The Long-Term Effects of Building Strong Families: A Program for Unmarried Parents

The authors present findings from a large-scale, random-assignment evaluation of Building Strong Families (BSF), a program offering group sessions on relationship skills education to low-income, unmarried parents who were expecting or had recently had a baby. Findings based on a 3-year follow-up survey of over 4,000 couples indicate that BSF did not succeed in its central objectives of improving the couple relationship, increasing the quality of coparenting, or enhancing father involvement. In fact, the program had modest negative effects on some of these outcomes. BSF also had little impact on child well-being, with no effect on children's family stability or economic well-being and only a modest positive effect on children's socioemotional development. Impacts varied across the 8 study sites. Although attendance at group sessions was relatively low, there is little evidence of program effects even among couples who attended sessions regularly.