Objective To explore fathers’ experiences with a Norwegian home visiting program during the prenatal period and the first‐year postpartum. Design Qualitative design with interpretive description (ID) as the methodological approach. Sample Individual interviews with fathers (n = 13) who received home visits by a public health nurse (PHN) within the New Families home visiting program. Measures Interviews were guided by a semi‐structured interview‐guide, which contained open‐ended questions encouraging informants to reflect on their experiences with home visits. The analysis of the data was informed by content analysis. Results Two main themes that reflect the fathers’ experiences emerged: (1) The importance of being on their home ground captures the fathers’ experience of receiving home visits and building a trusting relationship with the PHN. (2) Including fathers in the home visit represents their thoughts about the content and focus of the home visits. Conclusions Fathers experienced the universal New Families home visiting program as an important contribution towards a more available and tailored service, with the home environment as a suitable arena for developing a trusting relationship with the PHN. However, the fathers often felt insufficiently included in the home visits, with only scant attention towards them as independent caregivers, their emotional reactions, roles, and family relationships. Pre‐birth home visits might contribute to strengthening preparations for fatherhood and increase fathers’ engagement in the Child Health Service.

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Becoming a father involves major changes in roles, identity and life

Men often experience depressive symptoms during the transition to parenthood, but there is a lack of synthesized knowledge of instruments used to identify such symptoms. The aim of this scoping review was to identify instruments used to measure symptoms of depressive symptoms among fathers in pregnancy and the postpartum period, and to describe the instruments’ characteristics and measurement properties. We identified studies published since 1990 through searches in databases such as MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PsycINFO and in gray literature. Pairs of reviewers selected relevant studies based on predetermined inclusion criteria. For each included study, we collected information relevant to the review question, guided by the COnsensus based Standards for the selection of health status Measurement INstruments (COSMIN). We included 13 instruments, described in 59 studies with about 29,000 participants across 25 countries. There were 12 validation studies. None of the instruments were uniquely developed for assessing paternal depressive symptoms related to fatherhood. The three most extensively examined instruments were the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, and Beck Depression Inventory. For seven of the 13 instruments, there was no information reported about the instruments’ properties beyond internal consistency, but for the other six instruments the 12 validation studies reported on both reliability and validity. No studies reported on measurement error or responsiveness. EPDS was both the most extensively assessed instrument and reported to be the most reliable and valid. Further research on instruments for identifying men with depression in pregnancy and the postpartum period is warranted.

Objective: To explore how men experience becoming a father for the first time and how they perceive their role during their partner's pregnancy, childbirth and the early period with a newborn child. Methods:The study had a qualitative design. Nine individual interviews were conducted with first-time fathers. Qualitative content analysis was used to interpret the data material.Results: The men's ages were from 25 to 45 years. They were all Norwegian, seven were cohabitants, and two were married. Four categories describing fathers' experience of the transition to their role as fathers were identified: Expectations of fatherhood, delivery, barriers to the father's role, and facilitators of the father's role. Conclusion:Development of the fatherhood role is a process in which the man transitions from relating to the abstractness of pregnancy via concretization through birth to the realization phase after birth. Growth in the father's positive engagement depends on a sense of mastery, meaningfulness, control and manageability in relation to his child, his partner and his new everyday life. Identified factors facilitate or inhibit the development of a positive fatherhood role. The sum of the factors determines how this role is experienced. Insight into the fatherhood role is important to enable health professionals to provide personalized follow-up of high quality in the health services. Better follow-up will enable public health nurses and midwives to strengthen the role of both the individual father and the family as a whole. This will in turn contribute to better health and development for the child.