Interventions to support parenting in military and veteran families: the state of play

Military parents face distinct challenges in parenting which can negatively impact overall family functioning, child developmental outcomes, and serving members’ readiness and retention. Over the past decade, several programs supporting military parents have been developed and seem promising, but the existing evidence on their effectiveness has not yet been ascertained. This study systematically examined the overall effectiveness of parenting support interventions for military families. Through systematic searches of literature published between 2010 and 2025, 14 interventions were identified and included in the review. These are analyzed in relation to their approach and characteristics, country, evaluation design, sample characteristics, outcome measures, and key findings and limitations. Conclusions highlight that while many of the evaluations of parenting programs developed so far show promise as to their usefulness and beneficiaries of these programs are largely positive about them, confidence in their effectiveness is hindered by limited evaluations, non-randomized controlled study design, and small homogenous samples, among other limitations. Moreover, it is important to consider how, for example, these interventions developed and tested in North America can be adapted for other countries.