Family Well Being Commentaries
" With 40 percent of children born to unwed mothers today, and a growing marriage gap between wealthy and poor, we can't afford to go on pretending that strengthening marriage is a conservative or liberal cause."
"Except the extra hours bumped Fajardo's pay over the income limit for a child-care voucher, which subsidizes her son's care while she's at work. Child care is the single most expensive item in the budgets of low-income mothers."
"Children with engaged dads are half as likely to experience depression, and only 25 percent as likely to drop out of school as children without dads. And single mothering is the greatest cause of childhood poverty"
"Some capable women manage to do a good job raising a family, but statistically the odds are stacked against them as they are victims of the second major threat to the family: poverty"
"There's a law that some experts say contributes mightily to the destruction of low-income African American families and neighborhoods"
"[W]e have seen growing legions of children raised in unimaginably awful circumstances, not because of marginal poverty but because of dysfunctional families"
"So a public policy that concentrates on lifting them out of poverty can help those children succeed, no matter the choices their parents made"
"Many parents are plagued by poverty or unemployment that can make it particularly difficult for them to balance parenting with job searches or work"
"Children who grow up without their fathers experience more poverty, have more problems at school, more trouble with the law"
"I don't want to see any more abortions in lieu of contraception. I don't want to see any more pregnant teens drop out of school. I don't want to see a perpetuation of poverty"
"As Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears has noted, children born to unmarried women and to those in cohabiting relationships 'must often overcome increased risks of poverty'"
"They face high rates of incarceration, homelessness, poverty and early childbirth. Less than 47% of foster kids graduate from high school, and less than 4% of those go on to college"
"[C]hildren from single-parent households are more at risk for poverty, academic failure, teen pregnancy and incarceration"
"teenage mothers are less likely to finish school and more likely to live in poverty; their children are more likely to have difficulties in school and with the law; and on and on"
"Close to a third of black children are poor, and their chances of moving out of poverty are considerably lower than those of their white peers. The fractured black family is not the sole explanation for these gaps, but it is central"
How Better Child Policy Makes for Better Poverty Policy
"Requiring that grandparents, aunts and uncles be licensed before serving as foster parents for their grandchildren, nieces and nephews will drive up costs for counties and unnecessarily insert the state into family relationships"
"Unwind the cycle of poverty and dependence, illiteracy and irresponsibility, that threatens another generation"
"Protects vulnerable mothers, infants and children"
"The feds and state government need to reach out to women, too"
The Link between Poverty and Unplanned Pregnancy
How to help women facing the realities of poverty.
By Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
James Q. Wilson lays out the need for a new focus on strengthening families.