family

If you are interested in families, the most recent presidential election brings a trail of troubles. A lot of Americans fear what is in store in the near future and are anxious about the clear division in popular attitudes that now exists in what is supposed to be the United States. Family policy will be deeply impacted as a result of this division. For direction, Kate Gallagher Robbins and Shawn Fremstad offer a light in the darkness in a recent brief—using evidence to clarify uncertainty. Robbins is the Director of Family Policy for the Poverty to Prosperity Program at American Progress, and Fremstadis a senior research associate at the Center for Economic Policy Research, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and a consultant on policy issues to multiple national nonprofits. They are also CCF Senior Scholars. If you want to hear more, also read this short interview with them on “Now What?”

In their brief, 4 Progressive Policies that Make Families Stronger, Robbins and Fremstad detail key progressive policies that will strengthen working class families.

1. Increase Minimum Wage

Families fare better when making more money because they have more certainty and fewer financial worries. Marriage rates help to portray that a low minimum wage is hard on families: Explain Robbins and Fremstad: “The greatest declines in marriage rates since 1970 are for working-class men, who have experienced the greatest declines in real wages, and for working-class women, who have seen little wage growth.” They argue that if the minimum wage were raised to $12 per hour, there would be increased financial resources for young, unmarried workers and even more for working parents.

2. Strengthen Collective Bargaining

Unions strengthen families because they bring security and stability for those in the union—and even for those in industries where the unionization rate is higher. “Researchers find that the connection between unions and marriage is ‘largely explained by the increased income, regularity and stability of employment, and fringe benefits that come with union membership,” report Robbins and Fremstad. Workers in states that have “right to work”—a policy that limits unions’ ability to organize workers–have lower wages and fewer benefits, and states without these laws have higher rates of unionization. And that leads us back to the takeaway here: States with more unionization have better wages and benefits for all.

3. Expand Medicaid

“Unfortunately, while the nation’s uninsurance rate is at an all-time low, nearly 3 million adults still lack health insurance because 19 states have yet to expand Medicaid to eligible low-income adults,” write Robbins and Fremstad. Despite the availability of federal funds to people across the country, some states deny people Medicaid who could be personally eligible. Expansion of Medicaid—health insurance for people with low or no income–would lessen stress levels, financial burdens, poor health outcomes, and family instability, all of which are heightened when Medicaid is lacking.

4. Support Reproductive Rights

They write: “Policies that support reproductive rights increase people’s ability to decide when and if to have children and are linked to higher levels of educational attainment and lifetime earnings for women.” When people are not given the control over when they have children, they note, it is harmful to their economic security. Robbins and Fremstad suggest that an expansion in Medicaid to cover birth control and other reproductive health options would help economic security and in the end help to strengthen families.

Together, these four policies are a compelling baseline for a progressive, pro-family agenda. As Robbins and Fremstad note, states that are promoting these four policies have “higher levels of educational attainment and lower levels of incarceration.” Their brief offers strong, clear recommendations. We will work… and see what 2017 brings.

Originally posted 1/2/17

Katherine Gallagher Robbins is a Director of Family Policy at the Center for American Progress. She focuses her work on economic security, family policy, women’s issues, and poverty. She has had years of experience in these types of research, as she also served as the director of research and policy analysis at the National Women’s Law Center before joining the Center for American Progress. Her work is cited on many media outlets, and she has authored many reports and analyses. More recently, she coauthored a brief titled: “4 Progressive Policies that Make Families Stronger” with Shawn Fremstad. Read the whole thing—and read a short review of it here on The Society Pages.

Shawn Fremstad is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Like Gallagher Robins, he focuses his research on economic security, family policy, and poverty. Before working for the Center for American Progress he was a deputy director of welfare reform and income support at the Center of the Bridging the Gaps project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and before that worked as a legal service attorney.

After reading their 4 Progressive Policies brief, I had questions about their ideas in the new political climate, and Robbins and Shawn Fremstad gave me some sobering answers.

Q: You make it seem so clear that progressive policy agendas offer more support for family stability, so how do you believe families will be impacted now that we have a conservative president-elect who, so far, has selected a team of very conservative individuals to work with him?

A: For a long time, the received wisdom was that conservative policies promote “family values” and liberal ones undermine them. But a growing body of research shows this just isn’t the case. Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, for example, have highlighted how the “blue family model”—which emphasizes birth control, higher education, and egalitarian relationship norms—has contributed to lower divorce rates, higher ages at first birth, and greater economic security. Similarly, our work shows that states with progressive, pro-worker policy agendas – that have raised their minimum wage, rejected laws that deter unions, and expanded access to health care, including reproductive care – are also places where families tend to have better outcomes. That’s likely due in part to the fact that such policies promote economic security, better health outcomes, less work-life conflict, and other factors positively associated with family stability and health for a wide range of family types.

Given this research, one of our key concerns is that the President-elect and a Congress controlled by conservatives will undermine or repeal important policies that stabilize and support families, particularly working-class and poor families. One of the big success stories of the last decade or so has been the extent to which programs like Medicaid, SNAP (formerly food stamps) and the EITC have become more inclusive and accessible to working class families, including many married and partnered ones. A related success story is the expansion of access to reproductive health care and comprehensive sex education programs, which have contributed to the substantial reductions in the birth rate among women under age 25.

The most immediate threat right now is the President-elect’s commitment to repeal the successful Affordable Care Act. This is effectively a pledge to take away health insurance coverage from 30 million Americans, most of whom are working class, and reduce access to the kind of effective reproductive care that has been a central part of the blue family model. Similarly, Trump’s tax proposal would raise taxes on nearly 8 million families with children—the vast majority of them are families headed by single and other unmarried parents.

These kinds of policies are best understood as part of a larger, right-wing effort to restore a Mad Men-era policy regime in which only the “right” kinds of families are valued and supported.

Q: What are you going to do now? I know you can’t tell us your whole year’s plan, but what are some of the top issues or top approaches?

A: Our first priority is blocking proposals by the President-elect and Congressional leaders that would take away health insurance, nutrition assistance, and other important benefits from tens of millions of struggling working-class families.  Another priority is defending immigrant families from mass deportation. President Obama’s Deferred Action for Child Arrivals, or DACA, initiative, has improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of families, but the President-elect has threatened to end it and deport these families.

At the same time, there may be some limited opportunities to get a better deal for working- and middle-class families when it comes to federal policy, such as child care and paid family leave. The President-elect has said he will work with Congress to pass an affordable child care and elder care bill during his first 100 days in office. But as currently drafted, his plan will mostly help rich families, and do little for working class ones.

On paid family leave, Senator Marco Rubio has proposed a modest paid parental-leave program and the President-elect has proposed a program that is limited to new mothers. Both plans fall far short of the kind of plan that caregivers deserve—a social insurance program that provides paid leave in an inclusive fashion and promotes egalitarian caregiving norms. But if the President-elect follows through on his promise to establish a paid maternal leave program, and puts something workable on the table, then we will likely work to make sure it isn’t just limited to mothers, and is as inclusive and effective as possible.

Additionally, we are thinking about how and where we can expand our work at the state and local levels to support families there. Many states and localities have stepped up in recent years and passed a number of proposals that have been critical to families. For example, in the last half of 2016 alone state and local wins provided nearly seven million workers with access to paid sick time with an inclusive family definition that works for every family. We will be working to grow this number in the coming months and years.

The city council where we both live, Washington, D.C., just voted to approve a paid leave program that’s likely to become law, joining California, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, and a number of cities and localities. Similarly, there has been a lot of momentum on increasing state minimum wages over the past several years; just last month, voters in four very different states—Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and Washington—approved minimum wage increases.

Q: How do you see this election affecting your own families? OR What are some abiding beliefs about research and policy work on families that will help you through this surprising new era?

Kate: I’m deeply concerned about so many people in my family. I worried for the health and safety of my LGBTQ family members – both those I’m related to by legal ties and those I’m related to by choice. I’m worried about the economic security and health of my sister-in-law, who is a person with severe developmental disabilities and for whom there are already too few supports. I’m anxious about the prejudice that my family members of color and those who are immigrants are more likely to face as we enter an era of rising hate speech and hate crimes. I’m worried about the fates of my family members who are serving in our nation’s military. That’s why it’s so critical that we work hard to ensure families are protected and supported.

Shawn: I’m a part-time worker on an annual contract and purchase my health insurance through DC’s ACA exchange. I’m also an unmarried, single parent who files as a head of household. So I’m looking at a tax increase and paying even more for health care. But much more importantly, I’m worried about the impact of this election on my nine-year old son. He was even more upset by the outcome than I was. Pretty much every day since the election he asks me: “What horrible thing did Trump do today?” Before the election, I was hopeful that by the time he graduated from high school, things like millions of Americans going without health coverage would be a thing of the past, and policies that promote egalitarian caregiving, like paid family leave, would be the new normal. I still want to believe this is possible, but it is going to take a lot of hard work and progressive solidarity in the coming months and years.

Molly McNulty is a CCF Public Affairs intern at Framingham State University. She is a senior Sociology and Education major. 

If you are interested in families, the most recent presidential election brings a trail of troubles. A lot of Americans fear what is in store in the near future and are anxious about the clear division in popular attitudes that now exists in what is supposed to be the United States. Family policy will be deeply impacted as a result of this division. For direction, Kate Gallagher Robbins and Shawn Fremstad offer a light in the darkness in a recent brief—using evidence to clarify uncertainty. Robbins is the Director of Family Policy for the Poverty to Prosperity Program at American Progress, and Fremstad is a senior research associate at the Center for Economic Policy Research, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and a consultant on policy issues to multiple national nonprofits. They are also CCF Senior Scholars. If you want to hear more, also read this short interview with them on “Now What?”

In their brief, 4 Progressive Policies that Make Families Stronger, Robbins and Fremstad detail key progressive policies that will strengthen working class families.

1. Increase Minimum Wage

Families fare better when making more money because they have more certainty and fewer financial worries. Marriage rates help to portray that a low minimum wage is hard on families: Explain Robbins and Fremstad: “The greatest declines in marriage rates since 1970 are for working-class men, who have experienced the greatest declines in real wages, and for working-class women, who have seen little wage growth.” They argue that if the minimum wage were raised to $12 per hour, there would be increased financial resources for young, unmarried workers and even more for working parents.

2. Strengthen Collective Bargaining

Unions strengthen families because they bring security and stability for those in the union—and even for those in industries where the unionization rate is higher. “Researchers find that the connection between unions and marriage is ‘largely explained by the increased income, regularity and stability of employment, and fringe benefits that come with union membership,” report Robbins and Fremstad. Workers in states that have “right to work”—a policy that limits unions’ ability to organize workers–have lower wages and fewer benefits, and states without these laws have higher rates of unionization. And that leads us back to the takeaway here: States with more unionization have better wages and benefits for all.

3. Expand Medicaid

“Unfortunately, while the nation’s uninsurance rate is at an all-time low, nearly 3 million adults still lack health insurance because 19 states have yet to expand Medicaid to eligible low-income adults,” write Robbins and Fremstad. Despite the availability of federal funds to people across the country, some states deny people Medicaid who could be personally eligible. Expansion of Medicaid—health insurance for people with low or no income–would lessen stress levels, financial burdens, poor health outcomes, and family instability, all of which are heightened when Medicaid is lacking.

4. Support Reproductive Rights

They write: “Policies that support reproductive rights increase people’s ability to decide when and if to have children and are linked to higher levels of educational attainment and lifetime earnings for women.” When people are not given the control over when they have children, they note, it is harmful to their economic security. Robbins and Fremstad suggest that an expansion in Medicaid to cover birth control and other reproductive health options would help economic security and in the end help to strengthen families.

Together, these four policies are a compelling baseline for a progressive, pro-family agenda. As Robbins and Fremstad note, states that are promoting these four policies have “higher levels of educational attainment and lower levels of incarceration.” Their brief offers strong, clear recommendations. We will work… and see what 2017 brings.

Why are families less economically secure today? After all, there’s been four decades of families seeming to have the opportunity to earn more and do better—this largely due to women’s movement into the U.S. workforce. According to a new report, women’s increased earnings and hours have been vital in the American family’s search for economic security. How has that search gone? Heather Boushey and Kavya Vaghul’s new report “Women have made the difference for family economic security” offers some answers.

Boushey, Executive Director and Chief Economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and research team member Vaghul used data from the Current Population survey to focus on changes in family income between 1979 and 2013 for low-, middle-, and professional-income families. They delved into the difference between men’s and women’s earnings regarding greater pay, as well as women’s earning as a function of more hours worked. They also looked at other sources of income between 1979 and 2013.

Boushey and Vaghul had three main findings:

• Low income families lost, while middle income and professional families gained. “Between 1979 and 2013, on average, low-income families in the United States saw their incomes fall by 2.0 percent. Middle-income families, however, saw their incomes grow by 12.4 percent, and professional families saw their incomes rise by 48.8 percent.”
• In all social classes, women’s hours of paid work increased. “Over the same time period, the average woman in the United States saw her annual working hours increase by 26.4 percent. This trend was similar across low-income, middle-class, and professional families.”
• Women’s contributions saved the day for low and middle income families. “Across all three income groups, women significantly helped family incomes both because they earned more per hour and worked more per year. Women’s contributions saved low-income and middle-class families from steep drops in their income.”

What about men? Between 1979 and 2013 men’s earnings fell while women increased both their working hours and pay per hour. That made women’s growing movement into the workforce even more important. Women’s work meant that the average annual income for low income families rose by $1,929, $8,948 for middle-class families, and $20,274 for professional families.

By pointing to women’s dramatic increases in hours worked and wages as well as men’s surprising decline in those same areas, Boushey and Vaghul demonstrate that women’s time at work make all the difference –across all income groups.

It is about finding time. While women’s entry into the workforce has significantly changed the make-up of family incomes, the U.S. still lacks proper policies to make such work manageable for families. The pressure being placed on workers to manage their family while making enough money to support them is examined in detail in Heather Boushey’s new book, Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict.

Originally posted May 17, 2016

Molly McNulty is a CCF public affairs intern at Framingham State University. She is a joint Sociology and Education major.

In recent months 2016 presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have discussed their childcare policy proposals. The mere fact that childcare found its way into the limelight gives me hope for families going to work while raising children today. Several pieces from the Council on Contemporary Families help to sketch where childcare policy has been and where it might go.

Will Obama’s Vision of Child Care Overcome Nixon’s Legacy?

For a great timeline of when and in what context childcare policy has been a central issue, take a look at sociologist Carole Joffe’s article, “Will Obama’s Vision of Child Care Overcome Nixon’s Legacy?”. Joffe summarizes the events of Nixon’s refusal to allow the Comprehensive Child Development Act to pass and the social implications that accompanied that refusal.  She also notes that President Obama’s message of support for quality and affordable childcare has made the issue visible again.

The Nixon record is more complicated than many think. In “Is TANF Working for Struggling Millennial Parents?”—on the 20^th anniversary of Welfare Reform–Shawn Fremstad recently noted that in his first administration Nixon called for equal benefits for all children no matter where they were from because, “no child is worth more in one State than in another State.”

America’s Fragmented Child Care and Early Education System

In “America’s Fragmented Child Care and Early Education System,” Sara Gable (University of Missouri), reviews the conditions of childcare in 2015. Gable makes it clear that our current childcare policies are not adequately addressing family struggles. Part-time childcare programs do not align with the needs of working families who are at it full time. High costs mean low-income families must spend significant portions of their income on childcare. When children get to childcare, Gable also notes, their experiences aren’t uniform. Teacher qualification policies across different states and childcare programs are inconsistent, ranging from only needing your high school diploma or GED to requiring a BA in education. Taking these shortcomings into account, Gable suggests raising professional standards for teachers and investing in childcare services the way that Sweden and Finland have.

The State of Affordable Child Care

In “The State of Affordable Child Care” sociologist Perry Threlfall shows how current childcare policies influence financial stability and economic growth for families. Threlfall notes that without affordable and quality childcare programs, working families are not able to fully participate in the workforce. She also brings light to the flaws in both the Child Care and Development Block Grant and the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit programs the U.S. government currently offers. Lastly, Threlfall discusses Center for American Progress Vice-President of Policy Carmel Martin’s proposal to provide a refundable tax credit that would allow low-income families to access quality childcare.

Schools didn’t start it. Achievement gaps start earlier.

In “Schools didn’t start it. Achievement gaps start earlier” Economic Policy Institute’s Elaine Weiss aims to correct the notion that schools are where achievement gaps begin and are responsible for closing them. Instead, she argues that the same system that created our staggering income inequality has also been a force behind the achievement gap. In other words, it comes down to money. Weiss explains that without an influx of educational resources low-income students will continue to enter school at a disadvantage and the schools will not be able to do much to help them. Weiss proposes fixes, including national investments in early education, higher wages for education professionals, and a further push on our current presidential candidates to concentrate on the matter of childcare and the achievement gap.

Megan Peterson is a Council on Contemporary Families Public Affairs Intern and a senior sociology major at Framingham State University in Massachusetts.

Part 1 of the Council on Contemporary Families’ Symposium on Welfare Reform at 20

The welfare reform bill that emerged in 1996, after a back-and-forth struggle between President Bill Clinton and the Congress (both houses of which were controlled by Republicans), imposed a two-year continuous term limit, and a five-year lifetime limit, on poor cash welfare recipients. It ended Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), an entitlement program, and replaced it with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, a state block-grant program. The policymakers who engineered this change took advantage of a growing popular expectation that mothers should be in the labor force. There was widespread resentment against those (perceived to be mostly Black) who used welfare payments to shirk the obligation to work, choosing dependence on the state rather than getting married or refraining from childbearing.This policy reform set out to fundamentally alter the relationship between work, parenthood, and marital status for U.S. women.

This policy reform, motivated and supported at least in part by racist ideas and stereotypes, set out to fundamentally alter the relationship between work, parenthood, and marital status for U.S. women. Instead, despite some increase in employment rates, it mostly increased the hardship – and reduced the support – for poor families and their children, who are disproportionately people of color. Reflecting on this anniversary, it now appears this was a tragic misdirection, and we lost an important opportunity to change work family policy for the benefit of all women and poor families. more...

Overview to a six-part series examining the origins, progress, and future of welfare reform. Over the next six weeks, The Society Pages will publish the individual reports.

Twenty years ago, President Bill Clinton proposed to “end welfare as we know it,” and, on August 22, 1996, he did just that when he signed into law The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). This welfare reform repealed the cash assistance program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and replaced it with a program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).Twenty years ago, President Bill Clinton proposed to “end welfare as we know it.” He did just that.

This wasn’t just an alphabet soup change-up; it effected a significant transformation in policy, based on an amalgamation of old racial prejudices and new expectations about families, women, and self-reliance. That is the conclusion of six new papers presented to the Council on Contemporary Families for their Welfare Reform at 20 Online Symposium. As University of Maryland demographer Philip Cohen demonstrates, the PRWORA reflected changing norms about the employment of mothers along with an abiding hostility towards black women. Stephanie Coontz of The Evergreen State College points out that it also embodied several myths about the history of the War on Poverty. One result of these myths was a growing diversion of welfare funds to programs designed to promote marriage and responsible fatherhood. But as Cal State-Fresno sociologist Jennifer Randles’ in-depth study of these programs reveals, they did not increase marriage rates or relieve poverty. Indeed, the few benefits they conferred came despite their out-of-touch condescension towards poor families, not because of the middle-class values and skills they tried to teach.

The Act succeeded in reducing the number of families receiving assistance: In 1996, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 4.4 million families received aid, and in 2012, 1.9 families received aid. Yet it failed at reducing the need for assistance, as documented in legal scholar Shawn Fremstad’s examination of the state of millennials. In 1996, 5.6 million families were in need; in 2012, 5.7 million families were in need.The Act succeeded in reducing the number of families receiving assistance, yet it failed at reducing the need for assistance.

The Act was initially deemed a success because more single moms found paid employment and the employment rate reached historic highs, CEPR’s domestic policy director Alan Barber and Framingham State University sociologist Virginia Rutter report. This employment surge, though, started in the early 1990s, well before welfare reform. Furthermore, the job losses starting in the 2000s have not been mitigated by this program, leading to intensive instability, especially for very poor families, per American University economist Bradley Hardy. Notably, child poverty today is as high as it was when President Lyndon Johnson announced the War on Poverty in 1964.

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The rapid rise in nonmarital fertility is arguably the most significant demographic trend of the past two decades. The proportion of births to unmarried women grew 46 percent over the past 20 years so that more than four in ten births now occur to unmarried women. Nonmarital fertility is quickly becoming a dominant pathway to family formation, especially among the disadvantaged. This is worrisome because decades of research show that children raised in single-parent homes fare worse on a wide range of outcomes (e.g. poverty, educational attainment, nonmarital and teen childbearing) than children raised by two biological parents. The poverty rates of single parent households are particularly striking. According to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 46 percent of children in single mother households were living in poverty in 2013 compared to 11 percent of children living with two married parents.

How can we improve the lives of the growing numbers of unmarried mothers and their children? So far, a dominant approach has been to encourage their mothers to marry.  At first glance, the logic makes sense. If growing up in a two-parent home is best for children, then adding a second parent to a single-mother home should at least partially address the problem. The 1996 welfare reform legislation and its subsequent reauthorization institutionalized this focus on marriage by allowing states to spend welfare funds on a range of marriage promotion efforts. more...

New Findings on Hooking Up, Dating, and Romantic Relationships in College

A Briefing Paper Prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Arielle Kuperberg, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Sociology, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Joseph E. Padgett, M.A., Doctoral Candidate in Sociology, University of South Carolina.

For more than 100 years, Valentine’s Day has been a time for romantic candlelit dinner dates. But today, many observers worry, romance and courtship are falling out of favor. According to the New York Times, “traditional dating in college has mostly gone the way of the landline, replaced by ‘hooking up.’” With women outnumbering men on most college campuses, we are told, women can’t attain the long-term relationships they really want, because there aren’t enough men to go around. Men, “as the minority, hold more power in the sexual marketplace,” and they use it to promote a culture of casual sex on campus. Instead of going out on dates, young adults are supposedly meeting up at their homes to “Netflix and chill” or hooking up at big parties, then moving on to the next in a long series of casual sex partners. This is said to harm their chance of entering long-term romantic partnerships.

How accurate is this picture? We recently analyzed a survey of over 24,000 college students, collected at 22 colleges and universities around the United States between 2005 and 2011, and found that reports of the death of dating are greatly exaggerated. College students have essentially equal rates of hooking up and dating. Since beginning college, approximately 62 percent reported having hooked up, while 61 percent said they had gone out on a date. Only 8 percent of all students had hooked up without ever going on a date or being in a long-term relationship. More than 3 times as many students – 26.5 percent — had never hooked up at all, but instead had dated and/or formed a long-term relationship. So while it is clear that hookups are widespread, they have certainly not replaced the traditional date.College students have essentially equal rates of hooking up and dating. more...

Reprinted from Beggruen Insights, Issue 4, with permission.

Nostalgia often arises out of a real experience of loss. It needs to be addressed and redirected, not ridiculed or denounced. And that applies to the nostalgia that motivates a considerable number of Trump supporters.

I have spent most of my career pointing out the dangers of imagining a Golden Age in the past that we should try to recapture. Nostalgia offers a warped explanation of what actually did work in the past and airbrushes out what did not. It leads to the scapegoating of those who supposedly ruined “the good old days” while providing no tools for coping with the new realities that underlie contemporary challenges.

That said, nostalgia often arises out of a real experience of loss. It needs to be addressed and redirected, not ridiculed or denounced. And that applies to the nostalgia that motivates so many Trump supporters.
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