More Than Kissing Babies?: Current Child and Family Policy in the United States

This compendium provides an orientation to basic issues of child and family policy. It includes an overview of the recent history of child and family policy in the United States; an exploration of several political economic conditions underlying changes in these policies; a historical survey of policies toward dependent children; and case studies of selected local, state, and federal policies. The case study approach helps to discern patterns in successful and unsuccessful policies, clarify assumptions and values that underlie them, and develop evaluation criteria. Policy formation is the focus in analyses of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act; family support initiatives in Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland; and municipal policies for homeless families in Atlanta, Denver, and Seattle. Examinations of the federal Baby Doe regulations and AIDS education policy in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, public schools highlight policy implementation. An account of the Massachusetts Day Care Partnership Project concentrates on the third phase of policy analysis: policy evaluation. The concluding chapters stress the importance of considering race, class, and gender in defining social problems, setting policy agendas, and structuring and evaluating policies and programs. They then provide an analytic framework for assessing future responsibilities for U.S. child and family policy.