This is one in a series of 15 two-page, evidence-based framing memos on pressing education and social issues prepared by MDRC for the incoming Obama Administration and the new Congress.
Bottom Line
The new Administration will need to decide how it will invest in strengthening the most basic foundation for early childhood development: family relationships. A central challenge is the growth in single-parent families that many experts agree has contributed to child poverty and makes it harder for parents to support their children’s growth and development. Previous Administrations have addressed these issues through a variety of approaches, including programs for noncustodial fathers (“fatherhood programs”); reforms in the welfare and child support systems; and, most recently, the healthy marriage initiative, with relationship education programs at its core. An efficient research strategy in the current tight budget environment would be to follow through on studies underway at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) while also investigating new approaches that build on evidence about the importance of the earliest years of life and the unique role played by fathers in early childhood.
What Do We Know?
Since 1960, adults have delayed marriage and experienced high rates of separation and divorce, tripling the proportion of children who grow up in single-parent families. This is particularly true in lower-income households; in fact, children born to disadvantaged mothers now typically spend only half of their childhoods in families with two married parents. Strong research supports three fundamental points about how families can be assisted to provide healthy environments for their young children:
- A child’s early years are critical for both brain development and providing a foundation of emotional security. Early Head Start is the primary federal program that directly helps parents and caregivers to improve the early development of disadvantaged children aged 0-3. In FY 2006, it received $679 million in federal funding, which enables the program to reach only 3 percent of eligible children. A rigorous study funded by HHS suggested that Early Head Start programs that combine home visiting with high-quality child care outside the home are more effective than programs that use only one approach or the other, but there is much left to learn about the most effective ways to deliver these services.
- Fathers play a unique role in the lives of children. For example, early learning experts have found that fathers play a role in children’s early language development that is important and is different from that of mothers. At the same time, the latest evidence is that the father-child relationship is most realistically viewed as a “triad” in which fathers’ relationships with their children (whether resident or non-resident) are heavily dependent upon the quality of the relationship between father and mother.
Prior rigorous studies of interventions for noncustodial fathers, such as Parents’ Fair Share conducted by MDRC, have found that, while many disadvantaged mothers and fathers view financial support of children as a cornerstone of fatherhood, it is quite difficult to improve the employment prospects of highly disadvantaged young men. HHS is currently conducting research on the effectiveness of programs to strengthen fathers’ involvement, and the Department of Labor is launching a Young Parents Demonstration aimed at studying how to improve employment and other outcomes for young disadvantaged men and women who are parents.
- Regardless of whether parents are married or unmarried, children benefit from living in stable, low-conflict families. In recognition of the importance of family relationships to children, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 provided $100 million per year for healthy marriage services and $50 million per year for responsible fatherhood services. These services are now in their third year of operation around the country through grants operated by HHS.
What Do We Need to Know?
Our knowledge of how to improve parents’ capacities to support their children’s development lags behind our basic understanding of what children need. New demonstration programs could provide important evidence about the most effective ways to help disadvantaged parents improve their fundamental parenting and relationship skills. Well-structured demonstrations can also help public agencies to meet the challenge of moving promising interventions from a small scale to a much larger or national scale. Given strong evidence that critical brain and emotional development occurs from age 0-3, it makes sense to focus on learning what works to strengthen families with young children. A federal learning agenda could include three basic elements:
- Demonstration programs studying new strategies to help parents of newborns and toddlers to directly promote their children’s early development. Well-structured programs targeting parenting skills, such as David Olds’s Nurse-Family Partnership home visiting program and Carolyn Webster-Stratton’s The Incredible Years, have shown promise in experimental studies. In 2008, Congress responded to Olds’s positive results by appropriating funding for competitive grants to states for nurse home visiting services. However, the federal government is not currently conducting rigorous impact research on how to improve Early Head Start or related services for parents of 0- to 3-year-olds at a large scale.
- Completion of studies already underway about strengthening relationships between parents. Current demonstration programs funded by HHS will provide critical knowledge about preventive strategies for strengthening the relationships of parents: unmarried couples in Building Strong Families, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, and married couples in Supporting Healthy Marriage, conducted by MDRC. If found effective, programs aimed at bolstering parents’ relationships could be integrated into other support systems for families, such as Early Head Start programs, home visiting programs, or neighborhood family resource centers.
- Develop new approaches to supporting fathers, whether residing or not with their children. The types of responsible fatherhood and domestic violence services proposed by Senators Obama and Bayh in the Responsible Fatherhood and Strengthening Families Act of 2007 could serve as a foundation for broadening the focus of current family-strengthening efforts. Future research demonstrations operated by HHS could provide valuable evidence about the effects of specific reforms proposed in the Act, such as the requirement that child support funds go to the child’s custodial parent instead of the welfare system; improved Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and employment policies for noncustodial fathers; and/or the prohibition on treating incarceration as “voluntary unemployment” for the calculation of child support arrears.
Key References
Carlson, Marcia J., and Sara S. McLanahan. 2006. "Strengthening Unmarried Families: Could Enhancing Couple Relationships Also Improve Parenting?" Social Service Review 80, 2: 297-321.
Cherlin, A.J. 2005. "American Marriage in the Early Twenty-First Century." The Future of Children 15, 2: 33-55.
Cowan, P.A., Cowan, C.P., Ablow, J., Johnson, V., & Measelle, J. (Eds.). 2005. The Family Context of Parenting in Children's Adaptation to Elementary School. Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum Associates.
Schumacher, Rachel, and Elizabeth DeLauro. 2008. Building on the Promise: State Initiatives to Expand Access to Early Head Start for Young Children and Their Families. Washington, DC: Center for Law and Social Policy and Zero to Three Policy Center.
Shonkoff, Jack, and Deborah Phillips (Eds.). 2000. Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Child Development. Washington, DC: National Research Council and Institute of Medicine.
Webster-Stratton, C., and Taylor, T. 2001. "Nipping Early Risk Factors in the Bud: Preventing Substance Abuse, Delinquency, and Violence in Adolescence through Intervention Targeted at Young Children (0-8)." Prevention Science 2: 165-191. |
