New America on Family and Children

Easy Access to Our Work and Experts on This Issue

Nearly two-thirds of families are now headed by either two working parents or a single working parent. Accordingly, many parents are forced to choose between their career and economic success, on the one hand, and adequately caring for their children and elderly parents, on the other. Given the unprecedented pressures on families, workers and employers, Americans need more control over their time, as well as more opportunities for skills development.

Children, meanwhile, face challenges of their own. The United States lacks an integrated and comprehensive approach for meeting educational needs during the crucial years of pre-kindergarten through grade 3 -- undermining our ability to give young Americans the skills they will need to thrive in the competitive, high-tech economy of the 21st century.

New America's recent articles, events, policy papers and press coverage on this topic are available below, as is information on our staff and fellows with expertise in this area. To learn more about New America's ideas, proposals and activities, please see our Workforce and Family Program home page, the Education Policy Program's Early Ed Initiative and the Asset Building Program's information on KIDS accounts and the ASPIRE Act.

Policy Papers

New America's latest official publications on this issue are featured below.

How Much Does the Federal Government Spend To Promote Economic Mobility, And For Whom?

In an economically mobile market economy, individuals and families are able to raise their private incomes, wealth, and ability (sometimes referred to as human capital) over time and across generations. In the United States, many associate economic mobility with the pursuit of the American Dream. Education, work experience, and saving enhance the opportunity for upward economic mobility. To this end, many federal spending and tax expenditure or tax subsidy programs aim to enhance economic mobility. But exactly how much does the… more

Adam Carasso | April 17, 2008

10 New Ideas for Early Education in the NCLB Reauthorization

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) seeks to improve student learning and narrow academic achievement gaps that place low-income and minority students at a disadvantage relative to their affluent and white peers. Evidence shows that the roots of children’s academic success or failure are already firmly in place by third grade and as much as half of the black-white achievement gap already exists before children enter first grade. Therefore, to achieve its ambitious goals NCLB must do a much… more

Sara Mead | November 29, 2007

Asset-Based Welfare Policy in the U.K.

While traditional anti-poverty efforts have focused on maintaining a social safety net to protect the poor, there is a growing recognition that economic well-being hinges on a household’s ability to accumulate a wide range of assets. The value of assets is based not only on the economic security they provide but in how they enable people to make productive investments in their future. This approach has contributed to a wide range of policy proposals designed to help households build assets,… more

Reid Cramer | November 2007

ASPIRE Act Frequently Asked Questions

The attached document answers the following questions about the America Saving for Personal Investment, Retirement, and Education (ASPIRE) Act:

What does the bill do?Why is a bill to promote asset building for children necessary? more
Ray Boshara, Reid Cramer | October 1, 2007

The Stress of Balancing Work and Family

Executive Summary

American families confront major challenges in balancing work and family life. Workers report that they would prefer fewer hours, while new technological capabilities require parents to bring more job responsibilities home with them. Mothers and fathers encounter strain in work and home environments alike. Polling and surveillance data confirm that the balance between work and family care needs attention. Some of the most quantifiable and severe costs of this burden on families are adverse health outcomes. This paper… more

David Gray, Kelleen Kaye | September 17, 2007

Why Not More Focus on Children?

The 2008 presidential primary season is shaping up as one unprecedented in American history. Fund-raising reports from the first two quarters of 2007 demonstrate the breakneck pace with which this latest presidential season has begun. Fund-raisers aren’t alone in setting a new pace, as state after state has moved up the date of its Presidential primary in a bid for increased influence.

What has not changed is the focus of the early primary politicking. In the past few weeks, would-be… more

David Gray, Justin King | July 16, 2007

Estimating the 'Hidden Tax' on Insured Californians Due to the Care Needed and Received by the Uninsured

The report released today by the Hoover Institution confirms that insured families across California pay a "hidden tax" to provide uncompensated health care to the uninsured. The existence of this "hidden tax" is no longer in dispute; what's under debate is its magnitude, which is hard to measure precisely because it is "hidden."

This memo describes the range of estimates that various experts have made, highlights some of the reasons for differing judgments, and then lets the reader… more

Len Nichols, Peter Harbage | May 21, 2007

Every Baby a Trust Fund Baby

Click here for a brief video discussion of this idea.

An American Stakeholder Account (ASA), established for every child at birth, would build a savings and ownership culture in America, promote financial literacy, and fortify the American economy for the long haul. Every child would automatically receive a $6,000 deposit into an ASA at birth -- and also… more

Ray Boshara | February 1, 2007

How Research on Family Structure and Children's Development Can Inform Healthy Marriage Practitioners in the Field

Is children’s development, and children’s cognitive development in particular, affected by the marital status of their parents? On the face of it, this seems to be a simple question to which there is an intuitively simple answer: yes. Yet the answer to this question is anything but simple. The complexity of this question, the policy context that has helped shape a growing body of related research, and the implications of findings for policy and practice are discussed below. The following… more

Kelleen Kaye | December 1, 2006

Teacher Quality in Grades PK-3: Challenges and Options

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1) The PK-3 Workforce is Subject to an Array of Entry Standards. Public school teachers in grades K-3 must meet the quality standards of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Pre-kindergarten (PK) teachers in Title I-funded programs also are regulated by NCLB. But Head Start teachers have their own separate entry standards. In some state PK programs, all teachers must possess a bachelor’s degree and have engaged in additional early childhood or PK-3 training. In others,… more

Justin King, Lindsey Luebchow | October 20, 2006

Grandparents Raising Their Grandchildren

Today nearly 5.7 million grandparents only have to walk downstairs or down the hall to celebrate Grandparents Day with their grandchildren. They are part of a growing segment of the American population that is living in multigenerational households.

With the increasing demands of a global society, Americans are looking outside the nuclear family and using extended family members to assist with household responsibilities. Grandparents are helping their children manage their hectic lives and alleviate some of the parenting burden.

For the complete document, please… more

Danielle T. Maxwell | September 8, 2006

Beyond Censorship

As the FCC dramatically increases fines for indecency over broadcast TV -- and as Congress and the President raise the fine limits by a factor of ten and threaten to extend decency standards to cable and satellite networks -- the debate over how best to protect children from inappropriate media has reached a fever pitch. The problem is real: a plethora of studies show that repeated exposure to violence, inappropriate sexual content and even repeated advertising for junk food can… more

State Policy Options for Building Assets

States continue to play an important role in helping low- and moderate-resource families save and build wealth. They have been innovators in assets policy, whether on their own or through the forces of "devolution," in which federal funds and decision-making authority are shifting from the federal to the state level. These initiatives and experiments -- these "laboratories of democracy" -- have inspired and informed other states as well as policymakers at the national level.

The following ideas to broaden savings and… more

Leslie Parrish | June 2006

Valuing Fathers

Because of the demographic changes of the past generation, dads need more flexibility in their work. Businesses are recognizing that more fathers need flexibility in the workplace and many are giving it.

Businesses should be applauded for that and encouraged to do more in providing workplace flexibility -- and dads deserve credit for the work, balancing and the sacrifices that they make.

For the complete Issue Brief, please see the attached PDF below.

David Gray | June 18, 2006

The Assets Agenda 2006

The purpose of this issue brief is to summarize a federal public policy agenda to broaden savings and asset ownership opportunities for low- and moderate-income Americans. It reflects our latest and best thinking, and draws heavily on the work of many experts focusing on various facets of savings and asset-building policy. The menu includes calls for new structures and policies, as well as changes to existing tax systems, government programs and financial products.

We continue to share President Bush’s vision for… more

Economic Growth Finally Having its Effect on Family Wages

This week, the White House submitted its annual Economic Report of the President to Congress. It was a positive forecast driven by continuing strong consumer spending, business investment and export growth. Despite high energy prices and Hurricane Katrina, the White House had a lot of good news to trumpet on the economy from four years of largely uninterrupted economic growth.

For the complete document, please see the attached PDF version. 

David Gray | February 13, 2006

Ladders of Learning

It’s a good news, bad news situation. The good news is an increasing body of evidence shows that children’s participation in high quality pre-kindergarten (PK) programs helps them begin kindergarten ready to succeed. Similarly, there is growing evidence that children who start kindergarten behind but participate in a full-day kindergarten (FDK) program catch up to their peers by the end one academic year. The bad news is these effects often appear to “fade out” over time. As children move… more

January 20, 2006

Bipartisan Solutions to Work and Family Balance Challenges

America is the world's most entrepreneurial nation, giving tremendous opportunities to our own citizens andattracting business leaders from around the world wholocate in the United States to realize the benefits of our dynamic labor force. Yet as recent cover stories in Businessweek and Fortune magazines indicate, American workers increasingly feel stressed about trying to balance their work and family commitments, and value working arrangements that can help them find balance.

When Americans talk about "workplace flexibility," different ideas come to mind.… more

David Gray | January 1, 2006

Ensuring Health Coverage for California's Immigrant Children

The New America Foundation is committed to achieving universal health insurance coverage for all people in America. The most promising route to universal coverage is a system that relies on shared responsibility among individuals, employers, and the government. To that end, the New America Foundation has released a series of three papers outlining how to cover all children in California as a first step towards universal coverage. This paper is a component of that series.

For the complete document, please see… more

Cindy Zeldin, Len Nichols, Peter Harbage | November 10, 2005

Shared Responsibility to Cover California's Children

Health insurance is the gateway to health and to our health care system, yet over five million Californians are uninsured, about 800,000 of whom are children. Having health insurance facilitates access to affordable care from a network of health care providers and shields families from financial ruin in the case of a catastrophic medical emergency.

While most Californians have access to employment-based coverage, a growing number of people either work for firms that do not offer health insurance or cannot… more

Cindy Zeldin, Len Nichols, Peter Harbage | November 10, 2005

Articles & Books

Recent New America-authored articles, op-eds and books on this topic are featured below.

The Lost Children

In the summer of 1995, an Iranian man named Majid Yourdkhani allowed a friend to photocopy pages from “The Satanic Verses,” the Salman Rushdie novel, at the small print shop that he owned in Tehran. Government agents arrested the friend and came looking for Majid, who secretly crossed the border to Turkey and then flew to Canada. In his haste, Majid was forced to leave behind his wife, Masomeh; for months afterward, Iranian government agents phoned her and said things… more

Margaret Talbot | March 3, 2008 | The New Yorker

Life Chances

The blue-ribbon commission has an inauspicious history in American public policy. Most often, assembling a dozen or two bipartisan grandees to deliberate soberly about a problem for several years is merely a way of evading the problem.

But there are exceptions. Though it will probably pass unnoticed, Dec. 22 of this year will mark the 20th anniversary of the creation of one of the most successful policy commissions in modern U.S. history: The National Commission on Children. Chaired by… more

Flexing Their Word Power

Watching a bunch of gangly middle-schoolers hopping around in their gym clothes at 9 in the morning brought back all sorts of bad memories from my own junior high school days. Still, just by watching Wilmington Middle School students in phys ed class one day last week, I learned a valuable lesson about generosity, voluntarism and just plain common sense.

I went to Wilmington to check out what I thought was a simple yet brilliant idea to help working-class students compete… more

Gregory Rodriguez | November 26, 2007 | Los Angeles Times

Continuing the Investment

Deep Creek Elementary School is an education success story. In 2001, Deep Creek, where more than three-quarters of students come from low-income families and 80 percent are black or Hispanic, was one of the worst elementary schools in Baltimore County, Maryland. Its third-graders were reading at a first-grade level. But the new principal, Anissa Brown Dennis, expanded collaboration and professional development for teachers, implemented an aligned reading and math curriculum from pre-K through third grade, and offered summer learning and… more

Sara Mead | November 19, 2007 | The American Prospect

Baby Bonds Pay Bipartisan Dividends

At a recent campaign stop with the Congressional Black Caucus, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account.”

That was enough to generate a few headlines and some right-wing outrage. The Drudge Report was quick to tweak one of its favorite targets and drive some Internet traffic with a bold banner, “A Bond for Every Bassinet.”

The conservative Washington Times and New York Post blasted the idea within 24… more

Reid Cramer | October 16, 2007 | The Politico

Serving Our Young Adults

Many churches are developing programs to serve young adults. Many are investing in young adult coordinators in order to help grow their church.

However, there is another reason for churches to focus on young adults -- the critical needs of the early young adult population in our nation.

The violence at Virginia Tech last April perpetrated by a disturbed young adult is a tragedy beyond belief. It calls attention to the challenges faced by an often overlooked age group.

While American society… more

David Gray | October 15, 2007 | Presbyterian Outlook

Teach Your Children About Interfaith

One of the great fears that parents and church leaders have about their youth engaging in interfaith dialog is that they will lose their connection to their own religion and will end up rejecting and leaving their faith, maybe even converting to another religion as a result. My experience as a Christian pastor has been just the opposite -- I have watched young people become stronger in their own faith through exposure to other traditions.

Personal relationships matter a great deal… more

David Gray | October 15, 2007 | Washingtonpost.com

Forget Easy Money

Countrywide Financial, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, has a curious new idea -- or, more precisely, an old one. No longer will it use wads of Chinese cash recycled through Wall Street to make subprime loans to unqualified borrowers. Instead, it will take in deposits from small savers and lend them out to people who might actually repay them -- just like that humble thrift institution president George Bailey did in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Imagine: a bank that promotes thrift!… more

Help Kids via Junk Food Tax

In a few days, Congress will return to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. The program will pay for expanded coverage for children through an increase in cigarette taxes. The logic is to raise revenue while discouraging a behavior harmful to child health. Instead of a cigarette tax, however, Congress should address the health problem that research indicates is the greatest crisis facing America’s young people by taxing junk food instead.

The new epidemic facing American children… more

David Gray | August 31, 2007 | The Baltimore Sun

Mr. Successful

Anyone who's ever been to a wedding knows not everybody can stand up in front of a roomful of people and just talk. Anthony Pico discovered by accident, at 15, that he has a gift for doing that. He's 18 now, and he's become so well known… more

Douglas McGray | August 11, 2007 | This American Life

Islamophobes Rejoice! EU Countries are Becoming More Christian

Americans of all political stripes tend to see what they want to see in the European Union. For progressives, its example is supposed to show how a robust welfare state, including universal health care, is consistent with prosperity. It’s also supposed to show how separation of church and state, multilateralism, multiculturalism, opposition to the death penalty, embrace of gay marriage, state-sponsored preschool, gun control, the Kyoto Treaty, and other progressive causes are all consistent with a just and sustainable civilization… more

The Case for Pre-K

In 1961, 13 three- and four-year-olds from poor black families began attending a preschool class at Perry Elementary School in Ypsilanti, Michigan. They were there as much to learn as to teach. A team of researchers followed not only their time at the preschool, but their trajectory over the next four decades, and the findings were startling:

Compared to a control group of similar children who didn’t attend preschool, this class from Perry Elementary School would be less likely to… more

Living Wage Feasible and the Right Thing to Do

I never thought that trying to extend the city’s "living wage" law to a dozen hotels near Los Angeles International Airport was a good idea.

Please don’t misunderstand. Directing businesses to pay their employees at least $10.64 an hour is a smart and principled way to help the working poor. Those who insist that such a policy would trigger a huge loss of jobs are flat-out wrong.

The problem with targeting a handful of hotels -- and this was true even before… more

Rick Wartzman | May 11, 2007 | Los Angeles Times

A Gift of Flexibility For Our Moms

This Sunday is Mother’s Day and many of us will be out this week buying gifts for our moms. That is the right thing for us to do. As a nation, one way for our country to say "thank you" to our moms is by giving them more flexibility to balance their work and family commitments through creative public policies that increase workplace flexibility.

The changing roles of mothers have been one of the most pronounced social trends seen in the… more

David Gray | May 10, 2007 | TomPaine.com

Rallies Magnify the Shortage in Child Care

The turnout may have been relatively puny at this week’s immigration rights rallies in Los Angeles, but I have no doubt that the demonstrations threw more than a few families’ routines into turmoil.

After all, life can become pretty complicated when the nanny doesn’t show and you’re forced to figure out what to do with the kids so that you yourself can get to work.

For many thousands of Californians, this isn’t a one-day dilemma. It’s a constant headache, which presents some… more

Is America Serious About Mental Health?

The Virginia Tech massacre raises questions that may never be answered. Even in the insolubility of this week's events, however, one thing is clear: Cho Seung-Hui was a very sick young man.

No one deserves an explanation to the questions this tragedy raises more than the victims and their families. One question we all should be asking: Is America serious about the mental health of its young people?

America's young people face a mental health… more

The Moral Case for Covering Children

Abstract: Before the crucial upcoming debate over reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and all of the 10,000 general health reform questions that this discussion will engender, we should consider one fundamental moral question, for our answer will reveal the kinds of policies we actually want to pursue: Who should be allowed to sit at our health care table of plenty?

This essay sketches an answer to this question, drawing on the literature of various faith traditions as… more

Len Nichols | March/April 2007 | Health Affairs

Kids' Accounts Warrant Debate

Governor Schwarzenegger was cheered when he recently talked about post-partisanship in Washington, D.C. But the post-partisan waters don’t run deep back home in California. Two state senators who just crossed the aisle to forward a creative solution to a pressing problem are getting more grief than glory.

Senator Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Robert Dutton, R-Rancho Cucamonga, held a press conference on February 28 to introduce their bill to create a California Kids Account for every newborn. The goal is to… more

On Taxpayer-Funded Savings Accounts

Even though California is being modeled as the birthplace of post partisanship, ideological divisions still run deep in the political process. Two state senators who just crossed the aisle to forward a creative solution to a pressing state problem are getting more grief than glory.

Sens. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Robert Dutton, R-Rancho Cucamonga, held a press conference two weeks ago to introduce their bill to create a California KIDS Account for every newborn. The goal is to encourage parents… more

Is Success Killing South Koreans?

Three weeks ago, 39-year-old Hyang Sun Lee of Fullerton allegedly tried to set her three children and husband ablaze after she doused them with lighter fluid while they slept. Though she didn’t succeed, police said, within the last year, three other Korean immigrant parents in Southern California did.

News reports invariably point to economic hardship and the difficulties of immigrant adjustment as the source of the parents’ despair. And clearly they were factors. But real answers to these incidents are more… more

Events

Related New America events, both recent and upcoming (if any), are featured below.

Experts

David Gray

David Gray

David Gray is Director of the Workforce and Family Program at the New America Foundation, which seeks to advance innovative, market-oriented ideas that improve life for workers and strengthen families while enhancing the competitiveness of the American economy. Rev. Gray works on a broad set of policy issues from globalization… more

Gray is New America's primary contact for this issue. All fellows and staff with expertise in this area are listed below in alphabetical order.

Michael Dannenberg

Michael Dannenberg

Michael Dannenberg directs the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation. The program aims to advance education excellence and equity through extended learning time, improvements in teacher quality, and education finance reform. Mr. Dannenberg is recognized as a national expert on the No Child Left Behind Act, federal education… more

David Gray

David Gray

David E. Gray directs the New America Foundation’s Workforce and Family Program, which researches and develops solutions to social and family issues and builds common ground between people across ideological, political and theological boundaries. He manages the program’s various projects, directs its Healthy Families and Religious Center Initiatives, and… more

Jacob Hacker

Jacob Hacker

Jacob S. Hacker is Professor of Political Science at Yale University. An expert on the politics and character of U.S. social policy in historical and cross-national perspective, he is currently heading a Social Science Research Council project on the “privatization of risk.” In recent years, he has been a participant… more

Kelleen Kaye

Kelleen Kaye

Kelleen Kaye is an analyst and policy expert on family structure and family relationships as they relate to child, youth, and parental well-being. She has been a senior policy analyst at the Department of Health and Human Services, where she worked on efforts targeting single parenthood, teen pregnancy, healthy-marriage promotion,… more

Areas of Expertise: Demographics, Family & Children, Welfare

Justin King

Justin King As Deputy Director of the Workforce and Family Program at the New America Foundation, Justin King focuses on issues of child well-being in the United States. He leads the effort, directed at Congress and the media, to increase the visibility and popularize the use of the Child Well-Being Index, America’s… more
Areas of Expertise: Education, Family & Children

Phillip Longman

Phillip Longman

Phillip Longman, a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of numerous articles and books on demographics, economics, and social change. His work has appeared in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, Der Spiegel, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, The New… more

Douglas McGray

Douglas McGray

Douglas McGray writes about social and international issues, technology, and culture for The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Public Radio International's This American Life, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, Wired, The Washington Post, Mother Jones and The Economist. His work has been profiled… more

Sara Mead

Sara Mead

Sara Mead conducts research and writes about early childhood, elementary, and secondary education. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post and USA Today, and on CBS and ABC News. Before joining New America, Ms. Mead was a senior policy analyst with Education Sector, where she focused on issues… more

Areas of Expertise: Education, Family & Children

Margaret Talbot

Margaret Talbot

Margaret Talbot is currently a staff writer at The New Yorker. She has also written for The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, where she published numerous cover stories as a contributing writer from 1999 to 2003, and The Atlantic Monthly, among other publications. Her essays have been anthologized… more

Press

Press Release/Media AppearanceDate
Child Well-Being Index in Washington Post | For Children, a Better BeginningApril 24, 2008
Foundation for Child Development Study in Reuters | Obesity and Low Birthweight Mar Health of KidsApril 24, 2008
Child Well-Being Index in USA Today | 'Report: Black, Hispanic Children Making Gains'January 25, 2008
Steven Hill's NYT Letter to the Editor Regarding Krugman Column, Europe's Social ContractJanuary 11, 2008
Sara Mead Featured in Education Week on 10 Ways to Tweak NCLBNovember 30, 2007
New America Releases Two Reports on No Child Left Behind and Federal Education FundingNovember 29, 2007
Ray Boshara in The Record (NJ) on Child Savings AccountsOctober 22, 2007
Ray Boshara and the ASPIRE Act in the Los Angeles Times October 7, 2007
Bipartisan Lawmakers Introduce 'KIDS Account' Bill to Build Savings, Financial Education, and Retirement SecurityOctober 5, 2007
Marketplace Interviews Ray Boshara on Kids' SavingsOctober 3, 2007
The Los Angeles Times Writer Quotes Len Nichols on Bush and SCHIPSeptember 23, 2007
WTOP Radio Interviews David Gray on Balancing Work and FamilySeptember 7, 2007
New America Contest Highlights the Need for Increased Focus on America’s ChildrenSeptember 5, 2007
WTOP Radio Interviews David Gray on Well Being of ChildrenJuly 13, 2007
David Gray and Justin King in The Christian Science MonitorJuly 13, 2007
Roanoke Times Quotes Sara Mead on Educating BoysJuly 2, 2007
The National Journal Profiles Sara MeadJune 30, 2007
L.A. Times Quotes Len Nichols on President's Health Care RemarksJune 28, 2007
Columnist Neal Peirce Extols Ray Boshara, Kids Savings AccountsJune 18, 2007
Hoover Insitution Confirms that Insured Californians Pay 'Hidden Tax' for the UninsuredMay 21, 2007