Citation

Haskins R, Sawhill IV. Ann. Am. Acad. Polit. Soc. Sci. 2016; 667(1): 8-34.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0002716216663129

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

We have spent many years studying what has been happening to the American family. Haskins first addressed the issue when he was with the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over several social programs, especially the programs for adoption and foster care and the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, which required knowledge of research on family well-being. He began writing about family issues shortly after he joined the Brookings Institution in 2001 (Haskins and Sawhill 2003). Sawhill's first book, coauthored with Heather Ross, and published in 1975, was about the growth of single-parent families and their consequences for children (Ross and Sawhill 1975).

Like so many others in the scholarly and political worlds, we have been greatly influenced by the ideas of Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Now as the fortunate recipients of a prize given in his name, we happily acknowledge our indebtedness to his thinking, and we dedicate this article to his memory without in any way implying that he would have agreed with everything we say.

The history of his writing on the topic is well known. In 1965, as an assistant secretary in the Department of Labor, he wrote an internal report for members of the Johnson administration on his insights about the major impediment to continuing black progress (Moynihan 1965a). No paper written by a federal official has ever had as much influence as the Moynihan Report, as it was famously dubbed. The primary barrier to black progress in his view was weaknesses in the black family. He spoke of a "tangle of pathology" in the ghetto and was later ostracized both for his use of such language and for singling out the large proportion of single-parent families within the black community as an impediment to progress and thereby appearing to "blame the victim."...

Language: en