Developed in part from a consultation of marriage leaders held in New York City on January 24-25, 2000, this statement discusses the importance of marriage in society and strategies for marriage promotion. The paper begins by addressing the goals of the marriage movement, the contemporary marriage crisis, and arguments against the promotion of marriage. The […]
This report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) summarizes 2005 preliminary births and birth rates and selected 2005 preliminary maternal and infant health birth data for the United States. The findings come from a substantial portion of the records of births (99.2 percent) that occurred in calendar […]
Interventions to promote healthy marriages and strengthen families with unmarried parents are most likely to succeed if they are based on a sound understanding of the determinants of union formation, stability, and quality. With this in mind, the Administration for Children and Families contracted with Abt Associates for a review of the quantitative research on […]
The purpose of this issue brief is to provide information that can be used by F2F grantees to expand, improve and complement their current practices to respond to the needs of families experiencing domestic violence that are in the child welfare system. The information and recommendations in this issue brief are based on five focus […]
Challenging the popular stereotype of the marriagephobic male, findings from a new national survey of young heterosexual men, ages 25-34, indicate that while men are delaying marriage until older ages, most men are “”the marrying kind.”” Among all men surveyed, those from traditional, religiously observant family backgrounds are more likely to be married, to seek […]
This fact sheet from the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center outlines the trends in children’s living arrangements from 1970-2004.
The report explores the potential benefits of marriage for couples who are living together and have children. It begins with a review of research literature that indicates children with cohabiting parents fare worse than those with married parents. Research results are then provided from the 2002 National Survey of America’s Families that focus on four […]
This is a one page factsheet on marriage rates from 1935-2005.
The Building Strong Families (BSF) project originated from these bodies of research, and is one of the centerpieces of a broader policy strategy to support healthy marriage. BSF is a multi-year, multi-site project sponsored by USDHHS/Administration for Children and Families (ACF). Its goal is to learn whether well-designed interventions can help interested, romantically involved, unwed […]
In this paper, a researcher and a policy analyst examine recent research on couples and marriage through the lens of economic disadvantage, to find out implications for program design and policy. It turns out that we know a lot more than we did a decade ago, but there’s still much to learn. The paper was […]