This fact sheet provides statistics on the prevalence of violence against women and children, harms and costs of victimization, and crime and incarceration of youth who have a history of child abuse and exposure to domestic violence.

The number of individuals in the nation’s prisons has increased dramatically over the last decade, from 850,000 inmates in 1992 to 1.4 million inmates in 2002. As a result, more and more families are now affected by the incarceration of a parent or spouse. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than half of […]

Violence against women is a health care problem of epidemic proportions and one that uniquely impacts women of reproductive age. Young women aged 16-24 are particularly at risk. In addition to the immediate trauma caused by abuse, violence contributes to a number of chronic health problems, including depression, alcohol and substance abuse, and sexually transmitted […]

This brief provides a national portrait of nonresident mothers and their children, contrasting them with nonresident fathers and their children. The brief uses data from the 2002 National Survey of America’s Families (NSAF), one of the few nationally representative surveys with data on nonresident mothers. It shows that nonresident mothers have demographic characteristics similar to […]

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 […]

The association between parental mental health problems and child wellbeing has rarely been examined in the context of non-traditional families. Using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), this analysis exploits the full range of parent relationship types, including married, cohabiting, and non-resident relationships, to examine the effects of having one parent with major […]

This brief reviews the emerging practice known as marriage and relationship education (MRE) that is designed to promote healthy marriages and relationships between parents. It begins by explaining the goals of the Marriage-Plus approach to help more children grow up with their two biological, married parents in a healthy, stable relationship, and to help parents–whether […]

After decades of obscurity, marriage education has suddenly emerged into the national spotlight. In 2001, the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announced its Healthy Marriage Initiative and since then has committed over $100 million in funds to support marriage education research and programs. It now proposes to spend […]