What are the trends of US families

The United States Constitution makes no public commitment to the protection of family life , but rather defines rights and privileges solely in individualist terms . This emphasis on individualism seems as powerful today as when it was incorporated into the Constitution by the founding fathers . Few would argue that many symbols are more powerful in America society than that of the family . Commentators of all ideological persuasions have long claimed that strong family units provide a necessary foundation for a free society . Political stability is strongly identified not only with individual interests , but

also the collective interest of families . Although the United States had the least articulated family policy of any industrial society , public policy has most certainly had a profound effect on families . The political system has long been active in creating a legal infrastructure to support families , as well as regulating the form they take . Specific infrastructure functions such as family policy even in these limited areas . Differing state laws and judicial decisions have created a complex network of family policies . The variations that can exist across such regulations can be striking . Often such variations extend to requirements and benefits of joint federal and state programs that continue to grant state a significant degree of administrative flexibility

Prior to the economic crisis of the 1930 's the role of the federal government in family policy was quite limited . Most social welfare programs were centered in the private sector . Those public programs that did exist were very limited and were usually administered by state and local authorities . The depression overwhelmed this traditional system and created a strong political demand for action at the federal level . The passage of the 1935 Social Security Act laid the groundwork for the contemporary American social welfare system and what many see as the federal family policy . The Act created not only the social security pension system but also Aid for Dependent Children , Unemployment Insurance and Supplemental Security Income . Two important aspects of these programs should be noted . First is the significant exception of the pension system , states retained a key administrative role in the programs . This is so the tradition of no single national social welfare policy was maintained . The second is that there is little evidence that these programs were established within an explicitly family framework This defines a national family policy only in the sense that they have a direct impact on families , and that they were implemented using families as recipients (Duncan , 1984

Since the 1930 's a number of social theorists and policymakers have argued that the United States ought to formulate a more explicit family policy . They claim that numerous social problems ranging from crime and delinquency to poverty and unemployment are the result of pathologies within the institution of the family . Family and family life ought to be more directly taken into account in the development of domestic social welfare policy . While this view has never been explicitly embraced by the federal government , such logic is evident in...