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Family Policy Matters: How Policymaking Affects Families and What Professionals Can Do

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This best-selling text integrates the latest research and cutting-edge practice to make an evidence-based case for family policy. This book uses examples from around the globe to explain how families support society and how policies support families. The book also moves beyond analysis to action with pragmatic processes and procedures for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of policies by viewing them through the lens of family impact.

Highlights of the new edition include:



Extensive revisions with many new references and policies that reflect recent changes in the economy, politics, and family forms and functions.

Many new learning tools including guiding questions, more tables and figures, key terms defined chapter glossaries, discussion questions, and chapter summaries.

Enhanced global perspective with a new chapter (5) that features what policies nations have put in place to strengthen and support families.

New chapter (8) that views how family considerations can improve the effectiveness of policy decisions on issues such as early childhood care and education, health care, juvenile crime, long-term care, parent education, and welfare reform.





New chapter (11) on what the policy process and policymakers are "really like" what forces guide policy decisions and how policymaking institutions operate.





New chapter (12) that provides a theoretical and empirical rationale for why to view issues through the family impact lens and what innovative tools and procedures exist for analyzing the family impact of organizations, policies, programs, and practices.





Several chapters that review what professionals can do in the policy arena and how to do it.





Updated web-based teaching materials including sample syllabi, classroom activities and assignments, daily lesson plans, test questions, teaching insights, and more.

Part 1 highlights what family policy is, why it s important, how family life in the United States differs from other countries, and what family policies exist around the world to strengthen and support families. Part 2 examines whether families are a legitimate target of policymaking and what contributions family considerations can bring to issues such as early childhood education, health care, juvenile crime, long-term care, and welfare reform. Part 3 provides a theory that explains why polarization has stymied progress in family policymaking and what practical guidance exists for fostering compromise and common ground. Insights and inspiration are drawn from the history of family policy over the last century. Part 4 provides strategies for getting involved in family policymaking. It reviews: the processes policymaking institutions use to enact legislation; new tools and techniques for assessing the family impact of policies and programs; strategies for building better public policies for families from the award-winning Family Impact Seminars, now operating in 21 states and the District of Columbia; and various professional roles and careers for building family policy. The book concludes with a summary of how and where we go from here.

Intended for advanced undergraduate and/or graduate courses in family or social policy taught in human development and family studies, psychology, counseling, social work, sociology, public policy, home economics, consumer science, and education. Researchers and practitioners alike appreciate this book s integration of theory, research, and practice.

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 21, 2014

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1,836 reviews32 followers
March 4, 2023
As families are the foundation of society, it is imperative to see policy and law through the lense of the family.
475 reviews
July 12, 2010
very strong. read this for 645. good case for family policy. learned a lot.
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