The Decline of the American Family: Can Anything Be Done to Stop the Damage?

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).