This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. Preface

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• 
  Efforts to help children and families living in poverty or near poverty should be expanded.
  
• 
  Efforts to help preserve marriages should proceed cautiously or not at all for highly contentious marriages.
  

FOR YOUR REVIEW

1. 
   Why do you think the United States lags behind other democracies in efforts to help families?
   
2. 
   What do you think is the single most important policy or action that our government should take to help America’s families?
   

[1] Cherlin, A. J. (2009). The origins of the ambivalent acceptance of divorce. Journal of Marriage & Family, 71(2), 226–229.

[2] Russell, J. W. (2011). Double standard: Social policy in Europe and the United States (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield; Shahmehri, B. (2007). More than welcome: Families come first in Sweden. In J. H. Skolnick & E. Currie (Eds.), Crisis in American institutions (13th ed., pp. 204–209). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.