While it has been said that the only two inevitable things in life are death and taxes, today I'm going to talk about an obvious third one. Everyone is born into a family and 98 percent of children in this country grow up in families and are likely to do so in the future. In testimony before the U.S. Congress, the family was said to be the most powerful, the most humane, and, by far, the most economical system for building competence and character in children and adults.
Families carry out a variety of functions critically important to society.
They share resources, economically support their members, and care for the elderly, the sick, and the disabled in ways that no other institution can do or do as well. Increasingly a variety of state and national commissions recognize the need to support families, including the White House Conference on Families, the National Commission on Children, the Committee for Economic Development which included 200 CEO's of the country's leading corporations, and The Governor's Task Force on Family and Children's Issues right here in Wisconsin. Recent changes in families and households have spurred a growing interest in family issues. For example, policies and programs usually focus on the specific needs of children, youth, women, the elderly, the disabled, and the poor with little or no attention to the families in which these individuals live. Teenage pregnancy has obvious repercussions beyond the teenager.