Family Policy In America: A Continuing Controversy

Family Policy In America: A Continuing Controversy The continuing debate about whether or not the United States should have or does have a family policy is currently alive and well and became the focus of media attention in May 1992 when Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the television character of Murphy Brown for having a baby out of wedlock and trivializing family values (Johnson, 1992). The two most important issues in this debate revolve around the questions "what is a family?" and "what is family policy?" One side of the debate argues that a family can only be a traditional heterosexual married couple; the other side of the debate argues that family does not have to be heterosexual married couples, that partners do not have to be married, and that, furthermore, a single adult with or without a child(ren) is also family. The argument about the definition of family policy is just as heated. One side argues that the United States needs a fully comprehensive explicit family policy while the other side argues that an implicit family policy already exists but that these implicit policies are scattered throughout the federal and state bureaucracies. As Zimmerman (1988) points out, the two main issues being debated are not the real issue. Energy is being directed at trying to define family and family policy and not being directed at ensuring that families and children in this country are getting the services they need. The real issue in this debate is that families with or without children are affected by social and economic policy. To clarify this discussion, this paper examines the debate over explicit versus implicit family policy and then uses a family stress perspective to analyze the Child Care and Development Block Grant Program of 1990. The Debate The debate centers upon the definition of family, the definition of family policy, and whether or not a family policy already exists in the United States. The debate, for the most part, ignores the issue of whether or not families are getting the services they need. Family Family has been defined in many different ways. One very traditional definition is that a family is composed of an adult male and an adult female living together with any offspring they have in a relationship that their culture defines as marriage (McNall and McNall, 1992). This definition says that the family is a heterosexual married couple with children, and it deals with the structure of the family. This definition reflects the traditional view of the family according to a functional sociological perspective and gives each adult in the family a role to play while identifying the family as the place for children to be born and raised (Parsons and Bales, 1955). The United States government by way of the Bureau of the Census defines family differently, but still with emphasis placed on family structure. The Bureau of the Census defines family "as a householder and one or more other persons living in the same household who are related to the householder by birth, marriage, or adoption" (1989). Once again, from the functional perspective, this definition says that the family is a heterosexual married couple and the proper place for children. These definitions both define the family in terms of family structure (i.e., who they are) and not in terms of process (i.e., what they do). Functional definitions are not good for either analyzing or developing policy. They do not take into account the variety of living situations that exist which Americans define as family, such as married heterosexual couples with and without children, single people, single people with children, and homosexual couples with and without children (USA Today, 1987). Lanciaux (1989) says that a definition of family for the purpose of developing family policy should be flexible, inclusive, and related to what a family does. In the traditional patriarchal family structure, family functions include regulating sexual behavior and producing and raising children. …