Effective Policies for Single-Parent Families and Prospects for Policy Reforms in the United States: Concluding Reflections

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00027162221133682
• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Date: 01 July 2022
• Subject Matter: Summative Commentaries

236 ANNALS, AAPSS, 702, July 2022

DOI: 10.1177/00027162221133682

Effective

Policies for

Single-Parent

Families and

Prospects for

Policy Reforms

in the United

States:

Concluding

Reflections

By

JANET C. GORNICK,

LAURIE C. MALDONADO,

and

AMANDA SHEELY

1133682ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYPOLICIES AND REFORMS FOR SINGLE-PARENT FAMILIES

research-article2022

This conclusion engages two questions catalyzed by the

articles in this volume. First, which policies are effective in

reducing economic hardship among single-parent families

overall and minimizing disparities across subgroups?

Second, what are the prospects for related reforms in the

United States? We draw four lessons from the articles in

this volume and from prior research about effective policy

design: (1) work-family reconciliation policies are crucial;

(2) strengthening and stabilizing employment is necessary,

but not sufficient; (3) it is important to support the accu-

mulation of wealth in addition to shoring up income; and

(4) policies can be designed to include and protect those

single parents and their children who are especially at risk.

Turning to the feasibility of policy change in the United

States, we conclude that some factors—especially policy

elements that encourage self-reliance, shifting public

opinion, the COVID-19 crisis, and federalism itself—may

enhance opportunities for policy development in support

of single parents.

Keywords: Single-parent families, U.S. policy, high-

income countries, economic wellbeing,

lesson-drawing

During the course of producing this vol-

ume, as our editorial team absorbed the

many rich empirical findings reported in the

articles in this collection, we simultaneously

reflected on two sets of questions:

Janet C. Gornick is Professor of Political Science and

Sociology, Director of the Stone Center, and James M.

and Cathleen D. Stone Distinguished Chair in Socio-

Economic Inequality, at the Graduate Center of the

City University of New York. Most of her research is

comparative and concerns social welfare policies and

their impact on gender disparities in the labor market

and/or on income inequality. She is co-author or co-

editor of four books: Families That Work: Policies for

Reconciling Parenthood and Employment (Russell Sage

Foundation, 2003), Gender Equality: Transforming

Family Divisions of Labor (Verso Press, 2009), Income

Inequality: Economic Disparities and the Middle Class

in Affluent Countries (Stanford University Press, 2013),

and Measuring Distribution and Mobility of Income

and Wealth (University of Chicago Press, 2022).

Correspondence: jgornick@gc.cuny.edu

POLICIES AND REFORMS FOR SINGLE-PARENT FAMILIES 237

• What works? What lessons might we draw about the effects of public

policies on the economic security, material well-being, and quality of life of

single-parent families in high-income countries?

• What are the prospects for related policy reforms in the United

States, a country famously skeptical of extensive social policy? Is

there reason to hope, or expect, that some of the demonstrably effective

policy designs addressed in this volume might be implemented in the

United States?

In the following section, we turn to the question, What works? We briefly high-

light major findings, and themes, considering these articles as a collection. Here,

we focus our attention on four lessons that concern the effects of policies on the

lives of single-parent families, especially highlighting conclusions drawn from the

cross-national contributions.

Subsequently, we reflect on a related but different question that will surely be

on the minds of many of our readers: What are the prospects for policy

reform in the United States? Is there reason to hope, or expect, that the les-

sons that emerge in this volume—especially about policies that improve out-

comes in single-parent families—might find their way into U.S. policy terrain?

Although these two questions—which policies seem to lead to desired goals,

and what the prospects are for policy adoption in the United States—are related,

we see them as distinct. The late Erik Olin Wright argued that, when assessing

policy designs, it is analytically useful to distinguish between questions of viabil-

ity (these consider whether, if implemented, policies would generate the desired/

intended consequences) and those related to political achievability (these

address the “practical work of strategies for social change”) (Gornick, Meyers,

and Wright 2009). It is important to emphasize that the articles included in this

Laurie C. Maldonado is Assistant Professor of Social Work at Molloy University and Lecturer

at Columbia University School of Social Work. Her work on single-parent families, poverty,

and social policy has been published in Community, Work, and Family, Oxford Bibliographies

in Sociology, Handbook of Research on In-Work Poverty, and Handbook of Family Policy. She

has co-edited a book on single-parent families in cross-national contexts, The Triple Bind of

Single-Parent Families: Resources, Employment and Policies to Improve Wellbeing (Bristol

Press, 2018).

Amanda Sheely is Associate Professor of International Social and Public Policy at the London

School of Economics & Political Science. At LSE, she is affiliated with International Inequalities

Institute, the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, and the Phelan US Centre. Her work

examines state supervision of poor families, with a focus on single mother families in the United

States. She has published in Policy Studies Journal, Crime & Delinquency, Social Science &

Medicine, and Punishment & Society.

NOTE: We would like to thank the Phelan US Centre, at the London School of Economics

and Political Science, for providing funding for the conference that inspired this volume. We

are grateful to many of the volume’s authors for participating in an internal peer review of the

contributions. We thank our research assistants Isolde Hegemann and Joanna Dihn. Thank you

to Thomas Kecskemethy and his colleagues at The Annals for shepherding this volume to

completion.