Single-Parent Families and Public Policy in High-Income Countries: Introduction to the Volume

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00027162221133250
• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Date: 01 July 2022
• Subject Matter: Introduction

8 ANNALS, AAPSS, 702, July 2022

DOI: 10.1177/00027162221133250

Single-Parent

Families and

Public Policy in

High-Income

Countries:

Introduction to

the Volume

By

JANET C. GORNICK,

LAURIE C. MALDONADO,

and

AMANDA SHEELY

1133250ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYIntroduction

research-article2022

Keywords: single-parent families; U.S. policy; high-

income countries; economic well-being;

lesson drawing

Why Should We Care about

Single-Parent Families?

For the last 100 years, single-parent families in

the United States have captured the attention

of policy-makers, political actors, and social

reformers. Although the national discourse has

shifted over time, one theme has been con-

stant: the absence of the second parent, nearly

always the father, places single-parent families

at risk of economic insecurity and material

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 com-

parative 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), and

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).

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).

Correspondence: jgornick@gc.cuny.edu