The increasing recognition of the importance of marriage for the social and economic well-being of children has led to demonstrations aimed at strengthening and stimulating healthy marriages. The next step is to ensure that factors closely linked with healthy marriages are addressed as well. This paper brings together research findings and policy ideas about the interactions between marriage, employment, and family functioning. It presents a framework and proposes several demonstrations aimed at improving employment and family outcomes for disadvantaged populations. The appendix reviews an extensive body of research on specific linkages between marriage, employment, and family functioning. (author abstract)

While the scope of research on marriage and family formation has expanded greatly since the 1970s, the basic need to understand how families are doing, what challenges they face, and what helps them thrive will continue to be important. Marriage-related studies have evolved from merely tracking trends, to describing pathways into relationships and parenthood, to analyzing influences on child well-being and informing the Healthy Marriage Initiative. As a result, the field today covers an array of related topics including marriage, the wider spectrum of family structures, fatherhood, community resources, social networks, and the role of policy and programs as they relate to family well-being. There is a growing body of research showing how each domain influences family well-being directly and is vital in its own right. However, in combination they influence family well-being in interactive ways that are still not fully understood, for example how some elements mitigate or magnify the influence of others and how their relative importance varies over the life course.

Policy makers and researchers need to better understand how these dimensions of the family context intersect, and what this implies for developing policies and programs to strengthen families. To help achieve this, we need data that track individuals into relationships and parenthood; examine interactions among family members inside and outside the household; describe family resources, stressors and well-being along multiple dimensions and points in time; catalogue program participation; and capture a wide array of related covariates. In addition, we need data that will allow for examination of the roles and implications of these factors among different understudied populations such as low-income families and racial and ethnic minority groups.

This paper discusses the richness of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort (NLSY97) for studying these issues, and ways in which its utility for advancing research on marriage and the family could be enhanced. The basis for the recommended improvements comes from the discussion of a panel of experts convened by NORC for the Administration for Children and Families. To put these recommendations into clearer perspective, this paper begins with a review of the promises and current limitations of NLSY97 for studying marriage and family issues and ends with a discussion of first steps one could take in pursuing such enhancements.(author abstract)

Although there are exceptions, research indicates that children raised in single-parent families are at greater risk of living in poverty and of developing social, behavioral and academic problems than are children raised in married-parent families. This report presents a framework for intervention that would address the needs and circumstances of unmarried parents and provide instruction and knowledge for those who would choose to form and sustain healthy marriages. Head Start and Early Head Start staff can help develop programs that will assist couples in strengthening their bond while supporting the developmental needs of their child. (author abstract)

This report presents early implementation and operational lessons from the Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) evaluation. Funded by the Administration for Children and Families, SHM uses a rigorous research design to test the effectiveness of a new approach to improving outcomes for low-income children: strengthening the marriages and relationships of their parents as a foundation for family well-being. It also uses implementation research to document and assess how the organizations that were selected to be in the study are implementing the SHM model. The SHM model is for low-income married couples and includes three components: relationship and marriage education workshops that teach strategies for managing conflict and effective communication, supplemental activities that build on workshop themes and skills through educational and social events, and family support services that pair couples with specialized staff who facilitate participation and connect couples with needed services. In the first year of program implementation, SHM providers focused on three main tasks: developing effective marketing and recruitment strategies, keeping couples engaged in the program, and building management structures and systems. Lessons in these three areas from implementation analyses are the focus of this report. (author abstract)

As part of the multisite Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project, MDRC, together with its research partners, is leading an evaluation of parental employment and educational services delivered within Early Head Start (Enhanced EHS). The program model tested here aims to dually address the employment and educational needs of parents who are at risk of unemployment and the developmental needs of their children. The study is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, with additional funding from the U.S. Department of Labor.  The study uses a rigorous random assignment design comparing outcomes for families and  children who were offered Enhanced EHS with outcomes for those who could only access alternative services in the community. This report presents the final impact results approximately 42 months after families and children first entered the study. (author abstract)

This economic analysis of the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) addresses three randomized trials carried out to examine long-term effects of the NFP on maternal, child, and family functioning. The analysis presented in this report provides information on both the persistence of home visitation program effects on government expenditures and on their ability to be reproduced in different settings. The authors analyzed government expenditures incurred by both comparison and treatment groups for three sites. Because of the differential timing of the intervention in the three sites, government expenditure data was analyzed for different periods in the lives of the study families. For Elmira families, government expenditures were analyzed for the period from the birth of the study child until the family was interviewed during the child’s 15th year. For Memphis, expenditures were analyzed for the period from the study child’s birth until the family was interviewed when the child was 4 ½. For Denver, the period analyzed was birth to 4 years. The study conducted is a net-cost analysis from the standpoint of government spending. (author abstract)

This research article uses data from the Fragile Families Study to analyze intergenerational family relationships and stability among married and unmarried parents within five years of a child’s birth. Authors find that positive relationships between fathers and maternal grandparents is associated with a higher likelihood of marriage. The results suggest the importance for understanding broad contexts, such as intergenerational family relationships, when understanding fragile families.