This letter from Clarence H. Carter, Director of the Office of Family Assistance, highlights several OFA-funded resources available to states wanting to participate in efforts to strengthen marriages, support healthy relationships, and encourage positive father involvement. These resources include: The National Resource Center for Healthy Marriage and Families, which helps human services agencies develop the capacity to promote healthy relationship skills and The National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse, which is a resource for responsible fatherhood information.

This resource, from the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families, reviews trends related to family structure for low-income Hispanic mothers in urban areas using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. The data show differences in family life stability, psychosocial risk, parenting stress, co-parenting relationships, and support across foreign-born and U.S.-born Hispanics. Authors conclude that strengths and risks vary based on mothers’ nativity, which should be considered when developing interventions or programs.

Young adults are more likely to avoid poverty if they follow a “success sequence” in this order: earning at least a high school diploma, working full-time, and getting married before having children. This report from the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies examines whether millennials are following this success sequence. The researchers found that 95% of millennials who married first before having children were not poor, but 72% of millennials who had children before marrying were poor. Millennials were also more likely to make it into the middle or higher end of the income distribution by age 28-34 if they married before having children.

This research brief from the American Enterprise Institute provides data on the class divide in marriage. Only 26% of poor Americans and 39% of working-class Americans ages 18-55 are currently married, compared to 56% of upper- and middle-class Americans. This marriage divide would be even larger if immigrants were not included, since they marry at higher rates and make up a large proportion of poor and working-class families. The authors describe the key features of the marriage divide, and explain the economic, cultural, and policy forces behind it.

While students attending alternative schools are often at higher risk for teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, there has not been much research conducted on teen pregnancy prevention programs implemented at alternative schools. This Mathematica report, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Family & Youth Services Bureau aims to fill that research gap. Mathematica conducted a rigorous evaluation of the Teen Choice prevention curriculum in alternative schools in the New York City area. This report covers the implementation of that curriculum. The programs suffered from low attendance rates, but the students who did attend were engaged and willing to participate in group discussions. Program staff liked the flexibility of the Teen Choice curriculum and the mutual aid approach that encourages facilitators to build trust with participants.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation developed this report to study the impact of couples-based family strengthening services for incarcerated fathers and their families. The Office of Family Assistance funded 12 grantees to support healthy relationship programming for incarcerated fathers, their partners, and their families from 2006-2011, and this report focuses on the findings from four of those programs. Three out of four of the healthy relationship programs had weak and non-significant finds, but one program showed sustained positive effects on multiple relationship and parenting outcomes. The authors suggest that more robust and comprehensive interventions might be necessary for justice-involved families.

Mathematica Policy Research issued three new briefs to document lessons learned from implementing the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), which educates youth on abstinence and contraception. These briefs are part of a multi-component evaluation on PREP that Mathematica is conducting for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. One brief focuses on a teen pregnancy prevention program in rural Kentucky, another details a boys-only teen pregnancy prevention program in Iowa, and the third brief examines how California, Maine, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina developed infrastructure to support PREP programming. Each brief includes findings on how PREP implementation differed at each site.

Young adults are more likely to avoid poverty if they follow a “success sequence” in this order: earning at least a high school diploma, working full-time, and getting married before having children. This blog post from the Administration for Children and Families describes a recent report from the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies about millennials following this success sequence. The researchers found that 95% of millennials who married first before having children were not poor, but 72% of millennials who had children before marrying were poor. Millennials were also more likely to make it into the middle or higher end of the income distribution by age 28-34 if they married before having children. The blog post also describes ACF programs that can prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancy and promote healthy marriages.