Non-marital childbearing is associated with many adverse outcomes for both the mother and the child. Most of these births are unintended. If these unintended births could be reduced it might improve children's prospects by enabling their mothers to get more education, earn more, and wait to have children within marriage. In this brief, the authors…

In Ireland, historically and in the current era, family has been a central concern for society and the State. This article provides a descriptive overview of family life in Ireland and of major family-related changes over the past 40 years. It presents a general framework of analysis within which these changes can be understood, considers the…

The promotion of marriage and two-parent families became an explicit public policy goal with the passage of the 1996 welfare reform bill. Marriage has the putative effect of reducing welfare dependency among single mothers, but only if they marry men with earnings sufficient to lift them and their children out of poverty. Newly released data from…

The promotion of marriage and two-parent families as a strategy to reduce welfare dependency continues to be a major public policy goal of the 1996 welfare reform. Based on the assumption that women will marry employed men and that their earnings will lift poor mothers and their children from public dependency, this objective raises important…