ABSTRACT
Just as the ability to meet the needs of children is constrained by the social contexts in which parents live, so are their general feelings and behaviors regarding childrearing. Public policies are one feature of the social context that influences parenting, in spite of the vast symbolic distance between the creation of public policy by state or federal legislatures and individual family life. Thus, policies both reflect the cultural values of a society and shape family life in a multitude of ways. To explore effectively the interactions between human psychology and social and cultural systems, this chapter utilizes an ecological framework and assesses how current political systems influence parenting and children’s outcomes, with an emphasis on the United States). In all, the public policies that in some way affect parenting ability are too great to consider in any detail here. Instead, this chapter highlights broad policy issues that enhance or undermine parenting ability through improving the immediate social contexts of families (“microsystems”) and the more distal contexts that influence families but in which children and their parents do not interact directly (“exosystems”). Within the microsystems section we explore the lack of paid parental leave in the United States and the efficacy of home visitation programs, and within the exosystems section we discuss welfare and antipoverty programs, the role of neighborhoods on child development, and the economic and social costs of childrearing.
