Family Policies That Work  

In order to comment about family policies that work, it is useful to briefly recall the demographic and social trends effecting families today. The trends fall into three broad categories.

1. A breakdown of marriage and family

There are a number of discernible trends relating to families in western nations in recent decades:

• People are marrying less;

• Couples marry at an older age;

• There has been a dramatic increase in divorce;

• The rates of remarriage have fallen;

• Ex-nuptial births have increased; and

• There has been a marked increase in the proportion of single parent families.

These changes are having a profound impact upon families.

First, rising rates of divorce and unwed childbearing, which mean the steady disintegration of the married, mother-father childraising unit;

Second, the growing inability of families to carry out their primary social functions: maintaining the population levels, regulating sexual behaviour, socialising children, and caring for family members;

Third, the transfer of influence and authority from families to other institutions, such as schools, peer groups, the media, and the state;

Fourth, smaller and more unstable family units; and

Fifth, the weakening of familism as a cultural value in relationship to other values, such as personal autonomy and egalitarianism.

Taken together, this data reveals a steady displacement of a marriage culture with a culture of divorce and single parenthood.

If these developments were associated with an improving lifestyle for our children, they might be applauded. Generally our GDP, our health, and our educational levels have risen, but consider the evidence of what is happening:

• Youth suicide has increased markedly;

• Reports of child abuse rise each year;

• Alcohol and drug abuse among teenagers has risen markedly;

• Violence has risen;

• Welfare beneficiaries are much higher than two or three decades ago; and

• Single parent families, even after government benefits, continue to be amongst the poorest groups in the community.

As Professor Linda Waite from the University of Chicago and others have shown, stable marriage is not only the most healthy environment for adults, it is the optimal place for raising children. The evidence of the adverse impact of divorce on children continues to mount. The failure of marriage and the breakdown of family structures is hurting many of our children deeply and dreadfully.

This should not be seen to belittle the efforts of many single parents, often against difficult odds, who are successfully raising their children and who deserve our support; nor is it to fail to recognise that some married couples are failing the task. Nor is it to suggest a return to marriage forms of earlier years. To the contrary, marriage and family life requires a balance of values. The enhancement of family life for the welfare of children involves the balancing of rights and obligations: between men and women; parents and children; individuals and the community; the present and future generations. In the past the balance was not always right. There was often an overemphasis on women's obligations - to husbands, to children, and to the community - at the expense of individual development. But today, the goal of balance is often replaced by the contemporary libertarian rejection of all obligation in the name of individual freedom.

2. Aging societies

Aging populations have a major impact on nations. By the year 2020, many nations will face a major challenge in providing for an aged population. According to the OECD, the ratio of older people to those in the workforce in 1990 was 19 per cent. By the year 2030, this dependency ratio will double to 38 per cent across the OECD. In Germany, it is expected to soar to 49.2 per cent, in Italy 48.3 per cent, France 39.1 per cent, Austria 44 per cent, Belgium 41.1 per cent, USA 36.8 per cent, and Australia 33 per cent.

In countries like Australia and the United States, there has been a continuing shift over the past three decades of government resources from couples with children to older people. This shift in the allocation of resources continues apace. On current trends for both nations, some 40 per cent of the population will require long-term care at some stage of their lives. In Germany, for example, the proportion of the population in the working-age group of 26-59 is only 36.5 per cent, while the proportion aged 60 and over is 35.8 per cent. Demographers predict that the aged will increase to 43.9 per cent of the population by 2010, and 67.2 per cent by 2050.

This aging of the population will have a considerable impact on our nations. Not only will health care costs increase, the need for retirement income and other benefits will fall upon a decreasing proportion of the population.

3. A population implosion

For the past three decades a number of exponents of apocalyptic outcomes have suggested that the world faces a population explosion. Their thesis has been that the human race is breeding itself to a point of unsustainability. But, as Nicholas Eberstat has observed:

“The modern population explosion was sparked not because people suddenly             started breeding like rabbits, but rather because they finally stopped dying like      flies. .  it wasn’t that fertility rates soared; rather, mortality rates plummeted. Since the start of our century, the average life expectancy at birth for a human being has probably doubled, it may have more than doubled.”

In fact, the western world is probably facing a population implosion. The Economist magazine recently summarised the trends:

“In 50 or 100 years’ time, however, most countries are more likely to worry about the lack of babies than the excess. For there is now a serious possibility. . . that world population growth will stabilise by around 2040 at about 7.5 billion             – and then start to decline. . . Repeatedly, the UN’s demographers have revised down their population projections. . . the number of babies born into the world will fall below the number needed for replacement. . . with fertility rates in rapid decline, the debate about the global birth rate is now over when, not whether, it will fall below replacement level.”

The UN Population Division recently estimated that 44 per cent of the world’s people live in nations where the fertility rate has already fallen below the replacement rate. For the population to remain stable, women must have an average of 2.1 babies each. In 61 countries, there are insufficient births to replace the population. To take just a few examples: In the US, women are having just 2 children; in the UK, just 1.7; in Japan, 1.4; in Italy, 1.2; in Spain, just 1.15.

In a recent study of global fertility rates, the Australian demographer Peter McDonald concluded that if the current levels of fertility were maintained in many western nations, they are so low that they would threaten the future existence of the nations concerned:

“In an era in which we have come to understand the momentum of population increase, it is remarkable that we are yet to appreciate that the same momentum applies to population decrease.”

With increasing numbers of parents having only one child, many people in the future will live in families where intergenerational ties are greatly loosened. For example, if an only child marries an only child, their child will have no aunts, uncles or cousins. This is a realistic scenario for many families in the new millennium.

Although the effects of declining birth rates may not have an immediate impact on our societies, marriage breakdown, an aging population and declining fertility combine to produce an environment inherently more unstable and antithetical to healthy family life.

While full employment is likely to return in nations currently suffering high levels of unemployment, many people who live longer will do so in circumstances of isolation and loneliness. Extended families will virtually disappear.

Demographic patterns are not easily reversed. Even if nations introduced policies today to address these trends, it would likely take two generations for an impact to be observed.

Moreover, popular ideas and current lifestyle choices mitigate against the acceptance of appropriate policy responses. Having experienced their parents’ divorces, the movement of governmental support from families with children to the elderly, high levels of unemployment, and the need to have two incomes to achieve what their parent’s regarded as a reasonable standard of living, and facing what they perceive as an uncertain future, many young people are postponing or avoiding marriage and delaying children.

Family policies that work

In order, therefore, to answer the question implied in the title to this session ‘family policies that work,’ it is necessary to have clear objectives, of which, I believe, there are two:

• First, there is a need to strengthen marriage and reduce the incidence of family breakdown; and

• Secondly, there is a need to offset the combined impact of an aging population and declining birthrates.

Family policies will only work if they have a realistic chance of meeting these two objectives in the medium to long term.

The need for an integrated strategy has been recognised by others. The National Commission on America’s Urban Families identified three prevailing national responses to the trend of family fragmentation, namely: deny the problem; treat the symptoms; and change the economy. The Commission stated, ‘each of these approaches are championed by serious, sincere people. Each contains elements of truth and insight.’ But it found that these responses, both individually and as a group, to be fundamentally inadequate because ‘they do not contain the realistic possibility of halting or reversing the personal and societal problems that stem from the trend of family fragmentation.’

Let me outline a framework of what I believe is an appropriate policy response. In order to bring about a cultural change, there are at least four areas that should be addressed. Where appropriate, I will illustrate these elements by reference to policies adopted in different nations.

1. Explicit family policies

First is the explicit recognition of family policy. Despite political rhetoric about families, few nations have a national family policy. Families are treated as welfare recipients, or the aged, or defence force personnel, or public housing occupants, or taxpayers - but not as families. Even where programs have an impact upon families, they are compartmentalised into stages: infancy, childhood, youth, and the aged.

The failure of family policies to emerge as a distinct issue reflects the failure to agree on a common definition of 'family'. But as the veteran US Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, responded:

“A nation without a conscious family policy leaves to chance and mischance an area of social reality of the up most importance, which in consequence will be exposed to the untrammeled and frequently thoroughly undesirable impact of policies arising in other areas.”

The first step to treating families seriously is for governments to adopt specific family policies. Surveys repeatedly indicate that family life is a popular aspiration for people. In Australia, as many as 90 per cent of young people say that they wish to marry, and up to 70 per cent of people report that their greatest satisfaction comes from their family. A majority of the younger generation who have grown up with the reality of divorce in their lives aspire to marriage as a life-long commitment.

Even if the fundamental philosophical position that democracy is based upon healthy families is not accepted, the human and economic consequences of family fragmentation requires government to make an effective response to social stability and cohesion. As my Parliamentary Committee found, the cost of marriage breakdown in Australia, with a population of 19 million people, is between $3 and $6 billion a year.

The Irish Commission on the Family stated:

“The foundations of family policy, the principles and objectives which underlie and guide it need to be set out clearly. What the State is trying to achieve for and with families - the strategic dimension of family policy - should be clarified and made explicit.”

The Commission found that there is a need to strengthen the institutional framework of family policy so that the various manifestations of family policy acquire a greater degree of coherence and rationality. It proposed a series of principles, the first of which is that “recognition that the family unit is a fundamental unit providing stability and well-being in our society.”

The decision by the Australian government to create a new Department of Family and Community Services, replacing the Department of Social Security, and bringing together a range of government programs dealing with families, is an illustration of a national approach to families. The development of a National Families Strategy, in response to my Committee’s 1998 report to Parliament, is a reflection of this first response. A further development could involve the introduction of a Family Policy Grid for all departments, as pioneered in the Canadian province of Alberta. In Alberta, all government departments and agencies are required to consider the impact of their policies and programs on families in the planning and implementation of all initiatives.

The explicit adoption of family policies encourages governments to confront two cultural forces which have undermined families and communities, namely, the lessening of family autonomy, especially through state programs; and, secondly, the weakening of family through the growth of unrestrained individualism.

2. Recognition of family in economic policies

The second response is the economic, which involves a recognition of the advantages to individuals and society of life-long marriages, the desirability of higher fertility rates in the western world, and the additional costs of raising children.

It is also an important recognition that two economies exist within nations: the market economy, where exchanges take place through money and where competition and efficiency drive decisions; and the home economy, where exchanges take place through the altruistic sharing of goods and services among family members. As Allan Carlson and David Blankenhorn have written:

"It is precisely the home economy - acts of unpaid production ranging from parental childcare and nursing of the sick and the elderly to gardening, homecarpentry, and food preparation - that is the organising principle of family lifeand the basis of civil society.

"Every marriage creates a new home economy. These little economies are largely undetected in our measurement of the gross national product, just as they are usually beyond the reach of tax collectors. But they are vitally important. If they thrive, the well-being of children and society as a whole improves."

In many nations, such as the United States and Australia, there has been a massive intergenerational subsidy to those people who raised their families in the 1950s and 60s. That is, government programs and benefits favoured the earlier generation when they were raising their families and today in their old age. To the contrary, there is little net assistance to families with children today.

In the past three years, we have begun to reverse some of these trends in Australia, by raising the tax free threshold - that is, the level of income before tax is paid - for families with children, especially for families with one parent at home.

The Australian Government’s Family Tax Initiative increased the tax free threshold by $1000 for each dependent child up to the age of 16 and each dependent secondary student up to 18 years. In addition, single income families including sole parents receive a further $2,500 increase in their tax free threshold if they have a child under five. For a single income family of three children, one of whom is under five years, the tax free threshold is almost doubled.

The taxation reform package passed by the Parliament this year builds on these initiatives. Apart from reductions in personal income taxes, and the increase and simplification of  family benefits, the tax free threshold increases under the Family Tax Initiative will be doubled. From July 1, 2000, all single income families, including sole parents, with one child under 5 years will have an effective tax free threshold of $13,000, more than double the new general threshold of $6,000. This is a modest recognition of parents who choose to stay at home with young children.

Similarly, the policy of the Norwegian Government to pay parents the same amount that childcare centres or kindergartens receive in state subsidies - approximately $US 6,000 per year per child - enables parents a choice about staying at home with children up to the age of three years.

Further initiatives are necessary to address the competing pressures between family and work in our modern societies. As Janne Haaland Matlary, the Norwegian Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, has written: “In order to strengthen families and have a sustainable population, there is a need for policies that give parents flexibility, time, and an ability to combine child-rearing and careers. At a time when women are as well, or better, educated than men, it is completely unrealistic to expect them to stay at home in longer periods of their lives.”

Interestingly, fertility rates in Scandinavia have increased in recent years and are now the highest in Europe. According to Dr Matlary, there are two important economic policies behind this trend. The first is the child cash support referred to earlier. The second is the generous paid maternity leave available in Scandinavia. In Norway, for example, a new mother is legally entitled to 42 weeks of leave at full pay, or 52 weeks of leave at 80 per cent of pay. Unpaid leave, with a legal guarantee of her job back when the leave is completed, is available for up to three years. Paid leave for new fathers, usually totalling about six weeks, is also strongly encouraged and, in some circumstances, mandatory. Dr Matlary notes:

“The maternity leave has to be a paid one, it has to entail a job guarantee, and it has to be long enough so that the mother can avoid the stress of ‘double’ work as long as she breast-feeds, ideally up to nine months. It is beyond all doubt that breast-feeding is very important to the child, and also to the bonding between mother and child.”

More than 90 per cent of Scandinavian mothers breast-feed their infants for approximately nine months.

Two further factors are pertinent to the issue of work and family. First, although some studies suggest that higher rates of divorce are a result of increased labour force participation by women, there is considerable research evidence to suggest that women are more inclined to remain in the labour force because of high rates of divorce. That is, because many women are concerned, rightly, that their economic security is at stake should their marriage end in divorce, many more of them remain in the labour force. If this is true, policies aimed at supporting marriage and increasing fertility need to take account of women’s concerns about economic security.

Secondly, there is powerful new evidence from neuroscience that the early years of development from conception to age six, particularly for the first three years, set the base for competence and coping skills that will effect learning, behaviour and health throughout life. As Professor Fraser Mustard wrote in a major report for the Ontario Government:

“The evidence is clear that good early childhood development programs that involve parents or other primary caregivers of young children can influence how they relate to and care for children in the home, and can vastly improveoutcomes for children’s behaviour, learning and health in later life.”

The Early Years report identified parenting as a key factor in early child development for families at all socioeconomic levels. “Supportive initiatives for parents should begin as early as possible - from the time of conception - with programs of parent support and education.” These findings reinforce the need for policies that encourage a better balance between work and parenting, particularly when children and in the early years of life.

 3. Social policy

The third response is in the realm of social policy, particularly supporting marriage. I will not dwell on this element of an integrated family policy, as my wife, Margaret, addressed it this morning in her paper to this Congress.

However, there is a further important element of social policy, namely the support, or lack thereof, accorded to marriage in our legal regimes. Beginning with California in 1969, most nations adopted unilateral, no-fault divorce laws over the following decade. Although the importance of family was stressed in most debates about changes to divorce laws, the divorce of the parties remains the operational basis of such legislation everywhere. Under previous legal regimes, the concept of fault determined the outcome of the divorce application. In cultural terms, partners who walked away from a marriage, or caused their spouse to leave, risked the consequence of societal opprobrium. The introduction of unilateral no-fault divorce changed this cultural norm, allowing partners to leave a marriage on the premise that a short period of separation constitutes the irretrievable breakdown of the relationship. Hence society rightly concludes today that spouses can leave a marriage at will. As the former US Domestic Policy Adviser, Professor William Galston noted, the “divorce epidemic did not just happen. The legal codes. . .aided and abetted it through the institution of no-fault divorce.”

Galston suggested that two cultural changes were damaging families. First, the culture of rights without responsibilities and, secondly, the ethos of instant gratification. These cultural shifts are reflected in attitudes fostered by no-fault divorce. Marriage is often perceived as a right, including the right to leave it, without corresponding duties. Conversely, obligations, such as the sharing of property, can be imposed by a court, contrary to any previous understanding of the parties.

Recent developments in some countries involve a rebalancing of rights and responsibilities. First, many jurisdictions have imposed child support obligations on parents. Secondly, there has been the increasing legal recognition of nuptial agreements between parties. Thirdly, alternative covenant marriages have been legislated in a number of States of the USA, beginning with Louisiana. Fourthly, there is a growing marriage movement, especially in the US. Fifthly, government attention in nations like Australia, the UK and Ireland, is being focussed once again on marriage. Taken together, these initiatives represent welcome developments in support of marriage and family.

A further aspect of social policy is the reform of welfare policies. In many nations, expenditure on welfare has grown enormously over the past three decades, often to very expensive levels. A consequence, is that many families are dependent upon the state for the very economic survival. This in turn lessens family autonomy and contributes to a culture which is antithetical to the general wellbeing of children and society. A challenge for governments is to identify the barriers to family autonomy, especially through access to the labourforce.

The Fourth factor is the cultural, in particular the portrayal of marriage and family life by Hollywood and in the media. Although I have not time to develop this point here, few would doubt that the popular media often celebrates hedonistic individualism and a lifestyle that is antithetical to the commitment required for healthy, sustainable marriages in which children can be successfully raised.

Conclusion

While we read from time to time sensational reports that marriage and family life is fast disappearing, a lifelong commitment to family remains a popular aspiration, even amongst our young people.

Marriage and family life remain the optimal conditions for the socialisation and education of children’s character and values, without which liberal democracy cannot properly flourish. For these reasons, we cannot ignore the trends affecting families today.

Just as economic reform has been the major policy challenge of the 1980s and 90s in many nations, how we address family issues will be a central concern of the next decade. The tragedy of marriage and family breakdown is not just the millions of dollars it costs each year: It is the personal and emotional trauma which research increasingly indicates affects many children, even into their adulthood; and the consequent diminution of health, educational opportunities, and well-being, including the stability of relationships of children whose parents divorced.

Policy makers and public officials in many parts of the world are beginning to recognise again the social, cultural and economic importance of  lifelong marriages and healthy families. I hope I have been able to outline an integrated framework and to illustrate some policies that work. More however needs to be done to spread these policy ideas throughout the world.

Our choice is clear. We can throw up our hands in despair, unwilling or unable to propose a solution to family breakdown and falling fertility rates, with all the social consequences that follow; or we can take a positive step forward, committed to the aspiration so many people share, in the hope that with practical support and encouragement, we can continue to build  strong nations based on a healthy society with its foundation of stable family life.