Family Policy Matters

Karen Bogenschneider is a Rothermel-Bascom Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is widely recognized in the United States and abroad for her expertise in evidence-based family policy—studying it, teaching it, and doing it.

Part 1: Why You Should Care About Family Policy. 1. If You Want to Make a Difference, You Should Care About Family Policy. 2. Why We Should Focus on Families in Policymaking, and Why We Don’t. 3. Why Do We Need Family Policy? A Global Rationale. Part 2: The Basics of Family Policy and the Policymaking Process. 4. To Become a Field of its Own, Family Policy Needs Fresh Definitions. 5. What are Family Policies Anyway? Who Makes Them and Who Shapes Them? 6. What Policymakers and the Policy Process are Really Like. Part 3: What Forces Influences the Formation of Family Policy. 7. How Much are Families Changing? Have Policies Kept Pace? 8. How Individualism is Woven into our Families, our Work and Play, and our Policies. 9. How the Economy Influences Families and How Families Influence the Economy. 10. Why Polarization Influences Family Policy and How to Bridge the Divide: Guidance from the Theory of Paradox. Part 4: How Professionals Can Make Families Matter in Policymaking. 11. A Toolkit for Infusing the Family Impact Lens into Policy, Programs, and Practice. 12. What Insights From the Past Can Guide Family Policy in the Future? 13. How to Engage Policymakers in Family Policy: Best Practices From Theory, Research, and the Family Impact Seminars. 14. How to Approach Policymakers: The Critical Choice of Advocacy or Education. 15. Go Forth With Hope to Make Families Matter in Policymaking.