Regulating the Family: The Impact of Pro-Family Policymaking. Assessments on Women and Nontraditional Families

Abstract

Beginning in the 1980s, pro-family advocates lobbied the Reagan administration to take a stronger, more direct role in enforcing traditional family norms through agency rulemaking. In 1986 the White House Working Group on the Family published a report entitled, The Family: Preserving America’s Future, detailing what its authors perceived to be the biggest threats to the “American household of persons related by blood, marriage or adoption – the traditional . . . family.” These threats included a lax sexual culture carried over from the 1960s, resulting in rising divorce rates, children born “out of wedlock,” and increased acceptance of “alternative lifestyles.” The report also identified increased dependency on governmental anti-poverty programs, including welfare and public housing, as a key source for decreasing individual family economic power and security. The report was followed by swift executive action that required federal agencies to examine all proposed rulemaking through a “pro-family” lens and determine the impact on “family wellbeing,” specifically “the marital commitment” and the message sent “to young people concerning the relationship between their behavior, their personal responsibility, and the norms of our society.” To satisfy this requirement, agencies were mandated to conduct policy assessments that were analogous to Environmental Impact Statements, but focused on safeguarding “pro-family” values rather than the environment. After being momentarily rescinded under the Clinton administration, the “pro-family” policymaking assessments were reinstated by Congress in 1998 at the height of the “Culture Wars.” Although these “pro-family” requirements remain in effect today, they have gone largely unnoticed by scholars and commentators. This paper explores the development and use of the “pro-family” mandate within federal rulemaking. It details how the definition of family that was enunciated in a 1986 White House Report continues to inform and constrain federal rulemaking concerning women and “nontraditional” families. The “pro-family” lens requires agencies to filter proposed rules through a narrow definition of family and precludes the development of polices that are balanced and forward-looking. By favoring policies that focus on the preservation of traditional different-sex, two-parent families, the “pro-family” policymaking assessments strongly discourage rulemaking and policies that would benefit non-traditional families, including multigenerational, single-parent, or LGBT families. These excluded families, however, are often the most vulnerable and the most in need of assistance. The views expressed in the1986 White House Report were based on discredited social science data and bias. They have no place in contemporary policymaking because they fail to reflect the diversity and evolution of the American family — a reflection acutely necessary if we are to create and implement meaningful social policy that will benefit all families.