The increasing recognition of the importance of marriage for the social and economic well-being of children has led to demonstrations aimed at strengthening and stimulating healthy marriages. The next step is to ensure that factors closely linked…

The number of children born to unmarried parents has been steadily increasing. In 2005, 37 percent of children were born to unmarried parents. Responding to these trends, the Federal government implemented the Healthy Marriage Initiative. This…

This report from the Office of Research, Planning, and Evaluation provides a conceptual framework for healthy marriage education intervention with low-income married step-couples based on research and practice lessons. Authors provide background…

The BSF project is both a demonstration and a rigorous evaluation. The evaluation will thoroughly analyze whether the intervention is successful in improving the outcomes of the couples and their children. Interested and eligible couples are…

While the scope of research on marriage and family formation has expanded greatly since the 1970s, the basic need to understand how families are doing, what challenges they face, and what helps them thrive will continue to be important. Marriage-…

This report presents the findings of a groundbreaking large-scale national study of mothers' beliefs and concerns. A representative sample of more than 2,000 mothers of children under the age of 18 were asked what they think and feel about…

This article describes the HHS ACF effort to focus on programs that strengthen marriages, and ultimately, improve child well-being, and provides information on and links to recent studies that reflect the large-scale research agenda of the ACF.…

This research brief outlines the "Building Strong Families" project, which aims at helping new, unmarried parents gain the skills necessary to build healthy marriages. The project was created with expected outcomes to enhance the wellbeing of…

Authored by Marcia Carlson of Columbia University, Sara McLanahan of Princeton University, Paula England of Stanford University, and Barbara Devaney of Mathematica Policy Research. This brief, the third in a series from the Building Strong…