Introduction: Progressive Visions of the American Family

by JUDITH L. LICHTMAN*

It is with great pleasure that I introduce Volume 4, Number 1 of the Harvard Law & Policy Review. In addition to selecting articles discussing religion and science, implicit bias in the legal system, federal sentencing guidelines, and federal farm subsidies, the HLPR staff has also edited several pieces dedicated to this Volume’s symposium: progressive visions of the American family. As first President and now Senior Advisor of the National Partnership for Women and Families (formerly the Women’s Legal Defense Fund), I have dedicated my career to promoting fairness in the workplace, access to quality health care, and policies that help women and men meet the dual demands of work and family. The four articles in this Volume’s symposium aid us in better understanding how to approach these important issues, each providing important analysis of family legal dynamics, and each proposing feasible policy solutions to address the challenges confronting families today.

Although the subject matter in each of the four symposium articles is different, each recognizes the tremendous impact that law and public policy have in shaping families. As Anne L. Alstott notes in the following pages, family law is traditionally perceived as a legal backstop, stepping in to provide order when private familial relationships breakdown. The following symposium articles demonstrate the inaccuracy of this conception. As Alstott’s piece demonstrates, family law is inherently integrated with family tragedies of disability, family breakup, mental illness, substance abuse, and parental poverty. Using two examples—spousal support and disability, and child support for multiple families—Alstott illustrates how financial entitlements in family law and in social welfare policy are interdependent, and that changes in family law could dramatically alter the likelihood and ramifications of family tragedy. The piece thus undermines the traditional privatepublic distinction traditionally found in family law scholarship.

Karen Kornbluh and Rachel Homer’s piece further discredits the idea of distinct private and public legal realms, describing how tax policy and government benefits programs discourage women from occupying an economic provider role other than homemaker. The authors argue how restructuring the tax code, private pensions, and Social Security is necessary to remedying this longstanding inequality.

Charting some new legal territory, Courtney G. Joslin addresses an emerging challenge facing same-sex parent families, namely state regulations that do not automatically recognize a lesbian birth mother’s partner as the child’s second parent, thereby forcing same-sex parents to complete a second-parent adoption—an option that is not always available. Noting how this failure to recognize one of the child’s two parents has left thousands of children emotionally and financially vulnerable, Joslin proposes a system designed to eliminate this inequitable legal regime.

While Alstott, Kornbluh, and Joslin all note the influence of law and policy on families, David Katner’s analysis takes the inquiry one step further, identifying how the law’s impact on families eventually affects society as a whole. Providing several policy proposals informed by both demographic and comparative research, Katner notes how legal regimes promoting daycare and after-school care could help the nation confront juvenile delinquency and crime.

Although the relationships binding spouses, partners, parents, and children are among the ones we hope to keep most private, pursuing reform requires that public attention be given to these issues. This Volume, with its diverse set of authors and issues, takes significant steps in starting the conversation. There can be no better time to shine the spotlight on the law’s effect on families in order to promote progressive visions of the American family.