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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2009
Ideology and public policy are so intimately related that they may only with difficulty be seen separately. This essay attempts to view one kind of ideology, American family values, and predict the manner in which they will affect public policy and be altered by public policy. Whatever its intrinsic hazards, prediction for the last quarter of the century affords relative safety for a few years anyway. The term ‘family values’ is used broadly here to encompass objectives that are professed for families in the United States as well as patterns of family structure and activity to which, by practising them, we show attachment. I begin with a brief review and commentary upon the relationship between family values and public policy to date, concluded with some comments on the role that social scientists and reformers might play. Discussion of the future follows, with one further prescription.
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