Clearing the Record on the ‘Family Policymaking Assessment’

“Shelton lauds the creation of a 'Family Policymaking Assessment,' which purported to analyze all new legislation from the standpoint of its impact on families. Yet the 'Assessment,' in the telling of long-time family policy scholar Allan Carlson, never had the teeth its supporters intended. As written, it 'avoided any language that would threaten the interests of big business,' Carlson wrote in his 2003 history of family policy, The American Way. 'Moreover, it was intentionally vague' about issues ranging from family wages to stay-at-home parents, and as such 'had little real effect.'"
— Patrick T. Brown, “How Conservatives Can Promote Family Through Policy" (July 3, 2024, Institute for Family Studies)

To be a conservative is to acknowledge your debts, and I am deeply indebted to the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Patrick Brown. Not only has Brown written the most substantive response to my Summer 2024 National Affairs essay on fusionism here at the Institute for Family Studies, but he has been a constant help to me ever since I served as a legislative assistant on tax policy in the office of U.S. Senator Mike Lee and Brown was working for him at the Joint Economic Committee. Whenever I have a question about technical aspects of family policy, I make a point to reach out to him. 

Brown actually first brought my attention to the writings of Allan Carlson, one of the only scholars to discuss President Ronald Reagan’s Family Policymaking Assessment (FPA) at any length. Since the FPA was a central feature of the case I made in National Affairs for the ongoing relevance of fusionist approaches to family policy, and because Brown invokes Carlson against me on this point in his IFS article, it is worth revisiting what Carlson actually said—and what he overlooked.

First, Carlson, Brown, and I are agreed on one point: the FPA has never had the purchase on rulemaking and public policy that its supporters intended. In part, this was failure by design. As Carlson explained in The American Way, “it was intentionally vague about defining the type of family that was to be strengthened.” Carlson is also right to note that “key issues, such as… the desirability of the stay-at-home mother, and the necessity of a family wage were simply ignored.”

The FPA would be strengthened by directly addressing these criticisms: ensuring that rulemaking didn’t privilege two-worker households over a traditional single-breadwinner model (as the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, and other child care benefits do), and ensuring that rulemaking doesn’t suppress wage growth. Reform efforts should also add an assessment criterion for rulemaking that affects large families, especially in light of the growing birth dearth. Future reforms might even consider creating a private right-of-action for families injured by federal rulemaking to sue the government for redress in order to provide the FPA that Carlson, Brown, and I would all acknowledge is lacking. If it is to fulfill the aspirations of its original designers, the FPA should be improved upon.

And yet, even for these shortcomings, it is important to note that Carlson called the Bauer Report and the FPA “the most coherent effort by the Reagan administration to resurrect a traditionalist family policy.” While this very well might be a backhanded compliment to Reagan, it nevertheless suggests that returning to the FPA would be a good place to begin for would-be family policy experts.

But it is also the case that even Carlson was unaware of the ongoing relevance of the FPA. His 2003 book, invoked by Brown, claimed that “President Bill Clinton finally rescinded it on April 21, 1997.” In fact, the FPA was reinstated the very next year—this time with firmer footing as statute. Unlike the executive order that was rescinded, the statutory version did have more teeth.

As I spelled out in my National Affairs piece, the statute “allow[s] members of Congress to request family-impact analyses from departments and agencies on these grounds,” rather than simply trusting executive agencies and departments to perform this work on good faith. That this new FPA power has gone almost entirely unused by Congress was a great deal of the impetus for promoting the FPA so centrally in my essay at National Affairs. 

Thankfully, it appears that members of Congress are finally taking notice. Since the essay was published this past summer, multiple congressional offices have reached out to me regarding their plans to begin using and improving upon the FPA. 

And now, with Republican control of both the White House and Congress, American families are waiting to see what this new government will mean for them. Lacking a filibuster-proof majority, Congress will be limited in what it can accomplish, and Republicans will need to take advantage of every tool they have at their disposal. Fortunately for families, one of those filibuster-proof tools is the Family Policymaking Assessment.

John Shelton is the policy director for Advancing American Freedom. He received degrees from Duke Divinity School and the University of Virginia, and lives in Cheverly, MD with his wife, Katelyn, and their four children.