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This chapter focuses on how poor mothers and fathers raised their children, and on what they understood their parental duties to be. It discusses how material circumstances affected their capacity to be good mothers and fathers, and attempts to examine what they and their neighbours considered to be a ‘good’ parent. Much of this account applies to the parenting of illegitimate children as well. In neighbourhoods, the legal status of children was often unclear. By the early 18th century, all single parents and their children were a charge on the parish, accounting, in the case of two London parishes, for upwards of 30 per cent of their total expenditure.

This chapter examines how women reacted to pregnancies and births outside marriage, and what happened to them and their children. It first discusses the legislative context in which women bore their illegitimate children, then their pregnancies, childbirths, and initial responses to their infants. Secondly, it examines how single mothers managed to both work and bring up their children, and what support they could draw on. The parish was important, but not all poor single mothers were assisted by parish welfare. Finally, the chapter assesses evidence about single mothers and older children to suggest how these families of mothers and children survived and to discuss whether this can be read as evidence of care and affection.

This concluding chapter draws together some of the themes discussed in the preceding chapters, reflecting upon the experiences of mothers and fathers who were poor in contrast to those of higher social status. Despite the bleak picture which poverty always presents, it argues that many poor parents derived social status and personal satisfaction from their struggles to do their best for their offspring.

This chapter focuses on the planning of the Head Start program. To the planners, the purpose of Head Start was optimal child development, resulting in improved school readiness. The Community Action people viewed better performance by a Head Start child not as an end in itself but as a means to a much larger end. It was an opportunity to hire parents and locals to improve their financial situation. More important, Head Start would confront and change the system so that all poor children and adults would experience a better quality of life.

This chapter discusses the uncertainties faced by the Head Start program under the Nixon administration and the author's effort to improve Head Start. At the Office of Child Development (OCD), the changes he was making to Head Start were referred to as the improvement and innovation agenda. The need to improve Head Start was obvious, but why innovation? The impetus for his decision to experiment came from many sources. When Head Start began, it had the excitement and fervor that comes with a brand new endeavor; but complacency set in after it had been operating for a few years.

This chapter describes events during the late 1960s and early 1970s that came within a breath of expanding and joining Head Start to a national child care system. This system would have been a giant leap toward meeting the child care needs not only of poor children but of all children of working parents in America. Many Head Start advocates were not particularly enthusiastic about the program becoming a relatively small part of a much larger combined effort, and they were unhappy with the idea of allowing wealthier parents to join and potentially wrest control from the poor families.

This chapter considers the elements of the philosophy underlying Head Start's conception and design. Efforts to help poor children's early learning can be traced back at least to the 17th century and Comenius's “school of the mother's knee”. In the early 19th century when the industrial revolution got underway, British social reformers established infant schools for disadvantaged young children in factory towns and large cities. Experimental interventions in America, and the planning of the Head Start program are discussed.

This chapter focuses on the early years of the Head Start program. As Head Start moved from the drawing board to the set-up phase, it very quickly brought out the best in Americans. Head Start's huge popularity was ignited by President and Lady Bird Johnson. Alleviating poverty was close to the president's emotional core, since he had lived among the poor as a boy, and his own family later fell on hard times so he had to work his way through college. The First Lady had a special place in her heart for children and adopted Head Start with the zeal of a missionary. Neither the planning committee nor decision makers anticipated the immense popularity of Head Start. No one came close to predicting that 560,000 children would be enrolled in the first summer.

This chapter reviews the accomplishments of the Head Start program. At the top of the list of Head Start's contributions is the fact that it was the trailblazer for our nation's huge investment in pre-school education. Besides inspiring so many states to mount pre-school programs for poor children, Head Start has had an impact on other nations. Head Start has also had a huge influence, on the author and on the field of child development, which goes beyond the generation of a large scientific literature on early intervention.

This chapter discusses the status of the Head Start program under the Clinton administration. President Clinton was just as strong a supporter of Head Start at the end of his administration as he was at the beginning. The president stood his ground on Head Start until the very end. His last budget agreement with Congress included an increase of $1 billion for Head Start (bringing funding up to $6.2 billion). As praiseworthy as this was, this amount would still fall far short of Clinton's promise that the program would have the funds to serve every eligible child. Regardless of whether his goals were too lofty or Congress not co-operative enough, the Head Start community continues to look back on the Clinton years as the golden age of Head Start.

This chapter reviews the performance of the Head Start program. It argues that based on the criteria of eradicating poverty or eliminating the achievement gap, Head Start is clearly a failure. Judged by changes in the risk profiles and attainments of the children and families it has served, maybe not. Like all programs that receive taxpayers' hard-earned money, Head Start must be held accountable. A lack of clarity over exactly what it should be held accountable for has allowed the controversy over whether the program works or not to rage without answer, even after all these years.

This chapter examines the impact of welfare reform on child poverty a dozen years after its enactment. It shows that there are more children in poverty, more children receiving food stamps, more children receiving federally subsidized free lunches (even controlling for population changes) than prior to welfare reform. Although the architects of welfare reform have argued that it has been successful, particularly in reducing child poverty, the empirical data in the chapter suggest just the opposite: child poverty and the economic situation of poor children has grown worse.

This chapter examines the limitations and flaws of the welfare program, and suggests different approaches to solving child poverty that have been used in most of the other industrialized nations of Europe, Australia, and elsewhere. The two central approaches to reducing child poverty that have been used in most other industrialized nations are effective child support collection and a progressive children's allowance. The United States has among the worst record in the world in terms of assuring child support collection. This problem is particularly important for poor and low-income children. If the United States were to adopt child support collection approaches used in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere, it could cut child poverty rates in half. Furthermore, if the United States were to adopt a progressive children's allowance as is found in most other countries, it could further substantially cut child poverty.

This chapter argues that we need to embrace the mechanism that makes wealth possible — capitalism — and the opportunity and prosperity it provides. More importantly, we need to ensure that all children have an opportunity to participate in wealth ownership, which is the heart of capitalism. We need to embrace an “assets-based” approach to ending child poverty. Central to this approach is providing all children with the resources and opportunity to accumulate wealth. The main program that would allow this is a progressive child savings account.

This chapter describes the era before organized child protection, which began in 1875. Prior to that date, many abused and neglected children went without protection, although there was never a time when children were completely bereft of help. Criminal law always punished brutal physical abuse and sexual assault. Early in American history, a clear distinction was not observed between child maltreatment and poverty. Local officials had authority to apprentice dependent children, some of whom were maltreated and others who were simply poor. America's first institution to care for large numbers of poor and maltreated children was the almshouses or poor house. Beginning in 1729, an alternative to the almshouse emerged, the orphanage. During the 19th century, orphanages grew in number and spread across the nation. Beginning in the middle of the 19th century, reformers argued that dependent children should not live in orphanages, but should live instead in foster homes.

This chapter traces the rise of the modern welfare system in the United States, and the causes that led to the continued high rates of welfare up to the end of the 20th century. It examines the conservative arguments against welfare which led ultimately to its reform and, some say, its essential end. Many of the changes began in the late 1960s but continue even today. It is shown that although the welfare program designed to provide income assistance to poor children has been reformed and largely dismantled, the social and economic conditions it was designed to address are still present.

This chapter details the author's experiences upon becoming director of the Office of Child Development (OCD). Until his arrival in Washington, he had never experienced any sense of inferiority and never had a doubt that he could accomplish anything he set his mind to. His new position demanded more work than any one person could possibly do, and he should have worked day and night to at least try to keep up. He also discovered that in Washington he had many superiors to whom he had to answer to.

This chapter examines the current situation of child poverty in the United States. Two major factors define child poverty: single parenthood, and race and ethnicity. The United Nations recently reported that the United States had the highest child poverty rate among more than 30 industrialized nations studied. This is difficult to believe, given the fact that the United States is the wealthiest nation in the world. How could the wealthiest nation in the world have the highest child poverty rate? The answer, of course, is that the United States has what can best be described as two worlds of childhood. The highest rate of poverty is found among African-American and Latino children — several times higher than that found among White and Asian children. The poverty these children endure is often debilitating. The restrictions of opportunity that begin in the earliest years are carried into adolescence and young adulthood. As a consequence, the opportunity of getting a college education is out of reach for most children raised in the other world of poverty. The likelihood of getting a four-year college degree is less than 1 in 15 for children coming from poor families. The chapter explores the very different opportunity structures that exist in the two different worlds of childhood. It also examines the role of standardized testing in restricting the opportunities of poor and low-income children.

This chapter evaluates family-based prevention programs or programs that target risk factors for delinquency and later offending that are associated with the family, such as poor child-rearing, poor parental supervision, and inconsistent or harsh discipline. These programs are usually delivered by health professionals such as nurses and they are typically less behavioural, mainly providing advice and guidance to parents or general parent education. The findings reveal that parent education plus daycare services and parent management training are effective in preventing delinquency and later offending.

This chapter discusses the status of the Head Start program under the Reagan administration. Reagan's conservative views, his disdain for social programs, and his voiced desire for a smaller federal government signaled that Head Start was in for a difficult period. The greatest fear advocates had was that the new administration would block-grant the program to the states, essentially ending the Head Start that its advocates knew and had worked so hard to improve and grow. Remember too that Reagan, like Carter, was a former governor. Since the inception of Head Start the governors have been troubled by the fact that large amounts of federal money for the program come into their states, and they have no control over where and how this money was spent. This gave Reagan even more reason to want to block-grant Head Start. Thus, at the outset of the Reagan administration, the goal of Head Start advocates was simply to maintain Head Start as a federal program run out of Washington.