Another marker of decline of the neo-liberal/neo-Moynihanian family-policy consensus that prevailed in DC and certain other adjacent elite circles from roughly late '80s to late 2000s. Published many useful pieces over the years (including one, I hope useful, I co-authored)... https://twitter.com/FutureChildren/status/1350066412841283586

... but generally operated within a narrow consensus that viewed "work and marriage" as "the way to end poverty and welfare", and kept holding on to the belief that the "Moynihan [report] was right." 2/

As a result, it failed to provide a real roadmap for the future of the US social state, see, e.g, this 2007 issue on The Next Generation of Antipoverty Policies, which combined pieces proposing incremental improvements to last generation policies ... 3/ https://www.jstor.org/stable/i405424 

w/pieces like "Decreasing Nonmarital Births and Strengthening Marriage to Reduce Poverty", recommending that "all school systems offer health and sex education whose primary message is that parenthood is highly problematic for unmarried youth" (but I guess ok for married ones?)

and probably the worst single piece they ever published, "Toward a Mandatory Work Policy for [Black and Poor] Men" by the racist Larry Mead, in which Mead claimed that ... 5/ https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ795868.pdf

"Black youth...typically demand higher wages before they will work than whites" because "passion reigns" among Black youth, who Mead claimed "will often refuse to work for 'chump change' even if it means not working at all." /6

The data cited by Mead for this sweeping claim was a single study that didn't replicate. And Mead didn't cite the published piece showing it didn't replicate. /7 https://www.jstor.org/stable/146341?origin=crossref&seq=1

It would be one thing if this piece slipped through, but Mead acknowledges the comments of both Ron Haskins and Isabelle Sawhill, senior executive editors of the Future of Journal. So important to take claims like this with a grain of salt ... /8 https://twitter.com/FutureChildren/status/1350066415575977984?s=208/

At the same time, there are plenty of other examples of issues where they met that standard. This one, on childhood disability, comes to mind: https://futureofchildren.princeton.edu/sites/futureofchildren/files/media/children_with_disabilities_22_01_fulljournal.pdf 9/

For more on the broader family policy FoC was part of, see @FamilyStoryProj's report on marriage fundamentalism and Melinda Cooper's Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism. https://familystoryproject.org/case-against-marriage-fundamentalism/