All Our Children: The American Family Under Pressure

Why do American parents feel they no longer control the raising of their children? To what degree does parental influence compete with television, day-care centers, schools and peer groups? And what is the effect of radical changes in family patterns—both parents working, fewer children, a rising divorce rate, single parents trying to support a family? In 1977, the Carnegie Council on Children addressed these questions in All Our Children, a prescient and forward-looking report on the social and economic crises that American families were confronting—and today, still are. When the report was published, The New York Times  said, “This is a humane document, critical in its perspective and compassionate in its outlook. It will convince you that people concerned about preserving the American family must worry more about jobs and social justice than about fundamentals and permissiveness.”