Friday, October 3, 2008

Info about families / ask a debate question

I am teaching a course on the family, and have found myself fascinated and horrified by some of the info. I thought some of the links might be of interest to others: Jody Heymann MD, PhD wrote a heartbreaking book about families living in global poverty (Forgotten Families) and issued a report last year about how the USA measures up. Sadly, we fall behind many countries in the world in terms of public policy designed to help parents balance work and family. UNICEF issues a similar report, but focused on the well-being of children. They separate out a report of the well being of children in the world's richest countries, and found that the U.S. ranks 20th out of 21 countries. The full report is here. Finally, the World Economic Forum ranks us 31st out of 128 countries in the world with regard to the Global Gender Gap. All this leads to a chance to suggest a question for the next presidential debate, around support for families. The link is here, questions need to be posed today!