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Writing recently in National Review Online, Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), describes the huge social costs of family breakdown and the benefits to children and society of marriage. He also points out that his agency spends $46 billion each year on programs "the need for [which] is either created or exacerbated by the breakup of families and marriages." He rightly argues that we need to address this costly "family breakdown" problem. In fact, one could look beyond his Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and even HHS and make a similar point about virtually all...

CHICAGO (AP) - A leading group of pediatricians says teenagers need access to birth control and emergency contraception, not the abstinence-only approach to sex education favored by religious groups and President Bush. The recommendations are part of the American Academy of Pediatrics' updated teen pregnancy policy. "Even though there is great enthusiasm in some circles for abstinence-only interventions, the evidence does not support abstinence-only interventions as the best way to keep young people from unintended pregnancy," said Dr. Jonathan Klein, chairman of the academy committee that wrote the new recommendations. Teaching abstinence but not birth control makes it more likely...

WASHINGTON - Head Start helps poor, disadvantaged children narrow a gap in reading skills compared with other preschoolers, but the program doesn't help them catch up in math or their ability to comprehend what people say to them. The findings, according to a government report released Thursday, were based on research in which the skills of 3- and 4-year-olds who had been in Head Start for a year were compared with those of children the same age outside the program. "What these results suggest is that while this program has some benefits for kids, it can still be improved," said...

Washington --- The new chief of the federal program to promote sexual abstinence --- dubbed the ''chastity czar'' --- says he wants to make it socially acceptable for American teens to just say no to sex. Wade F. Horn, 50, assistant secretary for children and families in the Department of Health and Human Services, says youths who don't engage in sex ''don't feel supported in that choice.'' ''They believe the broader culture sees them as odd, that they are strange if they commit to abstinence,'' Horn said. ''I want to give young people a fighting chance to make the healthiest...

<p>January 17, 2004 -- CENTURIES ago, mankind created the greatest anti-child-poverty program in all of recorded history. It was called marriage.</p> <p>During the past three decades, the consensus behind this wondrously effective social program has collapsed. The result has harmed countless American children for whom there is no disaster quite like being born out of wedlock and growing up in a single-parent household.</p>

WASHINGTON - Administration officials say they are planning an extensive election-year initiative to promote marriage, especially among low-income couples, and they are weighing whether President Bush should promote the plan in his State of the Union speech next week. For months, administration officials have been working with conservative groups on the proposal, which would provide at least $1.5 billion for training to help couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain "healthy marriages." The officials said they believe the measure is especially timely because of pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage after a November ruling by...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 — Administration officials say they are planning an extensive election-year initiative to promote marriage, especially among low-income couples, and they are weighing whether President Bush should promote the plan next week in his State of the Union address. For months, administration officials have worked with conservative groups on the proposal, which would provide at least $1.5 billion for training to help couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain "healthy marriages."The officials said they believed that the measure was especially timely because they were facing pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage, after a...

<p>Welfare rolls fell again last year even though an economic slowdown pushed more people into poverty, federal data show.</p> <p>Numbers released by the U.S. Census Bureau yesterday show the number of people living in poverty during 2002 grew slightly, from 12.1 percent to 12.4 percent and the portion of children living in poverty, from 16.4 percent to 17.2 percent. This translates to roughly 1.4 million more people in poverty for a total of 34.7 million, the bureau's American Community Survey states.</p>

<p>The Bush administration is concerned about school-age children languishing in foster care and wants to reward states for finding adoptive families for them, a government official told a recent House hearing.</p> <p>"While the overall number of children being adopted from foster care has grown dramatically, older children in foster care still face excessively long waits for adoption and, in many cases, are never adopted," Wade F. Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, told the House Ways and Means subcommittee on human resources this week.</p>