ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies social interventions that make a difference in the health of children. The list of successes is reassuring for its length and for the growing evidence that confirms its effectiveness and illuminates its dynamics. A 1990 report from the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families summarized evidence in support of public programs that were cost-effective in promoting the health, development, nutrition, and well-being of the nation’s children and their families. Conventional wisdom and the weight of research evidence combine to affirm that nurturing families provide the best—perhaps the essential—milieu for the favorable rearing of infants and children. Social policies that contribute to trends in unwanted childbearing are not free of controversy, but they strongly suggest that ground gained in the 1970s enabling women to limit their fertility was lost in the 1980s. Unwanted childbearing associates with indicators of poor pregnancy outcome: inadequate prenatal care, use of alcohol and cigarettes during pregnancy, and low birthweight.
