America—and the rest of the world—is in a period of profound transformation, variously called a discontinuity, a change of era, or even a second Copernican Revolution. It is clear that technological, demographic, environmental, economic, and sociopolitical forces are combining such that what lies ahead in the 2030s will be markedly different than what lay behind.

These tectonic shifts cannot help but reposition the relationship between families and the state. No longer is there a dominant governing principle dictating that relationship. The Progressive Era is gone. The New Deal is gone. The Great Society is gone. The neoliberal-technocratic period that ranged from the 1980s through 2016 is gone. While vestiges of these eras persist, we are living through an interregnum of sorts. Efforts continue to tear down existing structures, with few attempts to replace them. The body politic suffers from what Anton Jäger calls “hyperpolitics,” where polarization and politicization run extremely high but are disconnected from sturdy ideas, institutions, or movements.

In the midst of this transition, a new president will be inaugurated on January 20th, 2029, and another after that. This is the moment to build the contours of what comes next. Because of our unyielding belief that, as Michael Novak once wrote, what strengthens the family strengthens society, we believe that a constructive family policy is a crucial pillar of the new order. Moreover, given the broad disaffection and distrust toward government following multiple economic shocks over the past several decades, addressing what Americans of all ideologies hold most dear—the family—is a way forward for any politics on both the right and the left. 

Capita has a detailed vision of what family policy should be. “We broadly define family policy as the full spectrum of laws and regulations, and the cultural narratives they shape, each influencing the stability and quality of family life for caregivers and children. Family policy must go beyond support for mere subsistence and survival. It should create the enabling conditions—beginning at pregnancy and birth—for raising healthy, happy, and emotionally resilient children and adults.” Yet America lacks a coherent family policy, and even lacks a national statement of family policy principles and goals.

One year ago, Capita’s Family Policy Lab launched an ambitious effort to start outlining the contours of a unified family policy agenda. As we wrote:

American family policy, as it stands, is not ready to meet this moment. What policies the nation does have—for the United States has never had a formal set of goals around the family akin to our national economic or defense goals—are generally disconnected and disjointed. They prioritize funding streams, programmatic interventions, and age bands over a holistic view of family life and the broader systems and conditions that mold it. Too little attention is paid to ensuring all parts of public policy work in tandem to support the conditions families need to flourish….

The questions thus loom large: What does the family policy agenda of the next 15 years look like? How can we start preparing now? Either America will embrace a family lens across all policy areas, or the American family will suffer. If we do embrace such a lens, however, the future for the family may well be boundlessly bright. The choice is ours.

Since then, we have published 6 briefs in the Unifying Family Policy series:

• Uniting Paid Parental Leave and Child Care
• Social Security Caregiver Credits—A Missing Pillar of Family Policy
• Why Job Quality is Family Policy: Predictable Hours
• Family Stability in the Age of AI: Pathways for Flourishing and the Common Good
• Housing for a Changing Nation: Reimagining Family Life, Community, Solidarity, and Care
• Hospitable by Design: Toward Institutions and Communities That Welcome Families

We like to think of these ideas as different parts of the family ecosystem, variously shaping the metaphorical water, soil, air, flora, and fauna that interact to create the conditions for a thriving or struggling household. Seeing these issues as inherently interrelated requires a change of perspective: predictable job scheduling cannot be cast simply as a labor policy question between employees and management; housing statistics cannot be assessed simply by levels of affordability or available stock; job-related disruptions from AI cannot be considered simply a matter of individual layoffs. Taking these topics in their narrow context is not necessarily wrong, but it is limited and limiting. Asking questions about how job schedules impact parenting, or what it means to have stability, predictability, and quality in family life in the age of AI, can help break us out of ossified debates and introduce new language and new vantage points.

The Unifying Family Policy series will continue in the fall with additional briefs, but just as important, we will shift our attention toward creating a shareable family policy agenda—a blueprint any candidate or elected official, from any political party, can use as we head past the midterms and toward the 2028 presidential election. The challenges and opportunities facing America are too nuanced and too connected to be met by myopia or technocratic responses that are far downstream of the real causes.

The choice of which future we pursue continues to be ours.

Elliot Haspel is a Senior Fellow at Capita.