Editorial Columns

Stepping up to the Challenge: A University Agenda for Children, Youth, and Families

Good morning. It's good to be in Florida at this time of year and it is quite an honor to be here today to serve as this year's Tyner Eminent Scholar. Through the generosity of friends and alumni of Florida State, this endowed scholar program has brought many distinguished individuals to your campus to share their knowledge on a variety of topics. I feel privileged to be among that list of individuals. My topic is how universities must step up to the challenge of promoting child and family development in the 21st century.

As someone who used to study the dynamics of children, youth, marriages and families before I moved over to the "dark side," I have for years been deeply concerned about the condition of the American family. I believe that among the greatest challenges of our time is the need to enhance the development of children and youth, to strengthen families, and to build caring, safe and healthy communities.

The barrage of media accounts we encounter paints a very mixed picture of today's family. Consider these headlines from the past year: In May, USA Today reported "43 percent of First Marriages End in Divorce." In July The New York Times announced that "Children's Well-Being Improves." In the month of August, The Los Angeles Times touted "Unwed Partners Up 72 percent in U.S." and The Washington Post announced the "Return of the Nuclear Family."

For most of the public, it's difficult to discern the state of the American family and the welfare of the children who are part of those families. What is certain, however, is that the health and well being of our children and their families will greatly influence the future of our nation.

I believe institutions of higher education have an obligation to marshal our resources to address the many unmet needs of children and families. As public universities, one of our missions is -- and has always been -- to harness our wealth of expertise to solve society's most pressing problems.

In my 1988 presidential address to the National Council on Family Relations, I spoke about how a vision of continuity and stability in family life is passed from one generation to the next -- even when children are confronted with dysfunctional situations, such as abuse or poverty, or structural variations such as absence of parents. In that address, I cited statistical evidence that I believed significantly influenced the strength of the family, as well as the welfare of our children and youth.

Over the ensuing years, the portrait of the American family has continued to change. Families constitute a declining share of U.S. households. Historically, family households have accounted for a large majority of all households in the U.S. -- 81 percent of households in 1970 were family households, but by 2000, family households made up only 69 percent of all households.

From 1980 to 2000, single-parent households have increased from 20 percent to 27 percent of all households with families, amounting to 12 million single-parent families today. Among children living with one parent, most were with their mothers, although single-father households more than doubled over these two decades. There are now 2 million single dads.

Despite the prosperity of the 1990s, by the end of that decade, about one of every eight Americans was living in families below the poverty line. Especially disturbing is that almost one-fifth of our nation's children, 13.5 million of them, were living below the poverty line.

Birth rates for females ages 15 to 19 have dropped to a record low in recent years. Still, the United States has the highest rate of teen pregnancy and births among more developed countries. Meanwhile, fertility rates for unmarried women in their 20s are higher than the rates for teenagers, and over the past 50 years, the percentage of births to unmarried women has increased steadily. In 1999, there were 1.3 million births to unmarried women, accounting for just under a third of all births in the United States.

Changes in living arrangements and shifts in American attitudes toward marriage, divorce and cohabitation continue to transform household and family structure. Millions of marriages end in divorce, even while the institution of marriage itself remains popular. The age at first marriage for both men and women continues its rise as more young adults postpone marriage and children. The average age at first marriage is now 25 for women and 27 for men, the highest ages since official data on this variable have been collected.

The number of unmarried-couple households surged from 1.3 million in 1978 to 3 million in 1988, and to 4.9 million in 1998. These figures suggest that the growth in cohabitation from 1978 to 1998 could account for 38 percent of the decline in marriage over the period, according to an analysis by Suzanne Bianchi and Lynne Casper. Increased uncertainty about the stability of marriage is one reason researchers give for the possible rise in cohabitation.

Cohabitation seems no longer to be an "alternative lifestyle" but rather an increasingly customary arrangement found in the transition to marriage as well as in the transition to remarriage.

Trends in divorce in America have been intensely monitored. During the 35-year period that followed World War II, divorce rates grew dramatically but have leveled off since the early 1980s. Yet nearly half of all marriages formed today are projected to end in divorce.

The number of children affected each year by divorce has dropped since a peak in 1981, but still more than 1 million American children each year experience the divorce of their parents.

Another indicator of the circumstances of America's children is the number who do not live with their biological parents. Children in foster care rose from 262,000 in 1982 to 560,000 in 1998. Forty-two percent of those 560,000 children had goals of reunification, while 19 percent had goals of adoption.

Some hopeful news is the reported drop in the number of child victims of maltreatment nationwide, which declined from nearly 1 million in 1986 to an estimated 826,000 in 1999.

Undeniably, the growing number of women in the workplace has changed family dynamics. More than 50 percent of preschool children are in child care. In 2000, adult women accounted for 47 percent of workers in the U.S. Between 1998 and 2008, about 42 million people are expected to enter the labor force and it is anticipated that women will make up 50 percent of these new entrants. If the trend continues, women will soon make up the majority of the U.S. work force. Women with young children make up much of the increase. In 1980, less than half of women with children under 6 worked, compared with two-thirds of women with young children today.

Despite the increase in women's employment, many mothers still do not work full-time, year-round when their children are preschool age. Shifting attitudes about mothers working have made its occurrence more acceptable, and fathers are increasingly taking on a different family role. Involvement by fathers in child rearing and housekeeping seems to be growing -- some men believe by substantial amounts, but many women would say the changes are quite modest.

I haven't even touched on the topics of gangs, school violence, dropout rates, substance abuse, homelessness, illiteracy and a host of other factors that affect the comfort, security and welfare of our children.

Families today reflect the complexities of modern life and the multitude of factors affecting children, youth and families in this nation continue to grow. As I stated earlier, higher education has a role to play in these shifting realities.

Across the country, our colleges of education, human sciences, medicine, agricultural sciences, law, liberal arts and others have much to contribute toward the prevention and solution of such problems as violence, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, malnutrition and illiteracy -- to name a few. These human concerns and others divert substantial resources, detract from economic competitiveness, and deeply affect individual and collective quality of life.

The fundamental purpose of our university it to use our educational resources to inform and improve the life experience, wherever and however we can do that. As an administrator for the last 25-plus years, I have come to see how public institutions can -- and should -- reorganize to foster the kind of real change that would make a difference in advancing these concerns within the university -- and more importantly, make a difference in addressing them in the communities we serve.

I believe the best strategy for increased effectiveness on the part of our universities is to integrate our teaching, research and public service activities to reach out to communities. For too long, these three spheres of activity have been carried out independently and autonomously, with little regard for how they can inform and invigorate each other. For too long, the notion of public service by our institutions has not received proper acknowledgement as a critical component of higher education.

Universities such as ours can no longer remain the sum of their discrete functions and parts. These elements seldom add up to a coherent whole that impacts society as it should. And without impacting society in measurable ways, we can hardly expect that same society to value our role and sustain us.

Faculty expertise not only must be encouraged, but also enabled to cut across disciplinary lines and address the issues our society faces in terms useful to people who live and work in the communities we share. There is growing frustration among the public, which believes we continue to hold an "ivory tower" attitude and are unresponsive in addressing the needs of the nation and its citizens. The perception of higher education is that it is inflexible and driven by disciplinary needs, and not able to tackle the multidisciplinary challenges that arise daily in our communities.

Almost all of the contemporary problems facing America require interdisciplinary solutions. For example, the problem of abuse and neglect of children is tied to many interrelated factors -- such as poverty, parental drug or alcohol abuse, lack of child care or supervision for the children, and a lack of community support for the parents. In addition, studies have shown that victims of abuse or neglect often have problems involving juvenile crime, poor academic performance and drug and alcohol abuse. These victims also may carry on the cycle of abuse as adults themselves.

This is quite a complex set of challenges. The point I am making is that no single discipline, on its own, can effectively address the broad spectrum of issues affecting children, youth and families, nor can it provide a complete answer for the complicated issues that trouble our world.

If our institutions were better organized to reflect the agendas of our communities so that their concerns were also our concerns, then we could more effectively bring the resources and expertise of our universities to bear on local problems in a consistent and logical way. I strongly believe there is great advantage in mounting a long-term and comprehensive initiative to enhance the quality of life for children, youth and families from at least three broad developmental perspectives: social and emotional adjustment; cognitive development; and physical well-being, with attention to the economic issues and social and cultural contexts that underlie those areas.

The key lies in restructuring and transforming the university in ways that integrate our missions and disciplines and that create effective linkages with partners and constituents. Inherited ideas about our universities usually emphasize a one-way process in which the university transfers its expertise to key constituents. Today's challenges call for a two-way approach, one in which we periodically ask ourselves if we are truly listening to the communities, regions and states we serve. In reaching out, we also obtain valuable information for our own purposes.

Institutions must first enter into a partnership with the community, particularly its opinion leaders and decision makers, working closely with them to identify issues and problems. Ongoing discussions with community members will result in the development of strategies and interventions, especially primary prevention through education, and in the determination of methods for assessing results. Our guiding principle must be not to do things for the community, but to do things with the community, building on its strengths in true partnership. By developing the assets of individuals, families and communities, we can work together to promote positive outcomes and a new capacity to engage in prevention.

Already in the area of education alone, our public institutions have created partnerships with school districts in nearly every state to improve the teaching and learning process and assist teachers and students in the use of new technologies. K through 12 initiatives are growing and many are aimed at at-risk youth, who are vulnerable to difficulties that sometimes result from stresses in the home life. Because we perform the lion's share of the basic research in this country, new knowledge is a distinctive contribution higher education can provide.

Moving from theory to action requires broad strategies to identify community needs, catalogue community resources, highlight academic strengths and capacities and coordinate the work of many individuals and groups -- frequently over long periods of time. This is no easy task and it takes ongoing dedication and leadership from the top, so that everyone is committed to the basic idea of engagement. Leadership is critical to helping reform the mind set that service is best left to the outreach arm of the institution.

Engaging with your communities means that institutions must create a broader and richer definition of scholarship. It means that engagement must become central to our mission and incorporated into every aspect of the university. It also means that the reward and benefits structure for faculty and staff must reflect the importance of service. Universities have not appropriately rewarded faculty and staff for their efforts in outreach, judging the transfer of information to communities and their people to be less important than other goals.

Because I am most familiar with what my own institution has done, I would like to briefly talk about how Penn State has begun to foster engagement across the University and quickly moved from theory to action, particularly in assisting children, youth and families.

Penn State has been restructured in several significant ways to better serve the public. First, the outreach function has been strengthened by joining together our Cooperative Extension service with Continuing Education, Distance Education and Public Broadcasting. This move has enhanced coordination, participation and collaboration across the University. Through this system, more than 500 staff and more than 50,000 volunteers can reach constituents in all 67 counties of the state. Combined, these units serve more than 6 million Pennsylvanians. Penn State offers a wide variety of community and youth development programs including after school programs, early childhood training institutes, and youth leadership camps.

We also have restructured our 24-campus system to be more responsive to the communities served by those campuses, offering more baccalaureate degrees to location-bound students. Working with educators and industry leaders in the community, we can address the needs of older students, displaced workers, or young people who may be candidates for dropping out of school.

Penn State's World Campus, our virtual university, was created to reach thousands of new students and serve as a platform for new technology-based pedagogies that can be applied throughout the University.

In addition, we have identified several areas of compelling societal interest that receive special investment. One of these focused areas is children, youth and families. Three years ago, we launched the Children, Youth and Families Consortium, a University-wide initiative that promotes interdisciplinary teaching, research and service, with an emphasis on outreach and community collaboration. Key to these efforts is the involvement of faculty, cooperation and coordination of units across the University and a commitment to leadership and excellence in all of the consortium's endeavors. The consortium now boasts more than 300 faculty and staff members from across the University who are working to deliver programming and disseminate information to parents, health professionals, teachers, and others who focus on issues related to the well being of society.

Some of the current cross-disciplinary research within the consortium includes a longitudinal study of parent-adolescent relationships, a study of the psychosocial impact of toxic contaminants on children, an investigation of approaches to youth violence, the effects of poverty on the development of rural children, and ongoing programs in language development and literacy, to name just a few.

Here at Florida State University, I've learned about your Office of K-12 Initiatives, established two years ago. This is by all accounts a wonderful example of engagement with your communities -- particularly the Southside Initiative. The involvement of 13 elementary, middle and high schools as well as Florida A&M University, is testimony to FSU's dedication to building greater social and human capital in communities, while sharing resources.

Another collaborative effort with Florida A&M and state government officials is said to be an overwhelming success. Recognizing that about 30 percent of all Florida children live apart from their father, your Department of Family and Child Sciences helped to launch the Florida Commission on Responsible Fatherhood in 1997. With the goals of raising public awareness and identifying barriers that impede the involvement of fathers, this commission has worked to find solutions to a statewide problem that was greatly affecting the well being of Florida's youth. Since its establishment, the commission has reached out to more than 5,400 fathers and nearly 11,000 children across the state. What an excellent example of engagement and cooperation.

Across Florida State and particularly within the College of Human Sciences, faculty and staff are working with at-risk youth, incarcerated parents and rural families, to name a few examples, with the aim of strengthening the relationships between children and their families and to create a safer, healthier environment. Research into the impact of premarital education and parenting, training programs and assistance provided for child care centers are all having a tremendous impact on the lives and ultimately the futures of the children and youth in Florida. By removing the obstacles for children that in some cases threaten their very existence, you are greatly increasing the chances that they will grow up to be healthy, educated and responsible members of society.

New resources in information technology have opened the door even wider for addressing the challenges. Collaboration has never been easier, and the potential to reach more individuals has never been greater.

One key to the success of these types of efforts is the research base within our colleges and departments that provides the theory on which to design the models and evaluate their effectiveness. Our research serves as an essential tool for informing, developing and implementing policies and programs that address the pressing needs of today's youth. We have the expertise to learn from the experience within the community and to develop plans for additional research that could expand our knowledge about what works and what does not work. In this way, efforts can continue to build impact and apply what is learned to make improvements that will lead to even better outcomes. That is what the concept of outreach is all about.

The answers for each community are different, but the outcomes should greatly influence the problems of our time. The success of such outreach efforts is tied to our ability to tailor services to the size, diversity and priorities of the community. Success is also tied to the ongoing support we, as universities, are willing to provide.

Integration and outreach of this magnitude -- which combines not only the mission of research, teaching and service, but expertise, resources, delivery systems, networks, and partnerships -- is the essence of a new model for the American university in the 21st century. This new model must be restructured for an advanced level of engagement with society. It must be propelled by a vision that sees the value of an entirely new relationship for the university with the society that surrounds it.

Only through imaginative integration of our resources and outreach can we help improve the quality of life for children, youth and families.

Only by collaborating within the university and outside in the community can educators adequately and successfully respond to the physical and mental health needs of families and youth. I cannot stress enough the importance of working outside your discipline. I cannot emphasize too much the need to remain oriented toward engagement.

There are no quick fixes to the challenges our states and communities face, but if we reorient our institutions and our thinking to move toward a more engaged model -- we can make a real difference with the problems facing children, youth and families.