Inequality is the issue of the decade. Both income and wealth are concentrated at the top, and social mobility in the United States, although varied in its particulars, is lower than in most developed countries.
One way to increase social mobility is to increase human capital, but, as I show in Failure to Flourish: How Law Undermines Family Relationships (Oxford University Press 2014), this can happen only if we strengthen families. Education is a key component of human capital, but what happens at home in the first few years of life—long before a child starts Head Start or pre-kindergarten—can set a child on a trajectory that is difficult to alter in later years.
Family law is part of the problem. Too often, instead of helping strengthen families, our legal system undercuts family relationships, making it harder for parents to provide children with the relationships necessary for healthy child development.
We can think of family law in concentric circles. At the center are rules about creating and ending relationships, including laws about marriage, divorce, adoption, and parentage. In the next ring are laws governing family behavior, such as child abuse and domestic violence laws. In an outer ring are legal structures and policies that we tend not to think of as family law but which deeply affect families nonetheless. These include tax policy, criminal justice, zoning, food stamp regulations, and laws governing workplace discrimination, among others.