A commitment to building a stable family is not the deal it used to be in America. The average American family is poorer than it was 10 years ago. As Stephanie Coontz has pointed out, over the last 40 years changes in the workforce and growing socioeconomic inequality have conspired to stoke familial instability. Our policies have failed to address this new landscape, and because of it we are inhibiting one of our nation’s greatest contributors to the public good, and Americans’ most personal aspirations: family.

It can be easy to miss the value of family to our nation because its contributions are so ingrained into our lives. Perhaps the best way to assess the value of a stable family is to examine the social costs of broken families. When Americans don’t have family to care for them, government must step in to provide those services. For instance, Matthew Zill at the Brookings Institution points out that state and federal governments spend billions of dollars each year to care for children in foster care—$9 billion through Title IV-E of the Social Security Act alone. There are longer-term costs for children who grow up outside of safe, permanent families as well, including the $5.1 billion the government spends incarcerating former foster-care youth each year.

Similarly, familial bonds help defray the costs of caring for the elderly. Filial responsibility—foundationally a moral responsibility, but also a legal responsibility in the United States and in nations around the world—has been central to social cohesion and distribution of social costs and responsibility. However, as family breakdown becomes more common, Medicaid (i.e., taxpayers) will have to bear more of the burden for care of adults. How much of a burden? In 2009, 61.6 million Americans gave uncompensated care to an adult “with limitations in daily activities” at some point during the year—an economic value of $450 billion in unpaid services. From cradle to grave, the social and personal benefits of a healthy family, and the costs of its absence, are evident.

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These benefits of family are certainly evident to the president. Obama’s experiences as a father and a husband are essential to understanding Obama the politician. His first book, Dreams from My Father, is driven by his search for identity not just through the prism of race, but as a man who hardly knew his father. He has addressed some of the most important moments and causes of his political life through his perspective as a father and husband: his speech on race in April 2008 and his remarks about Trayvon Martin, his case for the Affordable Care Act, and his advocacy for women. He has made promoting fatherhood a signature issue of his presidency. As someone who personally knows the “hole in the heart” that a child has when a father is absent, Obama has withstood criticism from some on the left for focusing on the role of fathers in children’s lives. In private prayers I’ve shared with the president, and public moments where he leads through his perspective as a son, husband, and father, Obama’s value of family has always been clear and moving to me.