The Societal Context of Home Visiting and Related Services for Families in Poverty

This article examines the challenges of providing home visiting and related supportive services within the framework created by American interpretations of and responses to poverty. In the first half of the article, the author argues that home visiting and related services have been shaped and constrained by the tendency to use services as a substitute for adequate income and economic opportunity, by ambivalent attitudes toward poor people, and by a preoccupation with the effects of poverty on child rearing, among other factors. In the second half of the article, the author discusses some principles of practice that might help support good services under the difficult conditions in which most early childhood programs for poor families must work. He argues that infant mental health theory and practice hold particular promise as a basic organizing structure for these services.