Families, The Family, and the New Deal

The New Deal, an outpouring of social policies formulated to combat the Great Depression, had enormous effects on American families. It also caused caseworkers to re-evaluate their roles in society. Using the lens of the journal The Family, this article will examine some of these self-reflections and briefly review the impact of New Deal policies on families. In general, caseworkers' writings were focused more on the way policies were reshaping their profession than on trying to shape the policies themselves.