The current issue of the Future of Children is on “Helping Parents, Helping Children: Two-Generation Mechanisms.” As the editors say in the introduction, “The two-generation model is based on the assumption that serving parents and children simultaneously with high-quality intervention programs would be more effective (and perhaps more efficient) than serving them individually.”
See in particular the article by P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn on “Two-Generation Programs in the Twenty-First Century.” This piece describes a second wave (2.0) of Two-Generation programs that have, “sought to rectify the flaws of earlier efforts, largely by building strong connections between components for children and adults, by ensuring that children and adults receive services of equal duration and intensity, and by incorporating advances in both education and workforce development.”
Two-generation programs are ambitious, but these articles prompt the question of whether there is a role for them in comprehensive Birth-Third efforts.