There are two overriding verdicts of history that New Democrats believe true progressives should accept without much debate: markets are the most efficient way to create wealth and allocate resources, and two-parent families are the best institution for raising children. The U.S. is doing quite well in the marketplace but also has the dubious distinction of leading the world in fatherless families, with 25 million children living away from their biological father and 17 million living with their mothers alone.

More ominously, the families headed only by a single mother are those most in need of financial and emotional resources because they live in poverty. In fact, the vast majority of welfare families are headed by young single mothers. Sadly, growing up fatherless is a strong indicator of whether a child will someday dropout of school, have a child of his/her own out of wedlock, or go to jail.

On a more practical level, the epidemic of absent fathers creates an enormous challenge for the nation's current experiment in replacing welfare with work. It's hard enough to "make work pay" sufficiently to lift families out of poverty even if both parents work. Worse, a majority of absent fathers in families on public assistance don't pay any child support at all, some because they refuse to, some because they have evaded detection and enforcement, and some because they don't have jobs themselves. More fundamentally, promoting a revival of two-parent families in impoverished areas is essential in "breaking the cycle" of dependence on public assistance that so often stretches for generations.

We are pleased to report that New Democrat Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) along with Sen. Pete Dominici (R-NM) is sponsoring legislation to make a revival in responsible fatherhood and two- parent families a national policy goal. Their Responsible Fatherhood Act (introduced on July 14 but not yet assigned a bill number) would give states and communities new tools to promote the formation and maintenance of two-parent families and the acceptance of personal responsibility for children by absent fathers.

The legislation gives states and communities flexible funds to promote responsible fatherhood through alliances with the news media, charities, community-based organizations, and religious institutions. It also makes clear that states can use welfare-to-work funds to help fathers get jobs. This would allow them to generate the income necessary to support their children, while making sure this help gets to families in the quickest manner possible. On this last point, the legislation wisely lets states set up a "child support enforcement pass-through," which basically lets absent fathers send child support directly to families without going through the government or risking the mother's availability for public assistance. Fathers are far more likely to pay child support if they know the money is going to their kids rather than to or through bureaucrats.

The Bayh-Domenici legislation also amends the "high-performance bonus" created in the 1996 welfare reform law to make formation and maintenance of two-parent families a factor in granting bonuses to states who have succeeded in moving welfare recipients into private- sector jobs. A revival of two-parent families in the welfare population will do more to break the cycle of dependence than any other initiative we can take.

Two-parent families work, and when fathers are absent, their work should contribute to the nurturing and upbringing of their children. That's the verdict of history, and Sens. Bayh and Domenici are right to say our policies should reflect our values in honoring it.