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Social policy is typically directed at reducing or preventing problems, and not ordinarily to promoting positive outcomes. In regard to youth development, policy makers or those charged by them with implementing policy-predicated actions, devote more effort to decreasing or preventing problems that are visible and about which constituents agree are bad (teenage pregnancy, school dropout, or substance use and abuse) than in promoting things that may seem to constituents as ephemeral, abstract, or even ‘‘impossible’’ to measure, e.g., self esteem, confidence, or caring for others. The articles in this special issue and, indeed, across the totality of research in the field of Positive Youth Development (PYD) (e.g., see Lerner, Phelps, Forman, & Bowers, 2009, for a review of the PYD literature) are therefore innovative and, to my mind, exciting. From a policy maker’s perspective, the research from the 4-H Study represents a new, evidence-based approach to promoting good things in young people and not merely to preventing what are often regarded as inevitable problems. The articles in this special issue offer a new vocabulary to policy makers, one that points to facets of youth behavior that constituents might agree are important to promote—for instance the Five Cs of PYD (see Bowers et al. this issue)—and, quite importantly, the research that is reported provides people with ways to measure the presence of these positive characteristics in youth. The research in this issue focuses on the strengths of youth, for instance their intentional self-regulatory behavior (see Gestsdottir et al. this issue), their engagement with school (see Li et al. this issue), and their involvement in and commitment to their communities and civil society (see Zaff et al. this issue), and the potential for developing and leveraging those strengths by linking youth’s strengths with the assets for positive growth present in all communities, even ones having relatively low levels of resources (see Urban et al. this issue). Therefore, I believe that the research in this special issue has far-reaching implications for policies that guide youth and community programs. I can offer my experience of working with the youth and families of America’s military personnel to illustrate how the PYD perspective, as studied by the researchers contributing to this special issue, can help shape policies and associated programs for military families, especially during this time of prolonged conflict for the United States.

Invited Commentary: The Positive Youth Development Perspective is an Exciting Direction for Adolescent and Family Policies and Programs