[Senate Hearing 108-1022]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-1022
SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC DATA ON THE IMPACT OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE ON
CHILDREN
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY,
AND SPACE
of the
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 13, 2004
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation
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______
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SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska ERNEST F. HOLLINGS, South
CONRAD BURNS, Montana Carolina, Ranking
TRENT LOTT, Mississippi DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii
KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West
OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine Virginia
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon JOHN B. BREAUX, Louisiana
PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota
JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada RON WYDEN, Oregon
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia BARBARA BOXER, California
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire BILL NELSON, Florida
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
Jeanne Bumpus, Republican Staff Director and General Counsel
Robert W. Chamberlin, Republican Chief Counsel
Kevin D. Kayes, Democratic Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Gregg Elias, Democratic General Counsel
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SPACE
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas, Chairman
TED STEVENS, Alaska JOHN B. BREAUX, Louisiana, Ranking
CONRAD BURNS, Montana JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West
TRENT LOTT, Mississippi Virginia
KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia RON WYDEN, Oregon
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire BILL NELSON, Florida
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on May 13, 2004..................................... 1
Statement of Senator Brownback................................... 1
Witnesses
Berlin, Gordon, Executive Vice President, MDRC................... 16
Prepared statement........................................... 17
Campbell, Gerald L., President, The Impact Group, Inc............ 81
Prepared statement........................................... 84
Fagan, Patrick F., The William H.G. FitzGerald Fellow in Family
and Culture Issues, The Heritage Foundation.................... 39
Prepared statement........................................... 41
Nock, Ph.D., Steven L., Professor of Sociology and Psychology,
University of Virginia......................................... 2
Prepared statement........................................... 5
Waller, Margy, Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institute.............. 32
Prepared statement........................................... 34
Zill, Ph.D., Nicholas, Vice President and Director, Child and
Family Study Area, Westat, Inc................................. 10
Prepared statement........................................... 12
Appendix
Casey, Timothy J., Senior Staff Attorney and Lisalyn Jacobs, Vice
President, Legal Momentum, prepared statement.................. 121
Children's Defense Fund, prepared statement...................... 97
Jacobs, Lisalyn, Vice President and Sherry Leiwant, Senior Staff
Attorney, Legal Momentum, prepared statement................... 113
Weiser, Irene, Executive Director, Stop Family Violence, prepared
statement...................................................... 104
SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC DATA ON THE IMPACT OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE ON
CHILDREN
----------
THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2004
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space,
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:30 p.m. in
room SR-253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Sam
Brownback, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. SAM BROWNBACK,
U.S. SENATOR FROM KANSAS
Senator Brownback. We will call the hearing to order. Thank
you all for joining me this afternoon.
America's political system is framed around a particular
understanding of human freedom: an understanding of freedom,
not as mere license, but as something that must be guided and
governed by a fundamental moral code, in keeping with human
nature, that directs us toward both the individual good and the
common good. Our great experiment with freedom as a nation has
not been without its difficult moments of trial, when we have
struggled with our very identity as a people as we attempt to
resolve the tensions inherent in responsible exercises of
freedom. The attempt at grappling the evil of slavery in the
19th century, and the civil rights struggle of the 20th
century, being primary examples.
In the long view of history, it seems likely that we will
look back at the social changes identified with the decline of
marriage and the family, which began to make cultural inroads
in the 1960s, and conclude that this vast cultural experiment
has been a very harmful failure, particularly harmful for our
children. That experiment, of course, continues apace today.
But there are indications that America is beginning to
reevaluate the experiment, to assess where it is headed and
whether, as a people, we need to correct course on our view of
marriage and the family. A vitally important part of this
assessment is to study the social science data regarding what
happens when sexuality and childbearing are taken outside of
the context of marriage, and what happens when marriage
declines as an institution as a result of a culture in which
divorce, out-of-wedlock births, cohabitation, and single
parenthood have become a social norm.
The question before us today is whether this course is
desirable, and, if not, what can be done to avert it.
Particularly important is what the social science evidence has
to tell us about how children have been affected by the
weakening of the institution of marriage over the last 40
years. It is incumbent on those of us who deal with public
policy issues to investigate this trend and its consequences
for society.
We have here today two distinguished panels of social
scientists and public policy experts to help us look into these
questions regarding marriage and children. In the first panel,
we will look at the trends with regard to marriage and divorce,
and we will inquire as to the effects of those trends on the
welfare of both adults and children. In the second panel, we
will explore how the family and society at large have been
affected by the weakening of marriage, with an eye toward
whether public policy can play a role in addressing the crisis
of marriage.
We'd invite our first panelists to come forward, if you
would, and I'll introduce you as you come forward and take your
seats.
Our first panelist is Dr. Steven Nock. Dr. Nock is
Professor of Sociology and Psychology, and Director of the
Marriage Matters Project, at the University of Virginia. He co-
founded the University of Virginia's Center for Children,
Families, and the Law. His research concentrates on the causes
and consequences of change in the American family. He has
investigated issues of privacy, unmarried fatherhood,
cohabitation, commitment, divorce, and marriage.
Our next panelist is Dr. Nicholas Zill. Dr. Zill is a
Psychologist and a Vice President and Study Area Director at
Westat, a survey research firm in the Washington area. Before
coming to Westat, Dr. Zill was the Founder and, for 13 years,
Executive Director of Child Trends, a nonprofit research
organization that is well known for its work on childhood
social indicators and teen childbearing. Dr. Zill will address
marriage and divorce trends as they relate to the health and
welfare of children.
And our final panelist on this first panel is Gordon
Berlin. Mr. Berlin is currently Executive Vice President for
the Work, Community, and Economic Security, WCES, organization,
and the Education, Children, and Youth Departments at MDRC, a
research and demonstration intermediary organization which
tests new approaches to the Nation's social welfare problems.
Mr. Berlin will discuss research findings from the Minnesota
Family Investment Program.
Gentlemen, thank you for joining me today on a most
important issue for the overall culture and trends within the
society. I look forward to your testimony.
We will run the clock at about 7 minutes, so you'll have an
idea of where you are. I would like to have time for questions
afterwards. We will take your entire statement into the record.
If you want to put that in and then summarize your points, that
would be fine to do, and they will all be placed in the record
at the outset.
Dr. Nock, thank you for being with us today. The floor is
yours.
STATEMENT OF STEVEN L. NOCK, Ph.D., PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AND
PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
Dr. Nock. Thank you, Senator. I appreciate the opportunity
to be invited to share my thoughts.
I am currently Professor of Sociology and Psychology at the
University of Virginia, where I've devoted a career to
investigating the consequences of marriage, divorce,
unmarried----
Senator Brownback. Pull that microphone a little closer to
you. Our technology is not the best.
Dr. Nock. Fine.
I'm going to begin my testimony by reviewing basic
demographic trends in marriage and divorce. First, let me begin
by saying that marriage is being delayed. I've provided some
charts in the appendix to my testimony that will be submitted.
First marriages now occur in the late--mid to late 20s. But
Americans are not rejecting marriage; nine in ten young people
will eventually marry. Delayed marriage means that fewer
married people are in the population at any point in time.
About six in ten men and about half of all adult women today
are currently married.
Postponing marriage does not mean that people are
postponing intimate living arrangements. Unmarried cohabitation
has increased dramatically. One in twenty households today is
an unmarried couple. And cohabiting couple households are
almost likely as married-couple households today to include
children.
Four in ten first marriages are predicted to end in
marriage. We see how the divorce rate soared in the 1960s
before peaking in 1982. Since then, the increase has stopped.
In fact, there's some indication that it's slightly declined.
Finally, these current trends result in fewer people in
America living in families. One-third of households today are
currently maintained by a single man or a single woman.
I'll now turn to some of the evidence on the consequences
of marriage.
Social scientists agree that married people live longer,
enjoy better physical and mental health. They have lower rates
of suicide, fatal accidents, acute and chronic illnesses,
alcoholism, and depression than unmarried people. They're more
likely to save and invest money. They have better sex lives.
They earn more, advance faster in occupations, are more
generous, more involved in community organizations, and they're
more religious. But the enduring question is whether these
benefits are produced by marriage or whether happy and healthy
people are the ones who are more likely to marry to begin with.
I believe that the evidence suggests that both are true.
So why does marriage have these effects? First, married
people have someone to remind them about appointments with
doctors, or to help them in times of illness or trouble, to
carry some of the weight of daily obligations--what two
researchers have called ``the nagging factor.'' Second, married
people are better able to endure difficult times because they
typically have higher commitment to one another. The here-and-
now problems are understood as something that will probably
pass, or can justified by a shared past or an imagined future.
But, most importantly, marriage is a social institution.
There are widely understood standards for what married people
should and should not do. This cannot be said about any other
existing form of intimate relationship. The ``shoulds'' include
waiting until one is mature before being married, having and
caring for children, being economically independent of parents,
providing for one's partner, being sexually and emotionally
faithful, and caring for family members in times of trouble.
The ``should nots'' include abuse, violence, abandonment,
adultery, sharing intimate secrets with strangers. In short,
the norms of marriage resemble the vows that are traditionally
spoken in wedding ceremonies. But these vows are more than
personal promises. Other people, including parents, friends,
and relatives, share those beliefs, and will react when people
violate them.
Married people are treated differently than unmarried
people are. Insurers and employers value the stability and
maturity associated with this status. Married people are
subject to different laws, they're held to different standards.
It would be difficult to imagine that such expectations have no
consequence. And, indeed, I think they do.
Turning now to the implications of divorce, women's
economic well-being declines by a third following divorce.
After their divorce, a quarter of mothers experience a decline
of more than 50 percent in their standard of living. Divorce
also affects a woman's chance of becoming poor. One in five
previously non-poor mothers become poor after a divorce. And
unlike their ex-husbands, poor mothers are less likely to
escape from poverty if their marriages are disrupted. Only 60
percent of divorced mothers are awarded any child support, and
only 44 percent receive anything.
Divorce also disrupts ties across generations, especially
among men. Men often lose touch with their children following
divorce, and only half of older men report weekly contact with
their children. But nine in ten never-divorced older fathers
are in touch with their children weekly. Adult children whose
parents divorced report very poor relations with their fathers.
The disruption of intergenerational ties between men and
their children has implications for public policy.
Historically, children, and especially daughters, have provided
most of the care needed by older parents in declining health.
This informal system of kinship care is now being strained, and
may break. Divorce disrupts kinship ties and leaves many older
people, especially men, without relatives to care for them. How
will we, as a society, provide care needed by the huge number
of baby boomers who have divorced?
To conclude, non-family living has important social
consequences. Historically, very few people lived outside of
families. Indeed, the practice was either prohibited by law or
heavily taxed for most of our history, because non-family
living has always been perceived as a threat to social order.
When people are not members of a family, social control and the
provision of care are more difficult. There is no public
arrangement capable of monitoring and controlling behavior as
effectively as other family members, nor is there any better
method of providing for dependent adults and children.
Marriage has always been the method that society has relied
upon to allocate the responsibilities for children and for
dependent elderly adults. It has also been the primary method
of controlling behavior and limiting deviance. Accordingly, a
compassionate government has a legitimate interest in
encouraging healthy and stable marriages.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Nock follows:]
Prepared Statement of Steven L. Nock, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology and
Psychology, University of Virginia
Trends in Marriage and Divorce: Implications for Adults
Senator Brownback, members of the Committee, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts on the implications of
trends in marriage and divorce for adults in America.
I am currently Professor of Sociology and Psychology at the
University of Virginia where I have devoted a career to the study of
these issues. For 28 years I have investigated the consequences of
marriage, divorce, unmarried childbearing, and cohabitation for adults
and for American society. My work has convinced me that marriage is the
primary source of well being for adults. It is also of great importance
for an orderly society.
I begin my testimony by reviewing basic demographic trends in
marriage, divorce, and cohabitation. I have prepared some graphs to
help illustrate the magnitude of the changes in each of these matters.
After I review these trends, I will summarize the research on their
consequences for adults.
I. Trends in Marriage, Cohabitation, and Divorce
1. Marriage is being delayed as seen in Figure 1. In 1950, half of
men's first marriages had already occurred by the time they turned 23
(22.8.) Half of women's marriages had occurred by the time they reached
20 (20.3.) Today, the corresponding ages are 27 (26.9) for men and 25
(25.3) for women.\1\ Though the 1950s family is now regarded as
anomalous, current ages at first marriage are the highest in American
history.
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\1\ U.S. Bureau of the Census. 2004. Estimated Median Age at First
Marriage, by Sex: 1890 to the Present http://www.census.gov/population/
www/socdemo/hh-fam.html#history
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But while waiting longer to marry, Americans are not rejecting
marriage. We estimate that nine in ten young people (87 percent of men,
89 percent of women) will eventually marry. However, marriage rates are
declining for blacks. While over 90 percent of young white women are
projected to marry, only two-thirds of black women are.\2\ In sum,
while the overwhelming majority of young Americans will eventually
marry, they will wait many more years than their parents did before
doing so.
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\2\ Raley, R. Kelly. 2000. ``Recent trends and differentials in
marriage and cohabitation: The United States. Pp 19-39 in The Ties That
Bind: Perspectives on Marriage and Cohabitation, edited by Linda J.
Waite, Christine A. Bachrach, Michelle Hinden, Elizabeth Thomson, and
Arland T. Thornton. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
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2. Delayed marriage means there are fewer married people in the
population at any point in time as seen in Figure 2. A smaller fraction
of all adults in America is currently married than was true for most of
the 20th century. About six in ten (57.3 percent) men, and about half
of all adult women (54.2 percent) are currently married (note that
Figure 2 begins at 50 percent)\3\
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\3\ Table: Marital Status of the Population 15 Years Old and Over,
by Sex and Race: 1950 to Present. http://www.census.gov/population/www/
socdemo/hh-fam.html#history
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Postponing marriage does not mean that people are postponing
intimate living arrangements. Figure 3 shows that unmarried
cohabitation has increased dramatically. In 1960, there were fewer than
half a million such couples (444,000). Today there are almost five
million (4,899,000). An unmarried couple now maintains one in twenty
households.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Table: Unmarried-Couple Households, by Presence of Children:
1960 to Present. http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-
fam.html#history. See also, Casper, Lynne M., and Suzanne M. Bianchi.
2002. Continuity and Change in the American Family. Thousand Oaks: Sage
Publications.
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A growing fraction of unmarried couples have children. The Census
Bureau estimates that 40.9 percent of cohabiting couples have a
resident child under 18 who is related to one or both adults. The
corresponding figure for married spouses is 45.6 percent. In short,
cohabiting couple households are almost as likely as married couple
households to include children. Cohabiting couples with children are
5.7 percent of all partners with children.\5\
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\5\ Fields, Jason and Lynne M. Casper. 2000. ``America's Families
and Living Arrangements.'' U.S. Bureau of the Census. Current
Population Reports, P-20, No. 537 (Fields and Casper, 2000:13-15)
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Over half of all marriages are now preceded by cohabitation.
Cohabitation is also becoming an alternative to marriage, or
remarriage.\6\
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\6\ Bumpass, Larry L, and Hsien-Hen Lu. 2002. ``Trends in
cohabitation and Implications for Children's Family Contexts in the
United States.'' Population Studies 54: 29-41.
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4. Four in ten (42 percent) first marriages are predicted to end in
divorce. Figure 4 shows how the divorce rate soared in the late 1960s
before peaking in 1982. Since then, it has declined very modestly each
year.\7\
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\7\ Casper and Bianchi, 2002. Bramlett, M. D., and W. D. Mosher.
2002. ``Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United
States.'' National Center for Health Statistics. Vital Health
Statistics 23 (22).
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5. Current trends result in fewer people living in families as seen
in Figure 5. A growing fraction of Americans do not live in any family
based on blood or marriage. One third (32 percent) of all households
are currently maintained by a single man or woman.
I will now review the evidence on the consequences of marriage.
II. Consequences of Trends in Marriage and Divorce
1. Marriage contributes to health, happiness, and overall well-
being for men and women. Most social scientists agree that married
people live longer, and enjoy better physical and mental health. They
have lower rates of suicide, fatal accidents, acute and chronic
illnesses, alcoholism and depression than unmarried people.\8\ They are
more likely to save and invest money, and they have better sex
lives.\9\ They earn more, advance faster in occupations, are more
generous, more involved in community organizations, and are more
religious.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Nock, Steven L. Marriage in Men's Lives. 1998. New York: Oxford
University Press.
\9\ Waite, Linda J. and Maggie Gallagher. 2000. The Case for
Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off
Financially. New York: Doubleday.
\10\ Nock, 1998.
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The enduring question is whether these benefits are produced by
marriage, or whether healthier and happier people are the ones most
likely to marry anyway. In my opinion, both are true. There is now
convincing evidence that getting married changes people. But there is
also evidence that happier, healthier, and more productive individuals
are more likely to marry, and stay married, in the first place.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ Waite and Gallagher. 2000.
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2. Why does marriage have these effects? Let me mention just a few
reasons. First, there are consequences of a shared life. Married people
have someone to remind them about appointments with doctors, to help in
times of illness and need, and to carry some of the weight of daily
obligations of family life. Two researchers describe part of the
benefits of marriage as a result of ``The nagging factor'' \12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Waite and Gallagher. 2000.
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Second, married people are better able to endure difficult times
because they typically have a higher commitment to one another than is
found in other relationships. This means that their here-and-now
problems are understood as something that will probably pass, or can be
justified by a shared past or imagined future.\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ Nock, Steven L. 1998. ''Turn-Taking as Rational Behavior.''
Social Science Research 27:235-244.
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But most importantly, marriage is a social institution. There are
standards for what married people should and should not do. This cannot
be said about any other form of intimate relationship. The ``shoulds''
include waiting until one is mature before marrying, having and caring
for children, being economically independent of parents and others,
providing for one's partner (economically, emotionally), being sexually
and emotionally faithful, and caring for family members in times of
trouble.
The ``should nots'' include abuse and violence, abandonment,
adultery, and sharing intimate `family secrets' with strangers. In
short, the norms of marriage are like the vows traditionally spoken in
wedding ceremonies (e.g., to have and to hold, from this day forward,
for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish until we are parted by death.)
But these vows are more than personal promises. Other people,
including parents, friends, and relatives share these beliefs and will
react when people violate them. Married people are treated differently
than unmarried people. Insurers and employers value the stability and
maturity associated with the status. Married people are subject to
different laws. They are held to different standards. It would be
difficult to imagine that such expectations have no consequence. And,
in fact, they have enormous consequences.
Turning now to the issue of divorce.
3. Divorce harms women's economic circumstances. Women's economic
well being (income-to-needs) declines by a third (36 percent) following
divorce (but improves 28 percent for fathers. A quarter (25 percent) of
mothers experience a decline of more than 50 percent in their income
relative to needs (compared with only 5 percent of fathers).\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ Bianchi, Suzanne M., Lekha Subaiya, and Joan R. Kahn. 1999.
``The Gender Gap in the Economic well-being of Nonresident Fathers and
Custodial Mothers.'' Demography 36 (No 2) 195-203.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Divorce affects a woman's chance of becoming poor. About one in
five (19 percent) previously non-poor mothers falls into poverty
following marital separation. And unlike their ex-husbands, poor
mothers are less likely to escape from poverty if their marriages are
disrupted.\15\ Women's economic problems after divorce are also related
to the fact that only 60 percent of divorced mothers are awarded any
child-support, and only 44 percent actually receive any support from
their ex husband. \16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ Bianchi, Subaiya, and Kahn 1999; Smock, Pamela J., Wendy D.
Manning, and Sanjiv Gupta. 1999. ``The Effect of Divorce on Women's
Economic Well-Being.'' American Sociological Review 64: 794-812
\16\ U.S. Bureau of the Census. Child support for custodial mothers
and fathers. Current population reports, Series P20-212. Washington,
DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Divorce disrupts ties across generations. Men often lose touch
with their children following divorce. Only half of older divorced men
report weekly contact with their children. But nine in ten (90 percent)
never-divorced older fathers are in touch with their children weekly.
Adult children whose parents divorced report very poor relationships
with their fathers.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ Cooney, Teresa M and Peter Uhlenberg. 1990. ``The role of
divorce in men's relations with their adult children after mid-life.
Journal of Marriage and the Family 52: 677-688; see also Aquilino,
William S. 1994. Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 56: 295-313.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The disruption of intergenerational ties between men and their
children has implications for public policy. Historically, children
(especially daughters) have provided most of the care needed by older
parents in declining health. This informal system of kinship care is
now being strained and may break. Divorce disrupts kinship ties and
leaves many older people, especially men, without relatives to care for
them. How will we, as a society provide the care needed by the huge
number of Baby Boomers who have divorced? How can we afford to provide
the care that children and kin have traditionally given?
To conclude, non-family living has important social consequences.
Historically, very few people lived outside of families. Indeed, the
practice was either prohibited by law, or heavily taxed for most of our
history because non-family living has always been perceived as a threat
to social order \18\. When people are not members of a family, social
control and the provision of care are more difficult. There is no
public arrangement capable of monitoring and controlling behavior as
effectively as other family members. Nor is there any better method of
providing for dependent adults and children.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ Nock, Steven L. The Costs of Privacy. 1993. New York: Aldine
de Gruyter.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marriage has always been the method that societies relied on to
allocate responsibilities for children and dependent elderly adults. It
has also been the primary method of controlling behavior and limiting
deviance. Accordingly, a compassionate government has a legitimate
interest in encouraging healthy and stable marriages.
Thank you.
Figures
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Source: National Center for Health Statistics
(Various years)
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census
Senator Brownback. Thank you, Dr. Nock.
Dr. Zill?
STATEMENT OF NICHOLAS ZILL, Ph.D., VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR,
CHILD AND FAMILY STUDY AREA, WESTAT, INC.
Dr. Zill. Thank you, Senator Brownback.
I've been asked to summarize what recent research has
revealed about the relationships between the family situations
in which children are reared and indicators of young people's
development and welfare.
Since the 1960s, there have been a considerable number of
social science studies of children's well-being based on large,
representative samples of American children and youth. The
results of these studies have all pointed to the conclusion
that children do best when they grow up in a household that
contains both their parents, their biological father as well as
their biological mother, who are legally married to one
another. All other family types--single-parent families,
stepfamilies, foster families--show less good outcomes for
children.
Family situations in which children are reared have been
found to be significantly related not only to young people's
emotional well-being, but also to their physical health and
safety, their academic achievement, and their moral and social
development. And these relationships remain significant after
controlling for related factors, like parent education level,
family income, and family size.
I've prepared a summary of representative research
findings, and ask that it be entered into the record along with
my testimony.
Senator Brownback. Yes, without objection. Pull that
microphone a little closer to you, too, if you would, Dr. Zill.
Dr. Zill. The 2003 edition of the annual report published
by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics
contains the following statement. ``On average, the presence of
two married parents is associated with more favorable outcomes
for children, both through and independent of added income.
Children who live in a household with only one parent are
substantially more likely to have family incomes below the
poverty line and to have more difficulty in their lives than
are children who live in a household with two married
parents.''
The Interagency report does not distinguish between two-
parent biological, step, or adoptive families, but, in fact,
the research evidence clearly showed that indicators of
children's achievement and social behavior are more favorable
in two-parent biological families than in two-parent step,
adoptive, or foster families.
The continuing problem for our society is that many of
today's children are not growing up in the ideal two-parent
married-couple family situation. Survey data from the Census
Bureau tells us that nearly a quarter of American children
under the age of 18 are living only with their mothers,
typically as a result of marital separation or divorce or birth
outside of marriage. Five percent are living with their fathers
only, and another 4 percent are living with neither parent--in
foster families, for example. Somewhere between 10 and 15
percent of children are living in a stepfamily situation with
their mother and a stepfather, or their father and a
stepmother. So although the Census Bureau reports that 69
percent of U.S. children are living with two married parents,
the proportion living with two married biological parents is
more like 55 percent--a majority, but a slim majority.
Furthermore, up until recently the Nation was experiencing
a decades-long decline in the proportion of children living
with two married parents. It has only been in the late 1990s
and the early 2000s that the percentage of children living with
both parents has stabilized, and even increased slightly. But
it is still the case that a large minority of all U.S. children
are living in single-parent or stepfamily situations. And for
African-American children in the U.S., it is a majority that
live with only one parent or neither parent.
Even if one accepts the importance of the family situation
for children's well-being, the question remains as to what
government policy can do about it. Many Americans believe that
decisions about marriage, childbearing, and family formation
are inherently private matters, things that the government
should intrude in only minimally, if at all.
Recently, the Bush Administration and Congress have put in
place a number of relatively modest initiatives to try to
promote healthy marriage and marriage education in low-income
communities where marriage, and childbearing within marriage,
have become practically extinct. I believe that these
initiatives should be welcomed as fresh approaches to the
persistent problems of childhood poverty and a lack of social
advancement of young people who must grow up in low-income
urban and rural communities in the U.S. These initiatives seem
quite appropriate as long as they are coupled with careful
evaluation studies aimed at determining just how effective
these programs turn out to be at achieving their stated goals.
It is my understanding that such evaluation studies are being,
and will be, conducted.
I would argue, however, that existing marriage promotion
programs need to be coupled with other government-sponsored
efforts that would complement and perhaps be ultimately more
significant than the current initiatives.
Among the efforts I would recommend are the following:
One, public education campaigns that make the research
findings about the importance of marriage to children better
known, especially to the Nation's adolescents and young adults.
Two, more effective child-support enforcement among
unmarried fathers to help ensure that the action of fathering a
child has real consequences for the young men involved.
Three, new school-based marriage education and
extracurricular activity programs focused on young people who
are not doing well in school and who are in greatest danger of
dropping out and bearing or fathering children outside of
marriage.
Four, maintaining or strengthening tax-credit and childcare
policies that make it easier for working poor married families
to maintain a decent standard of living and find adequate care
for their children while both parents are working.
Five, not returning to the failed welfare policies of the
past that encouraged unmarried childbearing and marital
breakup.
Six, sponsoring experimental and quasi-experimental
research that investigates the efficacy of new approaches to
promoting and preserving marriage.
While there is still much to be learned about the
determinants of children's healthy development, existing
evidence about the importance of parental marriage for child
well-being is extensive enough and compelling enough to justify
acting on it now to benefit American children.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Zill follows:]
Prepared Statement of Nicholas Zill, Ph.D., Vice President and
Director, Child and Family Study Area, Westat, Inc.
Good afternoon. My name is Nicholas Zill. I am the Director of
Child and Family Studies at Westat, a social science research firm in
the Washington area. For the last 29 years, I have been conducting
large-scale studies of the health, learning, and behavior of our
Nation's children and working to develop better statistical indicators
of child and family well-being. I have been asked to summarize what
recent research has revealed about the relationships between the family
situations in which children are reared and indicators of young
people's development and welfare.
Since the 1960s, there have been a considerable number of social
science studies of children's well-being based on large, representative
samples of American children and youth. Most of these studies were
sponsored by U.S. Government agencies, such as the Department of Health
and Human Services, the Department of Education, or the Department of
Labor. Others were sponsored by private foundations, like the National
Survey of American Families and the National Survey of Children, the
latter of which I had the honor of directing. The studies have made use
of various combinations of study methods, such as physical examination
or achievement testing of children, interviews with parents,
questionnaires filled out by teachers, and interviews or questionnaires
completed by children and youth themselves. Several of the studies have
had a longitudinal component, wherein the same children were followed
and studied repeatedly over time as the children developed into
adolescents and young adults.
The results of these studies have all pointed to the conclusion
that children do best when they grow up in a household that contains
both their parents--their biological father as well as their biological
mother--who are legally married to one another. All other family
types--single-parent families, step families, foster families--show
less good outcomes for children. The family situations in which
children are reared have been found to be significantly related not
only to young people's emotional well-being, but also to their physical
health and safety, their academic achievement, and their moral and
social development. And these relationships remain significant after
controlling for related factors like parent education level, family
income, and family size.
The 2003 edition of the annual report published by the Federal
Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics contains the following
statement: ``On average, the presence of two married parents is
associated with more favorable outcomes for children both through, and
independent of, added income. Children who live in a household with
only one parent are substantially more likely to have family incomes
below the poverty line, and to have more difficulty in their lives than
are children who live in a household with two married parents.'' The
report also notes an association between the number of parents a child
lives with and ``the economic, parental, and community resources
available to children.'' Although the Interagency report does not
distinguish between two-parent biological, step, or adoptive families,
in fact, the research evidence clearly shows that indicators of
children's achievement and social behavior are more favorable in two
parent biological families than in two-parent step, adoptive, or foster
families.
Now all of this may strike the skeptical layman as another instance
of social science elaborately and expensively demonstrating the
obvious. But it was not so long ago that the late Senator Patrick
Moynihan provoked a firestorm of criticism when he wrote a report
noting that the explosive growth of single-parent families might be
hindering the advancement of African-Americans. It was not so long ago
that social scientists were publicly chastised for saying that some
types of family environment were more favorable for children's
development than others. Many respected scholars and policy analysts
claimed that the fact that a child came from a single-parent family or
stepfamily had no particular bearing on how well he or she did in
school or in life. Single-parent families and stepfamilies were simply
different from, not necessarily more stressful or less supportive than
two-parent, married-couple families. Single-parent families were even
seen as having ``hidden strengths,'' such as the presence of warm,
nurturing grandmothers who taught children about their heritage and
bolstered their self-esteem. It was only when a large body of
consistent research evidence accumulated that it became broadly
acceptable for social scientists and policy commentators to state what
most members of the general public believed all along, that two-parent
families are better for children.
The continuing problem for our society is that many of today's
children are not growing up in the ideal two-parent, married-couple
family situation. Survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau tell us that
nearly a quarter of American children under the age of 18 are living
with only their mothers, typically as a result of marital separation or
divorce or birth outside of marriage. Five percent are living with only
their fathers and another four percent are living with neither parent.
Somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of children are living in a
stepfamily situation, with their mother and a stepfather or their
father and a stepmother. So, although the Census Bureau reports that 69
percent of U.S. children are living with two married parents, the
proportion living with two married biological parents is more like 55
percent: a majority, but a slim majority.
Furthermore, up until recently the Nation was experiencing a
decades-long decline in the proportion of children living with two
married parents. The U.S. divorce rate doubled between the late 1960s
and the late 1970s. It stabilized and even declined slightly after
that, but remains at a high level. The proportion of children born
outside of marriage grew exponentially between the 1960s and the mid-
1990s. It too finally leveled off, but remains very high by historical
standards. About one child in three born in the United States today is
born to unmarried parents, many of whom will never get married to one
another. There was also a decline in the number of children born to
married couples. As a result of these marital and childbearing trends,
the proportion of children living with both parents declined from about
two-thirds in the early 1980s to about 57 percent in the early 1990s.
It has only been in the late 1990s and early 2000s that the percentage
of children living with both parents has stabilized and even increased
slightly. But it is still the case that a large minority of all U.S.
children is living in single parent or stepfamily situations, as we
have just observed. And for African-American children in the U.S., it
is a majority that is living with only one parent or neither parent.
Even if one accepts the importance of the family situation for
children's well-being, a question remains as to what government policy
can do about it. Many Americans believe that decisions about marriage,
childbearing, and family formation are inherently private matters,
things that the government should intrude in only minimally, if at all.
Recently, the Bush Administration and Congress have put in place a
number of relatively modest initiatives to try to promote healthy
marriage and marriage education in low-income communities where
marriage and childbearing within marriage have been practically
extinct. I believe that these initiatives should be welcomed as fresh
approaches to the persistent problems of childhood poverty and a lack
of social advancement among young people who must grow up in low-income
urban and rural communities in the U.S. These initiatives seem quite
appropriate as long as they are coupled with careful evaluation studies
aimed at determining just how effective these programs turn out to be
at achieving their stated goals. It is my understanding that such
evaluation studies are being and will be conducted.
I would argue, however, that existing marriage promotion programs
need to be coupled with other government-sponsored efforts that would
complement and perhaps be ultimately more significant than the current
initiatives. Among the efforts I would recommend are the following:
Public education campaigns that make the research findings
about the importance of marriage to children better known,
especially to the Nation's adolescents and young adults. Such
campaigns should communicate the implications of the research
findings outlined above in a clear and compelling manner.
More effective child support enforcement among unmarried
fathers, to help ensure that the action of fathering a child
has real consequences for the young men involved. By getting
more young men to live up to their financial responsibilities,
we will not only be improving the lot of their children. We
will be helping to reduce the frequency of unmarried conception
in the future.
New school-based marriage education and extracurricular
activity programs focused on young people who are not doing
well in school and who are in greatest danger of dropping out
and bearing or fathering children outside of marriage.
Maintaining or strengthening tax credit and child care
policies that make it easier for working poor married families
to maintain a decent standard of living and find adequate
substitute care for their children while both parents are
working.
NOT returning to the failed welfare policies of the past
that encouraged unmarried childbearing and marital breakup.
Sponsoring experimental and quasi-experimental research that
investigates the efficacy of new approaches to promoting and
preserving marriage among young people, especially those from
low education and low income family backgrounds.
While there is still much to be learned about the determinants of
children's healthy development, existing evidence about the importance
of parental marriage for child well-being is extensive enough and
compelling enough to justify acting on it now to benefit American
children.
______
Representative Research Findings Related to Impact of Marriage and
Divorce on Children
Compiled by Nicholas Zill, Ph.D., Westat
Marriage and divorce and the economic well-being of children
U.S. children under the age of 18 living with mothers who
have never married have a poverty rate (47 percent) that is 6
times higher than the poverty rate (7.8 percent) for children
living with married mothers and fathers. Children living with
divorced mothers have a poverty rate (27.4 percent) that is 3
and a half time higher than the poverty rate for children in
married-couple families.
--Nicholas Zill, Westat, 2004. Analysis of data from
the 2002 Current Population Survey, U.S. Bureau of the
Census and Department of Labor
U.S. children under the age of 18 living with mothers who
have never married have a welfare dependency rate (18.1
percent) that is 11 times greater than the dependency rate (1.6
percent) for children living with married mothers and fathers.
Children living with divorced mothers have a dependency rate
(7.1 percent) that is 4 times higher than the welfare receipt
rate for children in married couple families.
--Nicholas Zill, Westat, 2004. Analysis of data from
the 2002 Current Population Survey, U.S. Bureau of the
Census and Department of Labor
The presence or absence of three protective factors at a
child's birth are closely related to the child's chances of
living in poverty at the time he or she begins elementary
school. The three protective factors are: (1) whether the
child's mother is married; (2) whether she is 20 years of age
or older at the time of the child's birth; and (3) whether she
has completed high school. If all three of these protective
factors are present, the child's chances of growing up in
poverty are only 7 percent. If one protective factor is
missing, the risk of child poverty nearly quadruples, to 27
percent. If two protective factors are absent, the risk of
child poverty is six times greater, 42 percent. And if all
three protective factors are lacking--if the mother is an
unmarried teen high school dropout at the child's birth--the
risk of child poverty is nine times greater, 64 percent.
--Kevin O'Donnell and Nicholas Zill, Westat, 2004.
Analysis of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal
Study of the Kindergarten Cohort of 1998-99, NCES, U.S.
Department of Education.
Psychological and achievement correlates of parental divorce in young
adulthood
Compared to young adults whose parents had not divorced, U.S. young
adults of ages 18-22 whose parents had divorced showed the following
elevated rates of emotional, behavioral, and achievement problems. They
were:
Twice as likely to have poor relationships with their
fathers: 65 percent versus 29 percent;
Nearly twice as likely to have ever received psychological
help: 41 percent versus 22 percent;
Nearly twice as likely to have poor relationships with their
mothers: 30 percent versus 16 percent;
Twice as likely to have dropped out of high school: 27
percent versus 13 percent;
Twice as likely to show a high rate of current problem
behavior: 19 percent versus 8 percent.
--Nicholas Zill, Donna Morrison, & Mary Jo Coiro,
Journal of Family Psychology, 1993. Findings from the
longitudinal National Survey of Children, 1976 to 1987.
Achievement and school adjustment problems of school-aged children from
different family situations
Compared to children living with married mothers and fathers,
children aged 7-17 living with never married mothers showed the
following elevated rates of achievement and school adjustment problems.
They were:
1.6 times more likely to rank in the bottom of the class: 60
percent versus 38 percent:
2.5 times more likely to have repeated a grade: 33 percent
versus 13 percent;
3.4 times more likely to have been suspended from school: 17
percent versus 5 percent.
Compared to children living with married mothers and fathers,
children aged 7-17 living with separated or divorced mothers showed the
following elevated rates of achievement and school adjustment problems.
They were:
1.3 times more likely to rank in the bottom of the class: 51
percent versus 38 percent;
1.8 times more likely to have repeated a grade: 23 percent
versus 13 percent;
2.4 times more likely to have been suspended from school: 12
percent versus 5 percent.
Compared to children living with married mothers and fathers,
children aged 7-17 living with remarried mothers and stepfathers showed
the following elevated rates of school adjustment problems. They were:
1.8 times more likely to have repeated a grade: 24 percent
versus 13 percent;
twice as likely to have been suspended from school: 10
percent versus 5 percent.
--Nicholas Zill, Family Change and Student Achievement,
1996. Data from the 1988 National Health Interview
Survey, NCHS, U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services.
Senator Brownback. Thank you. That's very clear testimony,
very interesting, and informative.
Mr. Berlin, thank you for joining us.
STATEMENT OF GORDON BERLIN,
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, MDRC
Mr. Berlin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm honored to be
invited to appear before you today to discuss what we do and
don't know about the effects of marriage and divorce on
families and children, and about what policies might work to
promote and strengthen healthy marriages, especially among the
poor.
MDRC is a non-partisan research organization dedicated to
learning what works to improve the well-being of disadvantaged
families and children, and we try hard to emphasize the science
in the social sciences, especially by trying to use the most
rigorous methods possible, typically experimental designs
similar to those required by the FDA, to determine whether the
Nation's social policies and programs are effective.
We used these methods in evaluating the Minnesota Family
Investment Program, a program that supplemented the earnings of
low-wage workers, and had surprisingly strong initial effects
on the likelihood that two-parent families would stay together.
And we hope to use these same methods, in partnership with the
Nation's leading marital scholars and practitioners, and under
the direction of staff at Department of Health and Human
Services, to learn whether marital education, family
counseling, and related services are effective in promoting and
strengthening healthy marriages among low-income populations.
My prepared remarks provide a historical summary on the
research to date on this topic, beginning with Senator
Moynihan's landmark, if controversial, 1960 study of trends in
single parenthood and the black family; fast forwarding through
more than three decades of research by psychologists,
sociologists, and demographers on the effects of single
parenthood on the life prospects of children; past 15 years of
pioneering efforts by sociologists and psychologists to
develop, test, and evaluate the effectiveness of various models
of marital education; up to the present, where we see an
historic coming together of longitudinal survey data telling us
that the poor share the broader society's commitment to
marriage with studies of the effectiveness of marital education
programs, which suggest that it is possible to successfully
intervene to promote healthy marriages.
To summarize my conclusions:
First, on average, children who grow up in an intact two-
parent family, with both biological parents present, do better
on a wide range of outcomes than children who grow up in a
single-parent household. Single-parenthood is not the only, nor
the most important, cause of the higher rates of school dropout
and youth unemployment and other negative outcomes we see among
these children, but it is an important factor.
Second, an emerging body of evidence demonstrates that
marital education, family counseling, and related services can
improve middle-class couples' communication and problem-solving
skills, resulting initially in increased marital satisfaction
and reduced divorce, although the effects on divorce seem to
dissipate over time.
Third, we do not yet have evidence to tell us whether
marital-education services could be effective in reducing
marital stress and eventual divorce among low-income
populations or in promoting marriage among the unmarried. Not
surprisingly, low-income couples face a wide range of stresses
that middle-class families do not. They are more likely to
experience job loss, have an unexpected health or family
crisis, be the victim of a violent crime, and so forth; yet, by
definition, they have fewer financial resources with which to
respond to these chronic and acute stresses, and less time to
dedicate to the relationship-building that can help a marriage
survive such crises.
While it seems likely that the skills marital-education
programs teach could make an important difference--that is,
reducing negative exchanges, like anger, criticism, and
blaming--and strengthening positive behaviors--like expressions
of support, humor, and affection--it is also possible that
these skills could be overwhelmed by the added problems low-
income couples face.
My fourth point--these concerns raise the question of
whether strategies to combine marital education with strategies
to more directly address the job and income and related needs
of low-income couples are needed. We don't have good evidence
on which to base policy in this area.
The Minnesota Family Investment Program, which provided
employment assistance with earnings support to welfare
recipients who took low-wage jobs, had a large effect on the
likelihood that two-parent families would stay together,
primarily by reducing separations. But the program's long-term,
six year afterward effects on divorce was uncertain and less
convincing.
In short, the problem and the goal are reasonably clear,
and, importantly, we have promising evidence on what might work
to encourage and strengthen healthy marriages. But there are
also a number of open questions about the effectiveness of
government policies to encourage and strengthen marriage among
the poor.
Recognizing the importance of obtaining reliable answers to
these questions, the Administration for Children and Families
and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has
launched two large-scale social experiments to learn whether
and what types of policies and programs might successfully
strengthen marriage as an institution among low-income
populations. Evidence matters in our national quest to improve
the well-being of families and children. Done well, we think
these studies should provide that evidence in the marital-
education field.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Berlin follows:]
Prepared Statement of Gordon Berlin, Executive Vice President, MDRC
Chairman Brownback, Senator Lautenberg, and Members of the
Subcommittee:
My name is Gordon Berlin. I am the Executive Vice President of
MDRC, a unique nonpartisan social policy research and demonstration
organization dedicated to learning what works to improve the well-being
of disadvantaged families. We strive to achieve this mission by
conducting real world field tests of new policy and program ideas using
the most rigorous methods possible to assess their effectiveness.
I am honored to be invited to address your committee about what we
know and do not know about the effects of marriage and divorce on
families and children and about what policies and programs might work
to promote and strengthen healthy marriages, especially among the poor.
My goal is to briefly summarize the evidence in three areas: (1) what
we know about the effects of marriage, divorce, and single parenthood
on children; (2) what we know about the effectiveness of policies and
programs that seek to stem persistently high rates of divorce and out-
of-wedlock childbearing; and (3) what we know about the likely effects
of these policies on low-income families and children. The central
focus of my remarks will be to explicate the role that marital
education, family counseling, and related services might play in
promoting and strengthening healthy marriages and to discuss what we
know about the potential of strategies that seek to ameliorate the key
stressors (for example, job loss, lack of income, domestic violence,
and childbearing) that make it difficult to form marriages in the first
place or act as a catalyst that eventually breaks up existing
marriages.
To summarize my conclusions:
First, children who grow up in an intact, two-parent family
with both biological parents present do better on a wide range
of outcomes than children who grow up in a single-parent
family. Single parenthood is not the only, nor even the most
important, cause of the higher rates of school dropout, teenage
pregnancy, juvenile delinquency, or other negative outcomes we
see; but it does contribute independently to these problems.
Neither does single parenthood guarantee that children will not
succeed; many, if not most, children who grow up in a single-
parent household do succeed.
Second, an emerging body of evidence suggests that marital
education, family counseling, and related services can improve
middle-class couples' communication and problem-solving skills,
resulting initially in greater marital satisfaction and, in
some cases, reduced divorce, although these effects appear to
fade over time.
Third, we do not know whether these same marital education
services would be effective in reducing marital stress and
eventual divorce among low-income populations or in promoting
marriage among the unmarried. Low-income populations confront a
wide range of stressors that middle-class families do not. The
evidence is limited, and mixed, on whether strategies designed
to overcome these stressors, for example, by providing job
search assistance or by supplementing low earnings, rather than
relying solely on teaching marital communication and problem-
solving skills would also increase the likelihood that low-
income couples would marry or that married couples would stay
together.
Fourth, to find out whether and what types of policies and
programs might successfully strengthen marriage as an
institution among low-income populations as well as among a
wide variety of ethnically and culturally diverse populations,
our national focus should be on the design, implementation, and
rigorous evaluation of these initiatives.
Marriage, Divorce, and Single Parenthood
Encouraging and supporting healthy marriages is a cornerstone of
the Bush Administration's proposed policies for addressing the poverty-
related woes of single-parent households and, importantly, for
improving the well-being of low-income children. The rationale is
reasonably straightforward: About a third of all children born in the
United States each year are born out of wedlock. Similarly, about half
of all first marriages end in divorce, and when children are involved,
many of the resulting single-parent households are poor. For example,
less than 10 percent of married couples with children are poor as
compared with about 35 to 40 percent of single-mother families. The
combination of an alarmingly high proportion of all new births
occurring out of wedlock and discouragingly high divorce rates among
families with children ensures that the majority of America's children
will spend a significant amount of their childhood in single-parent
households. Moreover, research shows that even after one controls for a
range of family background differences, children who grow up living in
an intact household with both biological parents present seem to do
better, on average, on a wide range of social indicators than do
children who grow up in a single-parent household (McLanahan and
Sandefur, 1994). For example, they are less likely to drop out of
school, become a teen parent, be arrested, and be unemployed. While
single parenthood is not the main nor the sole cause of children's
increased likelihood of engaging in one of these detrimental behaviors,
it is one contributing factor. Put another way, equalizing income and
opportunity do improve the life outcomes of children growing up in
single-parent households, but children raised in two-parent families
still have an advantage.
If the failure of parents to marry and persistently high rates of
divorce are behind the high percentage of children who grow up in a
single-parent family, can and should policy attempt to reverse these
trends? Since Daniel Patrick Moynihan first lamented what he identified
as the decline of the black family in his 1965 report, The Negro
Family: The Case for National Action, marriage has been a controversial
subject for social policy and scholarship. The initial reaction to
Moynihan was harsh; scholars argued vehemently that family structure
and, thus, father absence was not a determinant of child well-being.
But then in the 1980s, psychologists (Wallerstein and Kelly, 1980;
Hetherington, 1982) began producing evidence that divorce among middle-
class families was harmful to children. Renewed interest among
sociologists and demographers (Furstenberg and Cherlin, 1994) in the
link between poverty and single parenthood soon emerged, and as noted
above, that work increasingly began building toward the conclusion that
family structure did matter (McLanahan and Sandefur, 1994). Of course,
the debate was not just about family structure and income differences;
it was also about race and gender. When Moynihan wrote in 1965, 24
percent of all births among African-Americans occurred outside of
marriage. Today, the black out-of-wedlock birthrate is almost 70
percent, and the white rate has reached nearly 24 percent. If single
parenthood is a problem, that problem cuts across race and ethnicity.
But the story has nuance. Yes, growing up with two parents is
better for children, but only when both mother and father are the
biological or ``intact'' (as opposed to remarried) parents. In fact,
there is some evidence that second marriages can actually be harmful to
adolescents. Moreover, marriage can help children only if the marriage
is a healthy one. While the definition of a ``healthy marriage'' is
itself subject to debate, it is typically characterized as high in
positive interaction, satisfaction, and stability and low in conflict.
Unhealthy marriages characterized by substantial parental conflict pose
a clear risk for child well-being, both because of the direct negative
effects that result when children witness conflict between parents, and
because of conflict's indirect effects on parenting skills. Marital
hostility is associated with increased aggression and disruptive
behaviors on the part of children which, in turn, seem to lead to peer
rejection, academic failure, and other antisocial behaviors (Cummings
and Davies, 1994; Webster-Stratton, 2003).
While our collective hand-wringing about the number of American
births that occur out-of-wedlock is justified, what is often missed is
that the birthrate among unmarried women accounts for only part of the
story. In fact, birthrates among unmarried teens and African-Americans
have been falling--by a fourth among unmarried African-American women
since 1960, for example (Offner, 2001).
How, then, does one explain the fact that more and more of the
Nation's children are being born out of wedlock? Because the nonmarital
birth ratio is a function of (1) the out-of-wedlock birthrate (births
per 1,000 unmarried women), (2) the marriage rate, and (3) the
birthrate among married women (births per 1,000 married women)--the
share of all children born out of wedlock has risen over the last
thirty years, in large measure, because women were increasingly
delaying marriage, creating an ever larger pool of unmarried women of
childbearing age, and because married women were having fewer children.
Indeed, families acted to maintain their standard of living in the face
of stagnant and falling wages, earnings, and incomes during the 1970s
and 1980s by having fewer children and sending both parents into the
workforce, a strategy that undoubtedly has increased the stress on low-
income two-parent families (Levy, 1988), and that contributed to the
rise in out-of-wedlock births as a proportion of all births.
Concern about these trends in out-of-wedlock births and divorce,
coupled with the gnawing reality that child poverty is inextricably
bound up with family structure, has encouraged conservatives and some
liberals to focus on marriage as a solution. Proponents of this
approach argued that many social policies--welfare and tax policy, for
example--were actually anti-marriage, even if research only weakly
demonstrated that the disincentives to marry embedded in these policies
actually affected behavior. Moreover, they maintained that social
policy should not be neutral--it should encourage and support healthy
marriages--and they stressed the link between child poverty and single
parenthood and the positive child effects associated with two-parent
families.
The focus on marriage was met with skepticism by others. Critics
argued that marriage was not an appropriate province for government
intervention and that income and opportunity structures were much more
important factors than family structure. They questioned why the focus
was on low-income families when the normative changes underlying the
growth in single-parent households permeated throughout society, as
witnessed by the prevalence of divorce across all economic classes.
``Fragile Families'' Are Pro-Marriage
More recent evidence from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being
Study tipped the balance for many in favor of the pro-marriage
arguments. Designed by two prominent academics, Sara McLanahan and Irv
Garfinkel, the study is a longitudinal survey of 5,000 low-income
married and nonmarried parents conducted in 75 hospitals in twenty
cities at the time of their child's birth. Among mothers who were not
married when their child was born, 83 percent reported that they were
romantically involved with the father, and half of the parents were
living together. Nearly all of the romantically involved couples
expressed interest in developing long-term stable relationships, and
there was universal interest in marriage, with most indicating that
there was at least a fifty-fifty chance that they would marry in the
future. Looking at employment history and other factors, researchers
estimated that about a third of the couples had high potential to
marry; another third had some problems, like lack of a job, that could
be remedied; while the final third were not good candidates due to a
history of violence, incarceration, and the like (McLanahan, Garfinkel,
and Mincy, 2001).
There was certainly reason to be cautious about presuming a link
between what people said and what they might actually do, and longer
follow-up data did indeed throw some cold water on initial optimism.
However, when the Fragile Families data were thrown into the mix with
the trend data and with the data that suggested that family structure
was a determinant of poverty, the reaction was catalytic. The notion
was reinforced that more marriage and less child poverty would result
if public policies could just be brought in line with the expressed
interests of low-income couples.
Marital Education Can Work
But what, if anything, could government actually do to promote
marriage among low-income families? For some policy analysts, the
discovery of marriage education programs seemed to provide the missing
link. To the surprise of many, not only did these programs exist, but
there was a body of evidence, including more than a dozen randomized
trials, indicating that marriage education programs could be effective.
Marriage education refers to services that help couples who are married
or planning to marry to strengthen their communication and problem-
solving skills and thus their relationships. Models range from those
that adopt a skills-based instructional approach to those that use a
therapeutic ``hands on'' approach that addresses the specific marital
problems facing individual couples.
Some of the cutting-edge work now underway provides a flavor of the
approaches being developed. Dr. Phil Cowan and Dr. Carolyn Cowan, both
professors of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley,
have been involved in the development and rigorous testing of family
instruction models for more than twenty years. Dr. Benjamin Karney, a
psychologist at the University of Florida, has been conducting a
longitudinal study of newly married couples. Dr. Richard Heyman, a
psychologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has 15
years' experience conducting prevention and treatment research on
couple and family interaction. Dr. John Gottman, who leads the
Relationship Research Institute where he focuses on marriage, family,
and child development, has developed and carefully evaluated some of
the most innovative new approaches to marital education and group
instruction. Dr. Pamela Jordan developed the Becoming Parents Program,
a couple-focused educational research program being tested in a large
randomized trial. Dr. Howard J. Markman and Dr. Scott Stanley, both of
the University of Denver, developed and refined the Preparation and
Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP).
Among the skills-training programs, PREP is the most widely used
with couples who are about to marry. It teaches skills such as active
listening and self-regulation of emotions for conflict management and
positive communication. PREP also includes substantial content on
topics such as commitment, forgiveness, and expectations clarification.
PREP appears to have a significant effect on marital satisfaction
initially, but the effect appears to fade over time (Gottman, 1979),
and there is some indication that it improves communication among high-
risk couples but not low-risk couples (Halford, Sanders, and Behrens,
2001). Therapeutic interventions are more open-ended and involve group
discussions, usually guided by trained professionals to help partners
identify and work through the marriage problems they are facing. The
most carefully evaluated of the structured group discussion models
targeted couples around the time of their child's birth, an event that
triggers substantial and sustained decline in marital satisfaction.
Couples meet in a group with a trained therapist over a six-month
period that begins before the child is born and continues for another
three months after the birth. Initially, marital satisfaction soared
and divorce rates plummeted relative to a similar group of families
that did not participate in the program. But the divorce effects waned
by the five-year follow-up point, even while marital satisfaction
remained high for those couples who stayed together (Schultz and Cowan,
2001). More recent work by Cowan and Cowan and by John Gottman appears
to produce more promising results.
Both the Cowans' model of education via structured group
discussions and a marital-education and skills-development model
pioneered by John Gottman led to positive effects on children. The
Cowans found positive effects in the school performance of children
whose parents participated in their couples instruction and group
discussion program. Gottman describes improved cooperative interaction
between the parents and their infant child and sustained increased
involvement by fathers.
While the results from the marriage education programs are
encouraging, they are not definitive. Most of the studies are small,
several have serious flaws, and only a few have long-term follow-up
data (and those that do seem to show decay in effectiveness over time).
Moreover, only a handful of the studies collected information on child
well-being. Most importantly, all of the programs studied served mostly
white, middle-class families, not the low-income and diverse
populations that would be included in a wider government initiative.
Context and Low-income Families
Not surprisingly, low-income couples have fewer resources to cope
with life's vagaries. They are more likely to experience job loss, have
an unexpected health or family crisis, be evicted from or burned out of
their home, be the victim of a violent crime, and so forth. As a
result, they face greater difficulty than middle-class individuals in
forming and sustaining marriages. With the exception of African-
Americans, low-income couples are not less likely to marry; but they
are more likely to divorce when they do marry. Yet evidence from the
Fragile Families survey of 5,000 low-income couples who have just given
birth to a child and ethnographic interviews conducted with low-income
women in Philadelphia by Kathy Edin of Northwestern University provide
convincing evidence that low-income people share the same normative
commitment to marriage that middle-class families demonstrate. As Kathy
Edin told the Senate Finance Committee last week, ``[T]he poor already
believe in marriage, profoundly so. The poor want to marry, but they
insist on marrying well. This . . . is the only way to avoid an almost
certain divorce.''
If poor families share the same commitment to marriage as better-
off couples, what is it about their low-income status that inhibits the
formation of stable marriages? One possible explanation is the mismatch
between a large number of stressful events they face and few resources
with which to respond to those stressors. The imbalance places greater
demands on the individuals in a dyad, leaving less time together and
less time to dedicate to relationship building than might be the case
for a middle-class couple. In addition, the problems low-income couples
have to manage--problems such as substance abuse, job loss, eviction,
chronic infidelity, a child with a chronic condition like asthma or
developmental delays, and criminal activities--may be more severe than
those confronted by better-off couples. (Edin, 2004; Karney, Story, and
Bradbury, 2003; Heymann, 2000).
Because the problems low-income couples confront are likely to be
more acute and chronic than those faced by middle-class couples, it is
an open question whether the problem-solving and communication skills
taught by marital education programs will be as effective among low-
income couples as they appear to have been for middle-class couples
(where the evidence base is still evolving). Clearly, the skill sets
taught in those programs and the strategies applied by therapists and
counselors to solve the problems couples present will need to be
adapted. Moreover, it is possible that these kinds of stressors
overwhelm the abilities of individuals to use the skills they are
taught. It is difficult to be understanding of a partner's failings
when the rent is due and there is not enough money to pay it.
Such concerns have elicited two kinds of responses: first, efforts
to adapt marital education programs to better meet the needs of low-
income families; and second, proposals to combine marital education
with strategies that would directly tackle the poverty-related
stressors on family life--for example, with help in finding a job,
income supplements to make up for low wages, child care assistance, and
medical coverage.
Adapting Marital Education to the Needs of Low-Income Families
Underpinning the interest in public support for marital education
programs is a conviction that low-income individuals do not have good
information about the benefits of marriage. In part, this dearth
results from their experience of having grown up in single-parent
households where they were simply not exposed to role models that might
inform their own relationships. In part, it is a consequence of their
lack of access to the same kinds of supports and information,
counseling, and therapy that are often available to middle-class
couples contemplating marriage or divorce. Buoyed by the success of the
model marriage education programs with middle-class families, and
following the lead of former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, who was
determined to end his state's embarrassing status as the Nation's
divorce capital, practitioners of marital education programs have begun
applying and adapting these models to the needs of low-income couples.
The objective is to equip low-income couples with relationship skills
to improve couple interaction by reducing negative exchanges (anger,
criticism, contempt, and blaming) and strengthening positive behaviors
(expressions of support, humor, empathy, and affection). The logic is
obvious: When couples enjoy positive interaction and are successful in
handling conflict, their confidence and commitment would be reinforced,
thereby fostering satisfaction and stability. But the designers of
these programs recognize that they must adapt marital education as
middle-class families know it to better meet the different needs of
low-income households. This might involve changes in the types of
agencies that deliver services, the training leaders would get, the
content and examples used in the training, the duration and intensity
of services, and the balance between strengthening internal
communication and the forging of links to community programs that can
provide support related to the contexts in which poor families live.
Does Reducing Financial Stress Promote Marital Stability?
While there is a strong relationship between poverty and marital
breakup, would programs that ameliorate poverty by providing supports
to the working poor actually improve marital relationships? There have
been few tests of this question; the most relevant recent reform that
has been carefully evaluated for two-parent families is the Minnesota
Family Investment Program (MFIP). Implemented in 1994, MFIP used the
welfare system to make work pay by supplementing the earnings of
recipients who took jobs until their income reached 140 percent of the
poverty line, and it required nonworkers to participate in a range of
employment, training, and support services. For two-parent families,
MFIP also eliminated the arcane work-history requirements and the
``100-hour rule,'' a policy that limited the number of hours a primary
earner could work and still receive welfare but which had the perverse,
unintended effect of encouraging couples to divorce so they could
remain eligible for welfare.
MDRC's evaluation of MFIP examined program effects on employment,
income, marriage, and other family outcomes up to three years after
entry. Because MFIP treated two-parent family recipients (who were
receiving welfare at the onset of the study) and new applicants
differently, outcomes for these groups were examined separately. We
found that two-parent recipient families in MFIP were as likely as
those in a comparable group of welfare recipients who were not eligible
for MFIP to have at least one parent work; but the MFIP sample was less
likely to have both parents work, leading to an overall reduction in
their combined earnings of approximately $500 per quarter. Yet because
the program supplemented the earnings of participating families, the
two-parent recipient families who participated in MFIP still had
slightly higher family incomes (up $190 per quarter more, on average,
when taking into account their decreased likelihood of separating or
divorcing--and, thus, retaining access to both partners' earnings). In
contrast, MFIP had fewer effects on parental employment, earnings, and
income for welfare applicants, a finding that is not entirely
surprising given their short welfare spells.
One of the striking findings of the three-year evaluation was that,
among the 290 two-parent recipient families who were part of a follow-
up survey sample, families in the MFIP group were 19.1 percentage
points more likely than families in the group who received traditional
welfare payments under the Aid for Families with Dependent Children
(AFDC) program to report being married and living with their spouse.
Most of this increase in marital stability was a result of fewer
reported separations in MFIP families as compared to AFDC families,
although some of it was a result of small reductions in divorce.
Because there is some question about how families on welfare might
report their marital status, MDRC also obtained and analyzed data from
publicly available divorce records. We did this for some 188 two-parent
recipient families who were married at study entry. (The other 100 or
so families in the original survey sample were cohabiting, and we did
not look for marriage records for them). The data confirmed that these
couples were 7 percentage points less likely than their AFDC
counterparts to divorce. This gave us confidence that MFIP did indeed
reduce marital instability. (Again, divorce records would not tell us
about the separations we found in the survey, so the effect should be
smaller than the 19 percentage point effect we found there).
These findings have two important implications. First, make-work-
pay strategies might reduce financial stress and increase the
likelihood that two-parent families stay together. Second, given the
small number of people followed in the MFIP survey sample, MFIP's
marriage effects on all two-parent families should be investigated and
the results should be replicated in other locations before the findings
are used to make policy.
As a first step in that process, MDRC went back to the state of
Minnesota to obtain divorce and marriage records for the full sample of
2,200 two-parent MFIP families (including both recipients and
applicants) for a follow-up period of more than six years. This fuller
record would give us the opportunity to understand whether the positive
effects on divorce (but not the much larger effects on separation) we
found for the 290 two-parent families in the survey sample applied to
the larger group of two-parent MFIP families. In addition, we wanted to
learn about MFIP's possible effect on subgroups of two-parent families
that we could not previously examine.
Six years later, the full-sample story on divorce is decidedly
mixed. Overall, for the full sample of two-parent families, there is no
discernable pattern of effects on divorce over time. When we look at
the two-parent recipient families only, those eligible for the MFIP
program appear to be less likely to get divorced, but the finding is
not statistically significant until the last year of follow-up, leaving
open the possibility that the pattern we see could still be due to
chance. Moreover, the pattern among applicants is also uncertain--
barely statistically significant in one year, but favoring more rather
than less divorce. The different direction in the findings for the
recipient and applicant groups explains the absence of an overall
effect on divorce. And in both cases, the effects we did see were
small--about a 3 to 4 percentage point difference in divorce between
the MFIP group and the AFDC group. Finally, recall that public marriage
and divorce records can capture only a family's legally documented
marital status. They cannot distinguish informal statuses like
separations, the form of marital dissolution that drove the dramatic
36-month recipient findings mentioned above. We are currently planning
further analyses to better understand MFIP's effects on divorce for
these and other subgroups. We have no reliable way of exploring the
separation findings.
MFIP's initial results were tantalizing in large part because MFIP
was not specifically targeted to affect marriage, divorce, or
separations, and yet it appeared to produce large effects on the
likelihood that some two-parent families would stay together,
suggesting that strategies that tackle the vagaries of poverty could
promote marital stability by reducing some of the economic stress on
poor families. But the full-sample findings cast some doubt on that
promise (with regard to divorce but not separations), reinforcing the
need to replicate programs like MFIP for two-parent families in
different settings before reaching conclusions about the contribution
such strategies might make toward strengthening marriage. The findings
particularly leave open the question of the possible range of effects
that programs could achieve if policies providing marital education
were combined with policies designed to affect employment and income.
What We Don't Know
While the evidence base on marital education is extensive, there is
much left to learn. For example:
Will participation in marital education programs by low-
income couples lead to an increase in marriage and in marital
harmony and, in turn, have lasting effects on couples'
satisfaction, on parenting skills and practices, and on
children?
Will the skills taught in marital education programs be a
match for the poverty-related stresses experienced by low-
income families, or are additional supports such as employment
and income also needed to reduce divorce and increase the
number of healthy marriages?
Will marriage education programs be effective regardless of
race, ethnic identity, and cultural norms, and how should these
programs be adapted to better meet different groups' divergent
needs?
Who will participate in marital education programs? Will
they attract predominantly couples who already have a deep
commitment to each other or couples whose problems are acute?
Will a broad cross-section of low-income couples participate or
only a narrow slice of the population?
Will these programs facilitate the dissolution of unhealthy
marriages as proponents contend, or will they prolong marriages
that might be better off dissolving or not forming in the first
place?
Can a relatively short education course--say, 10 to 20 hours
spread over a few months--have a long-lasting effect on marital
and couple discord, or are more long-term strategies and even
one-on-one back-up couple-counseling services necessary? What
is the right duration and intensity of an initiative? Can
courses be short term and intense, or must they be longer and
more sustained to yield longer-lasting effects? What is the
right content? What are the implications for affordability and
scale?
An Opportunity to Learn
On substantive, policy, and financial grounds, there are good
arguments to be made for public involvement in the marriage field. If
marital education programs could be mounted at scale, if participation
rates among those eligible were high, and if the programs were
effective in encouraging and sustaining healthy two-parent families,
the effects on children could be important. The key word is if!
The strong correlation between growing up in a two-parent family
and improved child outcomes does not ensure that intervening to
encourage more marriage and less divorce will have the intended
results. Indeed, social policymaking based on correlation has an
uncanny way of ending with unintended consequences. The only reliable
way to understand whether marital education and other supports designed
to strengthen marriage produces such results is to conduct a social
experiment with the right mix of quantitative and qualitative methods
to answer the ``what difference,'' ``how,'' and ``why'' questions.
The Administration of Children and Families within the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services has launched two new projects
to do just that. Managed by Mathematica Policy Research, the Building
Strong Families evaluation is targeted to low-income unwed couples
beginning around the time of their child's birth. The Supporting
Healthy Marriage initiative, which is being overseen by MDRC, is aimed
at low-income married couples. Both projects will involve large-scale,
multisite, rigorous random assignment tests of marriage-skills programs
for low-income couples. The goal is to measure the effectiveness of
programs that provide instruction and support to improve relationship
skills. Some programs might also include services to help low-income
couples address barriers to healthy marriages, such as poor parenting
skills or problems with employment, health, or substance abuse.
Programs operated under these demonstration umbrellas will screen for
domestic violence and help participants gain access to appropriate
services. Done well, the results from these path-breaking projects
should inform the marriage field, and they should add value to our
existing understanding of the potential and the pitfalls of government
intervention in this critically important arena.
References
Cummings, E. M., and P. Davies. 1994. Children and Marital
Conflict. New York: Guilford.
Edin, K. 2004. Testimony Before the United States Senate Committee
on Finance Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy. The
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Edin, K., and M. Kefalas. 2004. Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women
Put Motherhood Before Marriage. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Gennetian, L. and V. Knox. 2004. Getting and Staying Married: The
Effects of a Minnesota Welfare Reform Program on Marital Stability. New
York: MDRC.
Gottman, J. M. 1979. Marital Interaction: Experimental
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Furstenberg, F. and A Cherlin. 1994. Divided Families: What Happens
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Halford, W. K., M. R. Sanders, and B. C. Behrens. 2001. ``Can
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Karney, B. R., L. Story, and T. Bradbury. 2003. ``Marriages in
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Levy, F. 1988. Dollars and Dreams: The Changing American Income
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McLanahan, S., I. Garfinkel., and R. B. Mincy. 2001. ``Fragile
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Parent: What Hurts? What Helps? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
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in Child Development.
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Webster-Stratton, C. 2003. The Incredible Years. Toronto: Umbrella
Press.
Senator Brownback. Thank you, Mr. Berlin.
Thank you, gentlemen.
We're starting to delve into an area that I don't think
we've done sufficient amount of research, as a government or as
a society, based upon the vast social experiment that we've
been conducting, basically, I think, since the 1960s, where we
walked away from a society that really said, ``OK, we're going
to really culturally reinforce this notion of a two-parent
family, held together, and for life,'' and then moved into a
much wider definition of family, much more accepting cultural
atmosphere, to a point where we are today. And I just don't
think we've studied sufficiently what's the impact on society
and what's the impact on children. And so that's why we're
holding this series of hearings and trying to determine what is
the impact and what should be done.
Just to get a baseline on this, I get different numbers on
what are the percentage of marriages that--people that are
married in 2004, what percent of those will end in divorce? And
it seems like that should be a pretty straightforward number,
but can one of you give me what that number is?
Dr. Nock. We don't know about marriages of 2004, but life
table estimates, which are the best predictions that we have,
based on marriages of 1995--first marriages in 1995--have a 43
percent probability of--43 percent will end within 15 years.
Some fraction of marriages disrupt after 15 years, Senator, but
very few, relatively. So, within 15 years, we have a fairly
good estimate of the total divorce experience of the cohort.
So, at the moment, it's in the 40s--40, 45 percent, something
like that.
Senator Brownback. That's 1995 data, and you said divorce
numbers have been trending down as a percentage, but--now, that
may also reflect the increase of cohabitation and other
lifestyle arrangements, is that correct?
Dr. Nock. That's correct. There are compositional changes
in the population, especially increasing cohabitation, that
remove some people from the risk of experiencing a divorce.
These estimates from the National Center for Health Statistics,
though, that I just referred to--and I'll be happy to provide
these in written answers, if you wish--but they adjust for such
changes in the population composition.
So the downward trend in divorce is correct, it has been
declining very, very minimally since 1982, but it is a very
small change. We are probably at about the point we were in the
late 1970s now, in terms the divorces-per-thousand-married-
women. So it's unlikely that a modest decline will have much
effect on our projections into the future. But then again, in
all humility, demographers did not predict a baby boom, either.
[Laughter.]
Senator Brownback. OK.
Dr. Zill. I might add, though, Senator, that we would
expect, actually, divorce to go down, because the age of
marriage is going up, and generally people who marry at higher
ages tend to have lower probability of divorce. Also, the
general education level of the population is going up. So
actually, in a sense, there are some factors that you would
expect the divorce rate to go down, and perhaps it's not going
down as much as one would anticipate, given those changes. So
there still is quite high incidence of divorce.
Senator Brownback. Now, all three of you testified that the
best place to raise children is in a stable, two-parent family.
Is that correct? And every study I've read, that's the social
science on this. Is that accurate? Does anybody deviate away
from that, on the social science data? There's pretty much
uniform agreement on that, is that correct, Mr. Berlin?
Mr. Berlin. Yes, I think so. You know, there are
qualifiers. They need to be healthy marriages. There's evidence
that biologically intact two-parent families, the children do
best there. Sometimes adolescents are more likely to have
problems in remarriages. So the broad statement you made is
absolutely correct, but there are some qualifiers.
Dr. Nock. Also, Senator, there is some research from two
research teams that suggests that when a divorce is preceded by
great conflict--which is fairly substantial, about a third of
divorces--children do better as a result of the divorce. In the
typical divorce that is preceded by low levels of conflict and
hostility, the child does worse. So the qualifications here are
important. Overall, I think you're correct.
Senator Brownback. The government gets a great benefit out
of intact two-parent families, is that correct? All of you are
testifying to that?
Dr. Nock. Yes.
Senator Brownback.If that's the case, we really see this
trend take off in the 1960s, and then really went high, and now
we've plateaued maybe and come down a little bit, based on a
series of factors. Are there things that we were doing at the
1960s that we should go back to? Are there policy issues that
changed in the 1960s that we should readdress to try to get at
this issue, to have more stable two-parent families?
Dr. Zill. Well, the changes that occurred in the 1960s--
there's pretty good research--were not restricted to this
country. There were trends in a number of countries, not only
in divorce rates, but also in crime rates going up. And, of
course, we know the political rebellion. So it seems to be some
sort of a mega-cultural kind of change that occurred that--and
I think it's----
Senator Brownback. In the industrial societies.
Dr. Zill. In the industrial societies, yes, right. And I
think it's a little hard to put the genie back inside the
bottle, in terms of just turning back the clock. I think that
the issue of, how do we deal with some of the changes? For
example, the different views, in terms of women's role and
rights in our society, the importance of individualism--I think
that's something that really needs to be addressed, individual
satisfaction and satisfying one's personal view of what one's
fulfillment is, as opposed to one's obligations to the society
and to others in the society. I think that balance is certainly
critical in the whole kind of behavior that the divorce
revolution exemplifies.
Senator Brownback. Let me maybe put a better point on it,
then. What was happening prior to the 1960s that led to a long
period of fairly stable marriages, of most marriages being
stable, to where we don't have that situation today?
Dr. Nock. The 1950s, the parents of the baby boom, this
period of family life is now regarded as an anomaly,
historically. Families before and families after were more
varied, more diverse in both their trajectories over time, as
well as their divorce probabilities. It is true, by the way,
divorce rates have continued to rise. But they dropped during
the 1950s. Fertility rose during the 1950s. Age at marriage
dropped during the 1950s. So that in many traditional
demographic trends relating to households and families, the
1950s were an unusual period, and there's great speculation
about what that might be.
But the prevailing consensus on this is that, having grown
up in the Great Depression, experiencing very, very modest
economic circumstances, experiencing the war, and then coming
of age in a time of affluence, by comparison, led to
historically early ages of first marriage and very stable
marriages that were predicated on a family wage system where
one person was able to support the family.
That was not true, by the way, prior to the baby boom. It
took two individuals to support the farm family or the small
business of the 19th century and early 20th century. It's
certainly not true now. But there was this period of our
history where one person could support a family, where
marriages were early, and where fertility was high. Whether
that could be replicated is very debatable.
Senator Brownback. Any of you other gentlemen have thoughts
on this point?
Dr. Zill. Well, a less rosy side to the picture, of course,
is that women were economically dependent on men to a much
greater extent in the prewar and even in the immediate postwar.
So, in a sense, there was an acceptance of perhaps marriages
that were less than ideal because of that economic dependence.
And with the growing role of women in the labor force and
somewhat greater economic independence, women were perhaps less
willing to tolerate marriages that were maybe abusive or maybe
less satisfying because they had some economic independence. So
I think that's an element in the equation, as well.
Senator Brownback. Recognizing the changes in society, are
there things, other than what you've listed in your testimony,
that we should be looking at to try to encourage stable two-
parent families? If this is the best place to raise children,
if all the social data points to that, if everybody agrees to
it, are there other policy factors we should be looking at,
that you have not identified, to try to create more stable
family situations?
Dr. Zill. Well, I think that we really are only beginning,
in the sense of really educating young people about marriage
and families, and I don't think many schools really address
some of the issues we're discussing, and they need to do so.
And particularly with the evidence becoming more compelling and
consistent, it needs to be communicated. Furthermore, there
needs to be a slant on that communication to understand that
having children outside of marriage is not something that's
wonderfully rebellious and good for children or anything like
that; that, in fact, it's a loser strategy, that those ethnic
groups and those religious groups in our society that are most
economically successful are those that have very low rates of
unmarried childbearing and low rates of divorce. And it's
ironic that some people--some scholars from some of these very
groups say, ``Well, it's okay to have single-parent families.
That's just an alternative family type.'' But, in fact, the
behavior of their own group is such that divorce is low, and
unmarried childbearing is low, and economic success is high.
And I think if we communicated to people, ``If you want to
advance as a group, if you want to do a favor to your kith and
kin, then it's not by fathering children outside of marriage,
or bearing children outside of marriage; it's not by living a
life of `my pleasure above all.' It's by having some commitment
to your children and taking the care and the effort to live in
a marriage and raise those children.'' I think those messages
have not been well communicated.
In fact, one might say the mass media, right now, are
communicating a very different message. Just look at what's on
the cable stations that appeal to young people, and I think--
none of this is there at all.
Senator Brownback. So why hasn't that message been
communicated? If this evidence is so clear, why hasn't it been
communicated?
Dr. Zill?
I mean, we communicate messages in our society about--we
communicate to them about things we don't like, like smoking or
things like that. We're very clear at communicating, and pretty
good at it.
Dr. Zill. Well, I think there's this double standard. I
think we feel okay if it's something to do with physical health
or the physical environment, but, once we go into the area of
the social environment and moral behavior, that people start
getting very reluctant to say things in that area. And I think
that's something that we need to change, and I think that's
something that Congress could take a lead in producing some of
that change.
Senator Brownback. Dr. Nock, do you have a thought on this?
Dr. Nock. I would just add, Senator, on a slightly
different note, there is empirical evidence--meager, but there
is empirical evidence, nonetheless--that suggests that the so-
called ``marriage penalty'' in our tax code is a disincentive.
It's a small one, but simulations as well as studies of Social
Security records by various organizations have suggested that
the tax penalty does--for two-earner married couples, middle-
income families--in fact, act as a disincentive to marriage.
And so, at a minimum, I would suggest that the evidence would
encourage us to continue trying to repeal this aspect of the
tax code.
Senator Brownback. The National Science Foundation, which
is under the jurisdiction of the Committee, funds research on
the issue of marriage and its impact on society. I believe, Dr.
Nock, you have some grant money that has come from NSF. Are
there other research needs in this particular field that you
would like to see us focus on?
Dr. Nock. Thank you for asking that question. It's a
dangerous question----
[Laughter.]
Senator Brownback. Ask a researcher.
Dr. Nock.--to ask a researcher what we should fund.
I actually believe that we know way too little about the
pathways to union formation.
Senator Brownback. Pathways to what?
Dr. Nock. To relationships, whether they are cohabiting
relationships or marriages, what we used to call ``courtship.''
We know very little about this. The immigration patterns of the
last decade or two have changed our understanding of how people
enter into relationships. Culture has changed. The age at which
people enter into relationships has changed. We know very
little about what leads couples to transition from what we
would--you and I might have called a ``dating relationship'' to
a cohabiting one, and from a cohabiting one to a marriage, or
what leads them not to. And so that's one area I think we
should investigate.
I also believe that the growing variety of household
structures--including same-sex couples, remarried couples,
multi-generational, blended, and more complex households--
deserves much more research in order to understand the factors
that are associated with them, that produce them, as well as
their consequences.
And, finally, since you ask, I'll offer a personal
preference, which is that I know that the majority of services
to married couples, as well as to people anticipating marriage,
are provided by faith-based organizations--pre-marriage
education, pre-marriage counseling, counseling in times of
trouble, and so on. We have been afraid to investigate this
issue. The Federal Government has avoided funding this type of
research. I think it's finally time to put some serious effort
into understanding the role of religion in relationships.
Dr. Zill. I would add to those recommendations, all of
which I agree with, that we need to fund, in this area, more
experimental and quasi-experimental research, as opposed to
correlational research. I mean, correlational research has a
great role, and that's--a lot of the research that I have done
is that. But it's also the kind of study that Gordon talked
about, MDRC is doing, where you actually try to get people--
make use of some sort of random assignment. For example, in
marital counseling you try to have some incentives so that,
people whose marriages are in danger of breaking up, one group
is randomly assigned to some kind of a new kind of marital
counseling, and another group maybe is assigned to an
alternative treatment, and we actually see, with the same kind
of precision that we get in drug studies, where the causal
factors are. Because it's very difficult, with correlational
studies, to completely answer these questions.
So I think we really need to have a program of imaginative
experimental and quasi-experimental research sponsored by the
National Science Foundation and also by the National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development.
Mr. Berlin. I would just agree with that. I mean, if you
stop and think about it, we're talking about these broad
normative changes that have occurred, you know, among all
classes of people in the country, and even worldwide, in
industrialized countries. If we want to try to change those
broad, sweeping, normative developments with public policies,
it's obvious that there are lots of unknowns about whether
that's possible and whether you'd end up with unintended
consequences. And we've all agreed that there's this very
strong relationship between growing up in a stable, two-parent
household; but that doesn't necessarily mean that policies
designed to encourage stable, two-parent households would have
the intended effect. And the only way to really get a clear
answer to that and understand what the costs and the benefits
are, and what packages of services might work, what kinds of
messages might make a difference, would be to conduct some
field tests of these new approaches.
And I think, to their credit, the Department of Health and
Human Services has a couple of these underway. I think they're
very important. But they won't succeed unless there's also
enough money for the programs to actually run these
initiatives. And right now those resources aren't available
because they're tied up in the welfare reform bill.
But I definitely agree with Nick, that in order to really
advance our understanding about what might work, the best thing
we could do at this stage would be to run some social
experiments.
Senator Brownback. Dr. Nock, in your opinion, what, if
anything, has the government done to contribute to the trends
regarding marriage, divorce, and, more generally, the trend
away from living in families? What has the government done to
contribute to that?
Dr. Nock. I would probably agree with most demographers on
this subject, in that the factors that have produced these
trends are long, widespread, secular trends. To the extent that
government has played a role, it would be a small one, because
we see these trends in all advanced Western societies, despite
enormous variations in government organization, government
policy. At the same time, I think it's an intriguing question
whether or not public policy, and Federal policy in particular,
could affect them, and has.
I know there has been documented evidence that the old AFDC
system did influence the formation of single-parent households,
minimally. It may have discouraged marriage, minimally. I know
there's some evidence that our Federal tax code acts as a
disincentive to marriage. Beyond that, it's hard to identify a
single----
Senator Brownback. No-fault divorce, state level? What do
you think?
Dr. Nock. These are at the state--there are enormous
effects at state level, in terms of domestic relations laws, I
believe. No-fault divorce is probably the best caution to all
of us about venturing into domestic relations. I think that
when Governor Reagan signed the first no-fault divorce law, he
and his legislators thought that they were protecting the
interest of women and children, they were minimizing the
bitterness and hostility of divorce, they were equalizing the
outcomes of divorce. I doubt very seriously that anyone
involved thought that no-fault divorce might lead to more
divorce. That is exactly the debate now. Thirty years after the
passage of the first law, we're still debating whether or not
no-fault divorce led to more divorce. And I would say half of
those who investigate it say yes, and half say no. We'll never
be able to sort this out.
I personally believe it probably did jeopardize women's
interests after divorce; it treated men and women alike,
despite the fact that men and women had very different economic
circumstances before divorce. So, in my opinion, no-fault
divorce was a negative consequence for women. That's also
reinforced by my research in Louisiana on two forms of
marriage, one which has no-fault divorce, and one which does
not. The divorces that have resulted in those two regimes
produce very different consequences for women.
Fault-based divorce is faster than no-fault divorce. It's
less contentious, and it results in better outcomes for women,
is what we're finding at least. Ours is----
Senator Brownback. Really?
Dr. Nock. Well, it has been so long, we've forgotten the
problems that motivated no-fault divorce, and there are very
few judges on the bench who came from those times. A no-fault
divorce takes, at a minimum, 6 months, and often longer. A
fault-based divorce can take place in a matter of weeks. What
we're finding in Louisiana is that the court will award fault-
based divorces faster. But more importantly is that in fault-
based divorces there tends to be alimony awarded.
Senator Brownback. Tends to be what?
Dr. Nock. Alimony awarded.
Senator Brownback. And what about the percentage of couples
that get divorced? Or is that fair to measure--compare the two?
Dr. Nock. In my opinion, it's probably not, because the
sort of couple who is attracted to the more stringent marriage
regime, the covenant marriage, is very different to begin with.
They're better educated, they're higher income, they're less
likely to have been married before, they're less likely to have
children before. In many respects, they have the advantages
going into marriage that would predict lower divorce rates to
begin with. But, even after we adjust for those preexisting
differences, the outcomes of divorce differ. I mean, though the
divorce rate is lower in the covenant-couple sample, the
outcome of divorces are better.
Senator Brownback. On Monday, Massachusetts will enter into
same-sex unions in their state. Do we know any data from any
countries of the impact of that on marriage, heterosexual
marriage, in the United States?
Dr. Nock. Last month, at the Population Association of
America meetings, so far as I know the first empirical paper
was presented on this subject from The Netherlands based on
vital records, which is what you and I would think of as
marriage and divorce records. Same-sex marriages have been
legal in Scandinavia for a number of years now, so it is
possible to study these. The researchers involved were not
interested in the outcomes for children; rather, they were
interested in marital dissolution rates.
The results are intriguing. They show that divorce rates
are somewhat higher among same-sex couples--legally married,
same-sex couples--than among heterosexual couples. They also
find that divorce rates are higher among lesbian couples than
among gay men. Beyond that, I think the results of this paper
are descriptive, but, to my knowledge, it's the first paper.
There is nothing done in the United States, because we have yet
to have a same-sex marriage.
Senator Brownback. What about its impact on--I've seen some
data that suggest that you're going to--that it will have a
negative impact on the number of heterosexual couples that will
get married in the United States, that there's--that it tends
to drive down the number of people that desire to get married--
heterosexual couples.
Dr. Nock. I'm not aware of any research in that line, sir.
Senator Brownback. Either way?
Dr. Nock. No.
Senator Brownback. OK.
Gentlemen, thank you all very much. Appreciate you being
here.
Call up the next panel, if you want to come on forward
while I'm introducing the overall group.
Margy Waller is a visiting Fellow at the Brookings
Institute. Previously, she was Senior Advisor for Welfare and
Working Families at the White House Domestic Policy Council in
the Clinton Administration. She'll discuss the impact of
social-policy outcomes on the American family.
Patrick Fagan is the Fitzgerald Research Fellow in Family
and Cultural Issues at the Heritage Foundation, former Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services during the
Bush Administration. He will examine the relationship between
family, community, and social problems, and will talk about the
implications of a culture of rejection for children and the
future of the Nation.
And the final panelist is Gerald Campbell, President of the
Impact Group, a charitable organization established to explore
the spiritual dynamics of homelessness and other dysfunctional
behaviors. He served as a Senior Advisor to USIA from 1985 to
1990, and a Special Assistant to the Administration of the
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Programs, U.S.
Department of Justice, from 1992 to 1993.
Thank you all very much for joining us today.
Ms. Waller?
STATEMENT OF MARGY WALLER, VISITING FELLOW,
BROOKINGS INSTITUTE
Ms. Waller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I'm very happy to
be here today. Thank you for having me.
I'm a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and I
should say that my testimony today reflects my own views and
not that of others of the institution or the institution
itself.
It is an honor to appear before you today to discuss the
state of knowledge on marriage and the well-being of children.
My testimony will review some important research findings and
their implications for public policy. Of course, my prepared
remarks have much more detail on both of these topics.
To begin, as the previous panel indicated, there is much
evidence that children raised in a household with their
married, biological, or adoptive parents do better than
children in other family structures, yet we don't know much
about why this is so. And, at the same time, it is important to
remember that while children raised in single-parent households
are at greater risk, most will not face serious problems.
The data that we do have about family structure and the
well-being of low-income families suggest that Congress should
proceed cautiously. While there is evidence that marriage
increases household income, it may not be easy or even a good
idea to encourage marriage for some single parents. The problem
is figuring out which families might benefit from counseling
and education.
Unfortunately, the research evidence does not answer
questions like: How much of the advantage is the result of
family structure, and how much from economic advantages? Is it
marriage that makes the difference, or the kind of people who
are likely to get married when they become parents?
The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study is
developing a rich database of information about unmarried
parents and how they differ from married parents. The
researchers reviewing the data conclude that about a third of
the unmarried parents would benefit from marriage programs, as
they face no serious barriers to marriage, and most of them
plan to marry or live together. But marriage promotion would
not work, or could even cause serious harm, for another third
of the parents and their children. The remaining third might
benefit from relationship-building skills if the marriage
initiatives also included employment and mental health
services. So you can see that the target population may be
smaller than generally thought, and somewhat difficult to
identify without trained caseworker involvement.
Unfortunately, it appears that marriage can even create
risks for these families. Children may suffer when their family
structure changes, and living in a stepfamily can have negative
effects, as well, for some children.
Finally, the research reveals that teenagers who have a
non-marital birth are less likely to get married later in life.
For this group, the answer doesn't seem to be marital
counseling, but strategies that prevent pregnancy in the first
place.
This summary of key findings reveals the possibility of
unintended consequences from investment in marriage promotion
as a means of improving child well-being. Many unmarried
parents are at risk of factors known to contribute to marital
disruption or conflict--domestic violence, unemployment, mental
health problems, and others. If we encourage marriage for such
couples before addressing these issues, we may put children at
greater risk of experiencing marital conflict and a change in
family structure, with all of its negative consequences.
Given the limited knowledge about how to support healthy
marriages that improve child well-being, Congress should
approach public investment with care. First, further
experimentation and rigorous evaluation of marriage promotion
are critical, so Congress should determine whether to provide
resources, in addition to the Administration's existing
research investment discussed by the last panel, and, if so,
appropriate a one-time allocation to that purpose. Second, all
marriage promotion activity must be developed in consultation
with domestic violence prevention experts. And, finally, until
we know more about encouraging marriage for unmarried parents,
the best investment may be programs proven to reduce teen
pregnancy.
The legislative vehicle for discussion of marriage
promotion is the current welfare reauthorization debate. If
Congress is committed to focusing on child well-being as a
primary goal of welfare reauthorization, Members might consider
adjusting the investment priorities reflected in pending
proposals. While we are experimenting with marriage promotion
to improve child well-being, social science already points to
many proven programs that do not present the same risk of
unintended consequences. In particular, services designed to
increase household income and economic security are known to
improve the well-being of children.
While welfare reauthorization provides an opportunity to
implement these strategies, all signs suggest it's unlikely
that Members will agree on legislation this year, and current
proposals are likely to reduce child well-being as a result of
new mandates to increase work hours and otherwise limit state
flexibility. This would, in turn, lead to reduced investment in
more promising programs--like child care--and simultaneously
decrease adult supervision of adolescents who are already
suffering. Given these facts, the current best option for
Congress to improve child outcomes through the welfare law
would be a straight multi-year reauthorization of the current
law.
Whatever happens, investment in marriage as a strategy to
improve the well-being of children should be limited and
dedicated to research. The priority should be sustaining
programs known to work, while avoiding changes that create
risk. Policymaking should support promising research and proven
results, but Congress should not let funding get ahead of the
science.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Waller follows:]
Prepared Statement of Margy Waller, Visiting Fellow,
Brookings Institution
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting
me to testify today. My name is Margy Waller. I am a Visiting Fellow at
the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. where my research focuses
on poverty, welfare, and low-income working families. Please note
however that my testimony today reflects my own views and not the views
of any organization with which I am affiliated.
It is an honor to appear before you to discuss the state of
knowledge on the impact of marriage and divorce on children, with a
particular focus on policy interventions to improve the well-being of
children in low-income households.
The administration proposes to encourage states to promote healthy
marriages and in doing so to ``place a greater emphasis in TANF
[Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] on strengthening families and
improving the well-being of children''.
There is little argument that the body of academic literature
supports the conclusion that children do best when they live with their
married mother and father, provided that the marriage is one of low-
conflict. However, other findings have important implications for
consideration of policy interventions to promote safe, healthy
marriages in low-income households.
First, my testimony will review some important findings--and
limitations of the research--for consideration in developing public
policy to support the goals of healthy marriages and the well-being of
children. Second, I will outline recommendations for public policy and
Federal investment in light of the research, including implications for
the pending reauthorization of the 1996 welfare law.
What the Research Reveals
While there is much evidence to support the conclusion that
children raised in a household with their married biological parents do
better than children in other family structures, scientific data
answering the question of why this is so is scant.
Still, while children raised in single-parent households grow up at
greater risk of emotional, social, educational, and employment
difficulty, most children from single-parent households do not face
these problems.
Furthermore, much of the research about the effects of family
structure and transitions has focused on middle-income families, or
national data sets controlling for income. There is much less
information about the particular outcomes in low-income households, and
not much is known about the effectiveness of marriage strengthening
strategies for poor parents.
However, the data that we do have about family structure and the
well being of low-income families and children suggest that we should
proceed carefully as we attempt to fashion public policy in this arena.
Children in families with married biological parents have
lower rates of poverty than children living with single or
cohabitating parents.
A marriage simulation matching real single mothers and
unmarried men who are similar in age, education, and race
reveals that if it is possible to increase marriages to 1970
rates, the poverty rate would be reduced from 13.0 percent to
9.5 percent.
The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study is developing
a rich database of information about the characteristics of
unmarried parents, and how they differ from married parents.
Researchers reviewing the data conclude that while one-third of
the unmarried parents face no serious barriers to marriage,
marriage promotion would not work or could cause serious harm
for one-third of the parents (and their children), and another
third could benefit only if the marriage initiatives included
employment and mental health services.
Ethnographic research by Kathryn Edin and others reveals
that low-income parents believe in marriage, but desire
economic security prior to marriage. Education, employment, and
economic status impact the likelihood of getting and staying
married for both men and women.
Income accounts for much of the difference between child
well-being in married households and other family structures.
Married and unmarried parents are different in a number of
ways: age, education, income, levels of domestic violence and
other relationship conflict, and use of substances. Parents who
are not married at the birth of their child are disadvantaged
on these measures, suggesting that marriage alone will not
deliver the full set of advantages that families with parents
married at the birth enjoy in household income or child well-
being.
Some research points to household and parental income as
more important determinants for various measures of child well-
being than family structure. Notably, children's lasting
educational deficits have been found to be more closely linked
to early and deep poverty, while their risk of behavioral
problems may be more linked to the family structure in which
they grew up.
Children may suffer when there are family structure changes,
and living in a stepfamily can have negative effects as well.
Children in stepfamilies do not do as well as those living with
married, biological parents, and may do no better than children
in single-parent or unmarried, cohabitating households. There
is some evidence that growing up in a single-parent household
leads to better outcomes for children than living through
family structure transitions.
Surveys of unmarried mothers in low-income households find a
higher prevalence of domestic violence than in the national
population. Couples experiencing domestic violence should not
be encouraged to marry.
Children of immigrants are more likely than those of native-
born Americans to be poor, despite the fact that they are more
likely to live in a two-parent household and in families with
full-time workers.
Teenagers who have a non-marital birth are less likely to
get married later and even if teen parents do get married,
these marriages are highly unstable and far more likely to fail
than marriages between older individuals. While teen mothers
face a host of economic and social challenges, their children
bear the greatest burden and are at significantly increased
risk of low birth weight and pre-maturity, mental retardation,
poverty, growing up without a father, welfare dependency, poor
school performance, insufficient health care, inadequate
parenting, abuse and neglect, and becoming a teen parent
themselves.
Studies of a variety of programs that are often called
``abstinence-plus'' provide strong evidence of effectively
reducing sexual activity and pregnancy among teens.
Interestingly, some of the most compelling results are from
programs that involve teens in supervised community services.
On the other hand, there is no strong evidence that
``abstinence-only'' programs delay sexual activity or reduce
pregnancy among teens. The jury is still out, although there is
a Federal evaluation underway.
Implications for Policy and Public Investment
A review of this research reveals the risk of unintended
consequences from investment in marriage promotion as a means of
improving child well-being, particularly in low-income households.
While we know that growing up in a household with biological
parents in a low-conflict marriage is better for child well-being, we
do not know why this is true. If we do not know exactly why it is true,
then we are not certain how or whether to go about encouraging similar
outcomes for children in single parent households.
For example, if marriage is encouraged and supported for step-
parent families, it is not clear that children will be better off.
Many unmarried parents are at risk of factors known to contribute
to marital disruption or conflict: domestic violence, unemployment,
mental health problems, infidelity and others. If we end up encouraging
marriage for such couples before addressing these issues, we put
children at greater risk of experiencing marital conflict and a change
in family structure with all of its negative consequences. If the
policy goal is to encourage marriage, then the policy should also
support programs intended to ensure that the marriage will last.
There are serious questions about which parent population to
target. For example, does it make sense to encourage step-parent
marriages for cohabiting households when we have little evidence that
one family structure is better than the other? Should we promote
marriage for teenage parents? Is marriage a positive step for parents
struggling with unemployment, mental health barriers, or a lack of
education and skills to be self-sufficient? Should we focus on doing
more to prevent people from becoming unmarried parents in the first
place?
An Agenda for Improving Child and Family Well-being
The social science research provides important lessons for
improving child and family well-being, with policies narrowly designed
to support marriage, and using a broader approach in the pending
welfare reauthorization legislation.
Given the limited knowledge about how to support healthy marriages
that improve child well-being, Congress should approach public
investment and public discourse on the issue with care.
Policies Intended to Encourage Marriage
Marriage Promotion Experimentation. Given the lack of social
science research that provides a roadmap for marriage promotion
and support among low-income families, Congress should proceed
cautiously and with the goal of learning more about how to
encourage marriage, while reducing the risk of harm to
children. Research evidence that provides guidance for
improving child well-being is growing, and the best investments
are those that may indirectly promote marriage. (See below.)
Congress should not put funding ahead of the science: a
relatively small investment in marriage promotion research
makes sense, if carefully targeted. The legislation should
dedicate funding to experimental designs, focused on the
strategies with promise--particularly those that combine
counseling and education with barrier removal activities like
education, training, and mental health services.
Domestic Violence Prevention. The research evidence is clear
that low-income mothers targeted by the marriage promotion
initiatives are at high risk of domestic violence. Accordingly,
all marriage promotion programs and experiments must include
requirements that (1) the program design be developed in
coordination with local, state, or national domestic violence
prevention advocates or experts; and (2) all participants are
advised that the program is voluntary.
Teen pregnancy prevention. While promoting marriage for
teens who become parents is not likely to improve child well-
being, we know that giving birth outside marriage reduces the
likelihood of marriage. Thus, one of the most effective
marriage promotion investments is programs proven to reduce
teen pregnancy. Unless new research results provide evidence of
delayed initiation of sex and reduced pregnancy as an outcome
of abstinence-only programs, the existing research suggests
that resources should be directed to programs with proven
effectiveness such as those that provide supervised community
service opportunities for teens.
Public Discourse. Since the research regarding the benefits
of marriage for child well-being is quite slim, and applies to
those children living with married, biological parents in low-
conflict relationships, it is irresponsible to overstate the
importance of marriage for child well-being. As we have
experienced with the public debate over work-based, time-
limited welfare reform, public understanding of policy shifts
can impact culture and behavior. It would be a serious
disservice to single parents and their children if the public
comes to believe incorrectly that these children are
necessarily worse off than they would be if their primary
caretaker were to marry.
Welfare Reauthorization and Lessons from Research about Child Well-
being
While the administration is apparently moving ahead of
Congressional action by using existing funds for marriage promotion
activities, the primary legislative vehicle for discussion of marriage
promotion is the current debate over welfare reauthorization. If
members of Congress and the administration are committed to focusing on
child well-being as a primary goal of welfare reauthorization, they
should shift the investment priorities reflected in pending proposals.
Current knowledge of the benefits and risks of encouraging marriage for
low-income parents is limited. This suggests that further
experimentation and rigorous evaluation is critical. Since we have no
evidence of what works, Congress should provide a relatively small
appropriation dedicated to research purposes.
Overlooked for the most part in the marriage promotion debate is
existing research on welfare and children that provides strong evidence
of successful approaches to child well-being that policymakers should
pursue in reauthorization. Some of these strategies may prove to
support safe, healthy marriage indirectly, as well. In particular,
programs designed to increase household income and economic security
(by providing work supports like child care and transportation
assistance or by improving employment income with education and
training services) are known to improve the well-being of young
children.
Make work pay and increase household income by
providing new resources for education and training,
including transitional jobs,
creating a new credit to reward states for job
placement rather than caseload reduction, with extra
incentives to place recipients in higher paying jobs,
allowing states to count education, training, and
barrier removal activities as primary work participation,
and
providing an appropriation (not just authorization)
for a car ownership demonstration program and evaluation.
Provide adequate funding to maintain current levels of child
care assistance to working poor families and add significant
new resources for eligible families not currently receiving a
child care subsidy. (Of course, any changes in work
participation rates would require additional funding for the
children of working welfare recipients.)
Protect families and children from the harm of income
reducing sanctions by requiring outreach and review for
alternatives to benefit reduction before eliminating household
income. Do not require states to impose full family sanctions.
Do not mandate expensive work participation requirements
that create incentives for states to utilize unpaid work
(workfare) activities for the purpose of fulfilling Federal
requirements. Increasing work participation and work hours will
lead to reduced state investment in more promising programs
that are proven to improve child well-being. In contrast,
increasing work hours decreases adult supervision of and
interaction with adolescents who are already suffering
academically when their parent(s) are participating in welfare-
to-work activities.
Make it easier for states to reform child support rules so
that children receive more of the child support collected for
them as a means to increase household income and reduce
poverty.
Allow states to provide legal immigrant households with
``make work pay'' supports, education, and other services
intended to increase earnings.
Reauthorizing current welfare law appears more likely to produce better
outcomes for children than House and Senate proposals
While welfare reauthorization provides an opportunity for
policymakers to implement strategies and services likely to improve
child well-being, all signs suggest that it is highly unlikely members
can agree on legislation this year. The welfare law expired in
September 2002, and Congress has passed six short term extensions of
current law since then. Most recently, serious disagreements between
members of the Senate and the administration led to the withdrawal of
the bill from floor debate. The current extension will expire at the
end of June.
These short term extensions create uncertainty for welfare
administrators, program providers, and low-income families.
Furthermore, the current proposals are likely to reduce child well-
being as a result of new mandates to increase work hours and otherwise
reduce state flexibility. Since the proposals were introduced, many
states and localities have created new marriage promotion initiatives.
In 2002, some observers may have concluded that state policymakers were
overlooking the opportunity to promote marriage as part of welfare to
work initiatives. For good or for ill, that is not the case today.
Given these facts and the policy choices under consideration, the
current best option for members of Congress to improve child outcomes
through the welfare law would be a straight, multi-year reauthorization
of the current law.
If Congress nevertheless chooses to implement a marriage promotion
experiment while reauthorizing current law, a balanced approach is
critical. Members should couple a small, targeted experiment with
additional funding for child care because it is a strategy known to
improve child well-being.
Policymaking should support promising research, but Congress should
not let funding get ahead of the science.
Selected References
Bachman, H.J., Coley, R.L., & Chase-Lansdale, P. L. (2003).
Marriage or Partnering? Effects of Cohabitation and Family Structure
Changes on Child and Adolescent Well-Being. Paper presented at the
first annual conference of the National Poverty Center, Washington D.C.
Working paper available at: http://www.npc.umich.edu
Edin, K. (2000) How Low-Income Single Mothers Talk About Marriage.
Social Problems, 47 (1), 112-133.
Gibson, C., Edin, K., & McLanahan, S. (2003) High Hopes But Even
Higher Expectations: The Retreat from Marriage Among Low-Income
Couples. Center for Research and Child Wellbeing Working Paper # 2003-
06-FF.
Hamilton, G. (2002) Moving People from Welfare to Work: Lessons
from the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies. Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department
of Education.
Haskins, R. & Sawhill, I. (2003) Work and Marriage: The Way to End
Poverty and Welfare. WR&B Policy Brief #28. Washington, D.C.:
Brookings.
Kaye, K. (2004) Effects of Marriage on Family Economic Well-Being:
Summary. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services.
Kirby, D. (2002) Do Abstinence-Only Programs Delay the Initiation
of Sex Among Young People and Reduce Teen Pregnancy? Washington, D.C.:
National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
Kirby, D. (2001) Emerging Answers: Research Findings on Programs to
Reduce Teen Pregnancy. Washington, D.C.: National Campaign to Prevent
Teen Pregnancy.
Lichter, D.T. & Graefe, D.R. (2001) Finding a Mate? The Marital and
Cohabitation Histories of Unwed Mothers. In Wu, L.L. & Wolfe, B.
(Eds.), Out of Wedlock: Trends, Causes and Consequences of Nonmarital
Fertility, 329. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
McLanahan, S. (2003) Fragile Families and the Marriage Agenda.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing.
McLanahan, S. & Sandefur, G. (1994) Growing Up with a Single
Parent: What Hurts, What Helps. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
National Center for Children in Poverty. (2002) Letter to Members
of Congress: Researchers discuss the effects of welfare reform on
children's well-being. Available at: http://www.nccp.org/item_25.html
Parke, M. (2003) Are Married Parents Really Better for Children?
What Research Says About the Effects of Family Structure on Child Well-
Being. Washington, D.C.: Center for Law and Social Policy.
Parke, M. (2004) Who Are ``Fragile Families'' and What Do We Know
About Them? Washington, D.C.: Center for Law and Social Policy.
Reardon-Anderson, J., Capps, R., & Fix, M. (2002) The Health and
Well-Being of Children in Immigrant Families. Washington, D.C.: Urban
Institute.
Seefeldt, K.S. & Smock, P.J. (2004) Marriage on the Public Policy
Agenda: What Do Policy Makers Need to Know from Research? University of
Michigan, National Poverty Center. Available at: http://
www.npc.umich.edu/publications/workingpaper04/paper2/04-902.pdf
Sigle-Rushton, W. & McLanahan, S. (2003) For Richer or Poorer?:
Marriage as an Anti-poverty Strategy in the United States. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing.
Thomas, A. & Sawhill, I. (2002) ``For Richer or for Poorer:
Marriage as an Antipoverty Strategy.'' Journal of Policy Analysis and
Management, 21(4), 587-599.
Senator Brownback. Thank you.
Mr. Fagan, thank you for joining us today.
STATEMENT OF PATRICK F. FAGAN, THE WILLIAM H.G.
FITZGERALD FELLOW IN FAMILY AND CULTURE ISSUES, THE HERITAGE
FOUNDATION
Mr. Fagan. Thank you for having me, Senator Brownback. It's
an honor to be here to testify today.
I think that the central message of the social science data
is already covered in the first panel--it's fairly simple, and
I think it's profound--that when parents belong to each other,
the more that they do that, the more each individual in the
family, both the parents themselves and the children, thrive;
and the more that there is rejection between the parents,
either in divorce or in out-of-wedlock births where eventually
they each go their own way, the more the entire family suffers,
and most especially the children. Not all children suffer the
same way, but if you look at cohort groups overall, they all
suffer to some extent. And none of them probably reach the
capacity they would have reached had they had parents who did
belong to each other.
I put a chart, into the testimony, that gives a picture of
the extent that this form of rejection has grown over the last
five decades. If we just take the beginning and end point, in
1950, if you take the number of children entering the Nation as
the base, the number of children born that year, and, against
that, measure the number that entered a broken family that
year--and the two ways of entering it are being born out
wedlock, where the family has not formed, or where the parents
divorce--and in 1950, for every hundred children born, twelve
children entered a broken family. By the year 2000, it has
grown to sixty. So there's a five-fold increase.
What that indicates, actually, is there has been a huge
shift in what I call the infrastructure of the culture, from a
culture of belonging, overwhelmingly, for most people, to now
overwhelming, for the children of this nation, it's a culture
of rejection. And on any measure you take, that the indicators
go down for each cohort involved.
Because of this new culture of rejection, most of our
children will not attain the fullness of their capacity, and
neither will the Nation attain the fullness of its capacity to
fulfil its destiny and role. And though this is far removed
from the point of this hearing, I think this cultural
phenomenon is now a foreign policy issue, as well. To be the
leader of the free world, which we are claiming, we need a
culture we are proud of, and a source of domestic strength and
happiness. And for our children, that is not the case.
Instead of achieving the fullness of their capacity, the
children of parents who reject each other suffer in more
emotional pain. It's not that they all suffer these things to
great extents; there are varying levels, of course, and there
are individual children who will not suffer this. But if you
take the cohort outcomes for any particular group, you will
find there's more emotional pain, ill health, depression,
anxiety, shortened life span--more drop out of school, less go
to college. They earn less income. They develop more addictions
to drugs and alcohol. They engage in increased violence, or
suffer it within their homes.
Society also suffers, with more gangs, more assaults, more
violence against women and children. The safest place, by the
way, for women and children is in the married family. It's not
totally safe, it's not without domestic violence, but any other
structure outside of that has more.
There's an increased need for healthcare, for supplemental
education, for addiction programs, foster care, homelessness
programs, and on and on it goes. The expansion of all these
social program budgets is directly linked, in my read of the
data, to the breakdown of marriage.
And there's not a single area of government concerned, not
a single social budget of a major social policy area, that has
not grown in size when marriages fail at this level, or when
parents--another way of saying that is, when parents reject
each other, picking up the pieces is not just the work of the
fragmented family and the extended family, but also of society
and the taxpayer.
The breakdown has now reached such a level as to be
massively expensive. And with these results, we can say that
this cultural change, America's latest experiment in its
history of experiment with freedom, but this experiment with
freedom has been a big failure, especially for the children of
those parents.
So the question then arises, How do we reverse the
situation? And I don't think it's easy, by any means. As a
nation, we need to set about restoring the conditions that will
grow again a culture of belonging with all the ingredients that
go into such a culture--some of these mentioned in the past
panel: courtship, marriage, worship--key link within this--and
forming communities of families where neighborhoods are places
you like to come home to.
Looking at neighborhoods is a key issue. We've all--all
of--anybody around my age, in their 50s, remember neighborhoods
where kids played a lot more, where families visited each other
a lot more, a neighborhood that sustained family life much
easier. There's huge stress on marriages today because the
demands for relational capacities are almost entirely on the
marriage because the communities don't support them, don't
provide this other support that makes human life so much more
human and humane.
So George Washington, in his farewell speech--I want to
segue into the issue of worship and religion--in his farewell
speech to the Nation, he drew attention to the need for the
American people to be a people of worship if our experiment
with freedom and our Democratic form and Republican form is to
succeed. But I think the social science data in this whole area
gives a clear nod in his direction.
For instance, on something that the whole country and this
Senate constantly talk, worry about, put a lot of budget money
into, and all the rest, is grade point average and how kids are
doing in school. Children from intact families that worship
frequently--and intact, there I would include the intact
cohabiting as well as the intact marriage where there's no
rejection, living together--put those two groups together, and
then you look at how frequently they worship, and what you find
is that the children do best in grade point average
significantly--and there's a chart in there, too--where they
score significantly higher. And those who score lowest are
those from fragmented families that don't worship at all, or
very little. And then the ones in between have an in-between
score.
And similar outcomes occur no matter almost what measure
you take. This comes out of the National Longitudinal Survey of
Youth, which is--or the Add Health--sorry--the Add Health
survey, which is our largest survey ever done on adolescents,
which we can track now through the third wave. These
adolescents are now into their mid-20s.
So the big thing that I think that is needed, more than any
particular program--if there is one program that's needed, it's
right here in the Senate--it's a program of debate that will
probably have to last many years. Because, given the sort of
nation we are, we are not one people, we don't have a history
of a particular culture. We are a political nation, and the
Senate is the place where we most debate how we will go
forward.
We've had an experiment that has failed. It's going to take
a lot of debate and a lot of fleshing out, aided by all of the
suggestions that have been made here--on programs, on data, on
correlational, on experiments and quasi-experiments--so that
these things can be fleshed out. And that debate and its
consequences out into the media and elsewhere, I suggest that
program of debate, which you are beginning, and others, by
having hearings like this, will have a much bigger impact,
because it will change the ideas and will form, gradually, a
consensus again. It'll take quite some time.
Who knows what way it's going to end up. But you will
gradually emerge a view of how we are going to move forward and
restore the culture of belonging in our families, rather than a
culture of rejection which we now have.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Fagan follows:]
Prepared Statement of Patrick F. Fagan, The William H.G. FitzGerald
Fellow in Family and Culture Issues, The Heritage Foundation
Good afternoon Mr. Chairman and Members of the
Subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before
you today on the challenge that family life in America presents
to the children and the leaders of our Nation.
The family is the building block of our society. It is the
place where everyone begins life and to which they always
belong. The more that members of a family belong to each other,
the more each individual and each family thrive. When rejection
occurs in the family, especially between the parents when they
separate or divorce, or even when they never come together, the
entire family and especially the children, suffers.
The accompanying extended remarks in the form of a booklet
called ``The Map of the American Family'' illustrate in charts
the trends and the dynamics of belonging and rejection in the
United States over the last fifty years. These charts are
mainly from Federal surveys and give a snapshot of what is
occurring within America's families. (British data are used
when there is no corresponding U.S. Federal survey . . . a
situation that should be remedied.)
The effects of belonging, rejection, and indifference are
illustrated in these graphs. National survey data repeatedly
and consistently show that the highest levels of positive
outcomes are in those families where the parents have always
belonged to each other and to their children: the intact
married family. These families (adults and children) are less
likely to live in poverty, less likely to be dependent on
welfare, more likely to be happy, and to have a host of other
positive outcomes. Further, the children in these families are
more likely to exhibit positive outcomes (such as higher grade
point average) and less likely to exhibit negative ones (such
as depression).
Though these charts are correlational--deliberately so, to
give the best picture or snapshot of what is happening with
America's children--the regression analysis and causative
exploration by the Nation's top family sociologists repeatedly
find that the intact married family is the best place in which
children thrive.
When parents reject each other by divorce or an out of
wedlock birth that eventually ends in totally separate lives
for the father and mother, the strengths of their children are
not as developed as they could be, and more weaknesses occur in
major outcomes such as deprivations, addictions, abuse and
failure.
When fathers and mothers belong to each other in marriage
their children thrive. When they are indifferent or walk away
from each or reject each other, their children do not thrive as
much, and many wilt a lot.
The chart below gives a picture of how many children have
been affected by changes in family structure over the past
fifty years, changes in the levels of belongingness and the
levels of rejection during these five decades.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
This chart shows that in 1950 for every hundred children
born, that year, 12 entered a broken family--four were born out
of wedlock and eight suffered the divorce of their parents. By
the year 2000 that number had risen five fold and for every 100
children born 60 entered a broken family: 33 born out of
wedlock and 27 suffering the divorce of their parents.
We must conclude that over the last fifty years America has
changed from being preponderantly ``a culture of belonging'' to
now being ``a culture of rejection''.
Because of this level of the rejection by fathers and
mothers of each other this growing cohort of children has not
nor will not attain the fullness of its capacities. Neither can
the Nation attain the fullness of its capacity to fulfill its
destiny and role.
The children of parents who reject each other suffer: in
deep emotional pain, ill health, depression, anxiety, even
shortened life span; more drop out of school, less go to
college, they earn less income, they develop more addictions to
drugs and alcohol, and they engage in increased violence or
suffer it within their homes.
Society also suffers with more gangs, more assaults, more
violence against women and children, more sexual abuse of women
and children, and much bigger bills for jails, increased need
for health care, supplemental education, addiction programs,
foster care, homelessness programs and on and on. The expansion
of all these social program budgets is directly linked to the
breakdown in marriage.
There is not a single area of governmental concern, not a
single budget of a major social policy area that does not grow
in size when marriages fail, or when parents reject each other.
Picking up the pieces becomes not just the work of the
fragmented family itself but of all taxpayers and the whole of
society. The breakdown has now reached such a level as to be
massively expensive. With these results we can say this
cultural change--America's latest experiment with freedom--has
been a big failure.
Though it may seem far removed from the point of this
hearing, this cultural phenomenon is now a foreign policy
issue. To be the leader of the free world we need a culture
that we are proud of, a culture that is a source of domestic
strength and happiness.
How do we reverse this situation?
As a nation we need to set about restoring the conditions
that will grow again a culture of belonging, with all the
ingredients that go into such a culture: courtship, marriage,
worship and communities of families that form neighborhoods
that are nice places to come home to: neighborhoods in which
romance, courtship and marriage are normal and frequent. Behind
this simple goal--some might, without grasping its import, say
simplistic goal--lies a huge amount of work especially for
everyone, including this body.
The Senate, which has played such a critical role so often
in shaping the ideas that guide and correct the unfolding
American experiment in freedom, and which has helped shape the
ideals of this Nation so often, is now called again to play
again its foremost role in bringing this about the changes
needed: debate.
We are a political nation, founded on a political ideas and
ideals that animate our constitution and our national history.
And the Senate is the institution designed most to be that
place where America debates the next form of its ongoing
experiment with freedom: more than the House, more than the
Supreme Court, more even than the Presidency. This is the
preeminent institution of debate in this country--so at least
was the intention of the Founders, and so still is the need of
the people.
George Washington in his Farewell Speech to the Nation drew
attention to the need for the American people to be a people of
worship if this experiment in freedom is to work. The latest
data show us that these families--those that worship most, are
those that most belong to each other, that give us the most of
what we want in all our social policies, and produce the least
of what we try to prevent in all our social programs . . . but
that is a topic for another hearing, one well worth having.
When mothers and fathers belong to each other and strive to
belong to God in worship the greatest strengths emerge and the
least problems are present. For instance on something the whole
country and this Senate constantly talk, and worry about, and
spend a lot of money on--education attainment and outcomes--
children from the intact family that worships God most
frequently has the highest Grade Point Average, while children
from the fragmented family that worships least or not at all,
as a group, has the lowest Grade Point Average, as the attached
chart illustrates from the National Longitudinal Survey of
Adolescent Health, our biggest and most comprehensive survey
ever of adolescent outcomes. A host of other outcomes
illustrate the same basic point.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
There is much in the scientific literature that points
towards religious practice as a great preserver and fosterer of
marriage and family strengths.
Thus we increasingly have data pointing towards two
fundamental strengths for this nation: love between fathers and
mothers in marriage, and regular worship of God. Significantly
both are premised on America's most fundamental premise,
freedom: both marriage and worship can only truly happen with
the totally free undertaking of the people involved. There is
absolutely no room for any form of coercion in these great
enterprises . . . hence the importance of the role of debate
and persuasion, especially debate in the Senate.
In this time of an obvious failure of one phase of
America's experiment with freedom, the challenge before you,
the leaders of this nation, is how to lead America back to
having a culture of belonging rather than being a culture of
rejection; to being a country where people and families belong
to each other and especially fathers belong first to the
mothers of their children and mothers belong first to the
fathers. Parents belonging to each other are what children need
more than anything else this Nation can give them.
The first step on how to get there is being taken by
discussions such as this. This and the debate that will follow
among your colleagues is a major service to the whole nation.
I sincerely thank Senator Brownback and Senator McCain for
inviting me to testify before this committee. It is a great
honor for me. I hope my testimony has been helpful to you.
------
The Heritage Foundation is a public policy, research, and
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is privately supported, and receives no funds from any
government at any level, nor does it perform any government or
other contract work.
The Heritage Foundation is the most broadly supported think
tank in the United States. During 2003, it had more than
200,000 individual, foundation, and corporate supporters
representing every state in the U.S. Its 2003 income came from
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The top five corporate givers provided The Heritage
Foundation with 5 percent of its 2003 income. The Heritage
Foundation's books are audited annually by the national
accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche. A list of major donors is
available from The Heritage Foundation upon request.
Members of The Heritage Foundation staff testify as
individuals discussing their own independent research. The
views expressed are their own, and do not reflect an
institutional position for The Heritage Foundation or its board
of trustees.
------
Attachment
The Map of America's Family Culture
The family is the building block of our society. Family is
the place where everyone begins life and to which they always
belong.The more that members of a family belong to each other,
the more each individual and each family thrives. When
rejectionoccurs in the family, especially between the parents
when they separate or divorce, the entire family suffers.
The following charts illustrate the dynamics of belonging
and rejection. These charts are mainly from federal surveys and
give asnapshot of what is occurring within America's families.
(British data are used when there is no corresponding U.S.
federalsurvey.) The issues of belonging, rejection, and
indifference are powerfully illustrated in these graphs as we
see the highest levelsof positive outcomes consistently
occurring in the always-intact family, where the parents have
always belonged to each otherand to their children. These
families are less likely to live in poverty, less likely to be
dependent on welfare, more likely to behappy, along with a host
of other positive indicators. Further, the children in these
families are more likely to exhibit positiveoutcomes (such as
dinner with their family) and less likely to exhibit negative
ones (such as depression). For the well-being of thefamily, it
is vital that the parents always belong to each other and the
children to the parents.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Brownback. Thank you. Very interesting thoughts.
Mr. Campbell, thank you very much for joining us today. The
floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF GERALD L. CAMPBELL, PRESIDENT,
THE IMPACT GROUP, INC.
Mr. Campbell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to go beyond the data, and ask a basic question.
Why does this crisis exist?
Senator Brownback. Mr. Campbell, get that microphone a
little closer to you, if you would. Appreciate that, thank you.
Mr. Campbell. Can you hear me now?
Senator Brownback. Yes.
Mr. Campbell. Can you hear me?
Senator Brownback. Yes.
Mr. Campbell. I'd like to go beyond the data, and ask the
question, Why does this crisis exist? What is its root cause?
Is it crisis of material conditions and circumstances, or is it
a crisis of the spirit? Since it strikes rich and poor alike,
the answer seems clear. But if it is a crisis of the spirit, is
there a unique explanatory principle to guide us to
understanding? I believe there is.
The principle to which I refer is the unmet need to belong.
These words resonate with us all. They denote a crying out for
love that springs from the depths of the human spirit.
My focus on the unmet need to belong began 14 years ago.
For 5 years, after leaving the United States Information
Agency, I roamed the streets of Washington, D.C., taking
photographic images and recording stories of homeless people.
This work expanded to include violent youth, substance abusers,
gang members, and a wide array of issues associated with these
people.
The unmet need to belong that I encountered reflects an
inborn logic rooted in the existential depths of the human
person. Its formal reality is revealed in a deep-seated
yearning of the person to be united, through love--with others,
through love and community. To authentically exist as a person
is to coexist through love. Love constitutes the intrinsic
meaning of human life.
Yes, every person cries out for love. But, at the same
time, within the heart of every person there also resides a
spiritual inadequacy, an unconditional incompleteness. The
chilling truth is that no human being can reconcile the unmet
need to belong, except through the love of another person.
That's an irrefutable logic. One may cry out to belong, but it
is only by being permitted that an individual can transcend
their separateness and their spiritual alienation.
From this insight, a fundamental truth emerges about the
root cause of the behavioral pathologies. The root cause of
behavioral pathology, including the crisis we're discussing
today, I believe, is rooted in the living dynamics of love and
alienation that emanates from the existential core of the
person. Within this nucleus, one discovers, at a single glance,
the existential need of the person, which is a crying out for
love and belonging, and the antithetical, yet primary,
condition of the individual, the fact that they come into the
world separate, that they are born alienated, and that they're
crying out to overcome that alienation.
It is the struggle of the need for love to transcend the
primary condition of separateness that I think is at the root
of all social disorders. From this originating source, we can
arrive at the intrinsic principle, I think, that governs human
behavior. It goes something like this. To the extent that an
individual is alienated from another, separate from another, at
the spiritual level, he will be intrinsically compelled to do
whatever is necessary to create at least some semblance of love
or community in his or her life, no matter how imperfect it may
be or how high its cost. Spiritual alienation cannot be
tolerated by the human heart; it must be reconciled.
Now, when you go into the family, what is the center of
gravity? Taking what I've just said, the center of gravity is
the love between the father and the mother. That is the center
of gravity for the whole thing. These relationships--the
relationships, the intrinsic relationships, between the mother
and the father generate, between them, a radiance of love that
suffuses the life of the child. Joy ensues, separateness
diminishes, and the child slowly opens to the nurturing
potential of the civilizing virtues and an engaging life with
others.
I've had many people on the street tell me this, ``It's not
the mother that I want the love from. It's not the father that
I want the love from. What I want is to share in the love that
they have for each other.'' This has been said over and over
again.
And the intrinsic logic of this is indisputable, because if
there is no love that is really secure between the father and
the mother, there's separateness; and that separateness also
fragments the life of the child. And so when you have discord
in the marriage bond, then this love becomes seriously
attenuated in the life of the child. The child feels alone,
feels isolated, withdrawal occurs, spiritual alienation
intensifies, and what the child begins to do is to look for a
new center of gravity in his or her life.
And what happens? Well, an alienated boy may turn to
substance abuse as a way of belonging, with a group--he'll go
outside the family--or of numbing the pain that comes from
being alienated. A lonely boy may be encouraged to sell drugs
on the street by one who cares, a kind of ``big brother''; or
he may do so just to belong. A student may disrupt class to get
the attention that was not received at home. Or a young boy may
commit a violent act, even murder, to get the respect of
others. What's surprising to most people is that murders in a
gang occur because of the love that they get when they come
back to the gang. It's about love.
Traditionally, public policy has dealt with material
circumstances and conditions and a set of incentives and
disincentives to change behavior or to change the conditions
that underlie behavior. What I'm suggesting is that the crises
or marriage and the family, as well as the crises of
homelessness and gangs and substance abuse and youth violence
and risky sexual behaviors--what I'm suggesting is that, at the
core, these crises are a spiritual crisis.
And this poses a serious challenge to public policy,
because the question arises, Can public policy address a
spiritual crisis? It has never done before--it has not been
organized to do that. But the question is, Can it? Can it get
to the root cause of the issue, or is it going to be content
with addressing material conditions and circumstances? If it
does the latter, then all that can come out of the policy is
treatment, not prevention. Prevention requires that we go to
the root cause, address the root cause as it is, in and of
itself, and then we can begin to change the impact that that
cause has upon behavior. If the root cause, as I am suggesting,
is spiritual, then we have to have a way of addressing that
type of thing.
Now, the spiritual crisis that I'm talking about is not to
be confused with a moral crisis. It is deeper. It's an
intellectual crisis. It's a crisis of ideas. What we have in
our society is a war of ideas in which the notions of freedom,
or the person, or responsibility, or love, or alienation, or
marriage, or family, or root cause, or human purpose all have
conflicting meanings. We don't really know what these things
mean. But they do have a meaning, depending on the perspective
you take.
And so what we have to do, then, is, I think, begin to
engage the ideas that are at the root of our policy. The very
fact that we look upon some of these problems in terms, solely,
of material conditions and circumstances means that underlying
this there's a philosophy involved, a philosophy of what man
is, a philosophy of what freedom is, a philosophy of what the
person is, what man's purpose is, and so on.
So what I'm suggesting is four things. Very briefly, I
think we need a new political language, a new political
lexicon, where we can begin to develop a way of talking about
spiritual dynamics, such as I'm talking about, as well as the
mechanical dynamics of human behavior. There are both. They do
both exist. If you go out and you talk to someone on the street
about what's going on in their lives, they don't talk about
material conditions and circumstances; they talk about love,
they talk about alienation, they talk about relationships.
So we need a new language. We need to recapture the word
``spiritual'' and take it away from its association with
religion. We need to realize that ``spiritual'' is about ideas,
it's about things that are not material. Alienation is a
spiritual concept. Love is a spiritual concept. Freedom is a
spiritual concept. We need to talk to people and collect
stories about them so we can begin to develop this language
that describes spiritual dynamics. We need to become concrete.
We need to humanize these problems.
The second point is that we need a leadership that will
begin to take this language and engage debate to encourage new
research along these lines, new conversation to widen the
intellectual horizons. I think a small nucleus of Members in
the House or Senate, or both, could begin to do this. This is a
long-term project. It's not unlike the kind of project that,
when I was at USIA, we conducted overseas, in Eastern Europe.
It was a 60-year project.
Senator Brownback. Mr. Campbell, if you could conclude,
here, I'd appreciate that, so we could go to some questions.
Mr. Campbell. And then, finally, we have to recognize that
the best means to address this problem, I think, is to be able
to reach beyond programs into the hearts and minds of people
themselves, because that is where the energy resides that's
going to make a difference in the family. It's in the
individual who is married, the individual who lives that on a
daily basis. And that's why using language as a means of
reaching out and changing the dynamics in this country is, I
think, a different kind of approach, but one that would be
beneficial.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Campbell follows:]
Prepared Statement of Gerald L. Campbell, President,
The Impact Group, Inc.
The Unmet Need to Belong: Crisis of Marriage, the Family, and Culture
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a great honor to be here today.
For over a quarter century, Americans have been generally quiescent
as a ``crisis of marriage and the family'' has raged in silence across
the land. No longer can this dispassion stand firm. The family is too
troubled to concede such luxury. Its structure is fragmented. Its
intrinsic dynamics have gone awry. Its integrity labors under great
stress. That is our collective judgment today. That is our collective
fear. And we struggle to make it otherwise.
A Human Tale
Unquestionably, the story of this crisis is a sad tale. The vast
array of empirical evidence and information presented here today
supports that conclusion. But considered in isolation, scientific
assessments portray a sterile and cold reality. They sketch a crisis
disengaged from freedom and dignity, an abstract reality without human
personality. Such is not the milieu of this crisis. Much more is
involved. The individual is an organic unity, not a collection of
discrete pieces. It has a spiritual center--the person.
To appreciate the full significance of this story--and to better
transform a destructive energy into an ethos of reconciliation--we must
explain why this crisis exists and what efficiency, or root cause,
creates it. Somehow we must be able to see beyond the labyrinth of
quantitative data and objective correlations into a seething spiritual
energy that flows quietly through the inter-subjective relationships of
marriage and the family.
The Unmet Need to Belong
A phrase that aptly expresses this energy is ``the unmet need to
belong.'' These words denotes a spiritual dynamic. I first became aware
of this need through my studies of the homeless, violent youth,
substance abusers, gang members, and individuals engaged in risky
sexual behavior. It is a spiritual dynamic whose presence has become
all too pervasive and disruptive in our national life and culture.
These words--``the unmet need to belong''--have reference to the
authentic person. They contradict the common view that the individual
is essentially self-contained, that it is ego-centric, that its
relations are a matter of mere choice or convention. Instead, the
``unmet need to belong'' symbolizes the person as intrinsically
relational. It is a spiritual dynamic that reflects an inborn logic
rooted in the existential depths of the person. It discloses the formal
reality of this logic as a deep-seated ``yearning'' of the person to be
united with others through love in community. All this goes to say that
the very being of the person is a transcendental inclination to belong.
To authentically exist as a person is to co-exist through love. Love
constitutes the intrinsic meaning of human life.
A violent teenage offender, incarcerated for murder, explained
belonging to me this way. He said: ``To me--from what I can see and the
life I've lived and know on both sides of the fence . . . and the
negative things I've done and the positive things I've done . . .
everybody needs love. I can't see in my mind where a human being could
live without love, regardless of the ways of getting it. I'm not
talking about whether you get it this way or that way. I'm talking
about love in general. I think every human being needs love.''
It is this insight into the nature of the person that enables us to
explain why the crisis of marriage and the family exists.
The Root Cause: A Dialectic of Belonging
Considered abstractly, the causal origins of this crisis are rooted
in the living dynamics of love and alienation that emanate from the
existential core of the human person. Within this nucleus, one
discovers at a single glance the central impulse of the person--``a
crying out for love and community''--and the antithetical, yet primary
condition of the individual--a spiritual alienation, or separation from
others. It is the struggle of this existential impulse to transcend the
primary condition of spiritual alienation that forms the dialectical
nucleus of all social disorders.
From this insight, we can deduce the following principle of human
behavior: to the extent that an individual is alienated from another,
he or she will be intrinsically compelled to do whatever is necessary
to create at least some semblance of love or community in his or her
life, no matter how imperfect it may be, or how high its cost.
Spiritual alienation cannot be tolerated by the human heart. It must be
reconciled.
Example: A Mother and a Child
To illustrate the outlines of this dialectic, let's begin with the
most innocent of human encounters, the relationship between a mother
and a newborn child.
The newborn child symbolizes separateness as an original condition.
Each person enters the world alone, spiritually isolated from others.
But separateness is not merely a brute fact. From birth, the child has
an innate sense of his or her separateness and struggles to mitigate
its alienation by being accepted and loved by the mother. Its
outstretched arms and legs, beseeching the mother for love, is a
powerful symbol of this struggle. The mother, aware of her identical
need, accepts this plea and extends the warmth and comfort of her
person to the child.
It is by virtue of this mutual gift of one person to another--each
``crying out'' for the love of the ``other''--that both mother and
child alleviate their separateness, their spiritual alienation. Each
stands in a relation of gratitude to the other. A loving, enduring, and
dynamic relationship has begun to be forged.
As a child is brought into loving relations, they slowly open
themselves to the nurturing potential of the civilizing virtues. In
this way, they are set on a path that will lead to a more complete and
engaging life with others. But, if the child is not permitted to
belong--if the child is not the beneficiary of the gift of self, of
loving relationships--the training and discipline necessary to instill
the virtues will itself become a source of coercion. Slowly, ever so
slowly, the distance between the child and the mother will increase.
And, since love has not intervened, the child will easily retreat into
an egocentric existence where hedonistic and utilitarian self-
indulgence can easily become a lifelong affliction.
Marriage and the Family: A Matter of Freedom
At this point, it is beneficial to raise a question about personal
freedom. Is the nature of personal freedom to be found in the creation
of a self-sufficient ego--an ego that is alone and distant from the
intrinsic life of others? Or is freedom to be more fully expressed in
an integral self, a relational self, a self that is united to others
through love in community? These questions are not merely about matters
of choice. Rather they are about the intrinsically relational nature of
the person and the ``unmet need to belong.''
If freedom is reflective of egocentric, self-contained existence,
it follows that the structure and living dynamics of the family will
become a fractured totality. It will degenerate into increasing
fragmentation. The family will be akin to a conventional organization
of individuals, related by mutual interests, but characterized by
individual autonomy, like so many billiard balls on a table. It will
lack intrinsic cohesion.
But, if freedom has an intrinsic relationship to the person and
``the unmet need to belong'', it will realize itself through the
building of loving relationships. Family unity will reach into the
inner being of the person. It will evolve as a community of love. It
will be intrinsically spiritual and replete with richness.
And so, the fundamental question that will determine the future of
marriage and the family can be stated this way: What shall we do with
our freedom? Shall freedom be intrinsically relational and, like the
person, be enriched with love, or should it reflect the autonomous
individual and remain self-absorbed?
Love: A Center of Gravity
The center of gravity in the family lies in the quality of
intrinsic relationships that unite husband and wife. These most
intimate relationships range all the way from the gift of self through
love, truth, justice, fidelity, and solidarity to simple helpfulness
and mutual associations of domestic life. When qualitative
relationships cement the existential reality of husband and wife, a
radiance of love is generated and suffuses the life of the child. The
``unmet need to belong'' in the child finds a degree of fulfillment and
separateness diminishes. A degree of restfulness ensues.
But when love does not unite husband and wife, the radiating
presence of love to the child becomes seriously attenuated. The child
is automatically placed in the position of the autonomous self. The
loving bonds within the family, bonds that alone can alleviate
existential aloneness, are fractured or weakened. The child feels alone
and isolated and, because of the intrinsic dynamics of ``the unmet need
to belong'', begins a new, possibly destructive, journey. The look for
a new center of gravity begins.
Emergence of a Secret Life: A Dialectic of Indifference
Alienated by a fractured relationship between mother and father,
young persons begin to look outside the family for love and
understanding. They begin to form their own social networks, their own
support groups, their own friends. They enter into dialectical
relationship with strangers, defining new needs, developing new
interests, and discovering new ways of alleviating internal conflicts.
They engage in give and take with others. They make an advance here and
a retreat there. The art of compromise evolves and erosion begins to
eat away. Little by little, the dynamics of existential yearning forge
a new inner substance, a new consciousness, a new set of sensibilities,
a new moral horizon, and a new set of behavioral imperatives.
Out of these convulsions, the young develop a keen sense of what
acquires duration for them, of what satisfies their felt needs and
perceived good. They struggle to balance unfulfilled desires and outer
demands. They seek to resolve internal conflict. They reach out for
approval with others. They want to be included and accepted. They want
to be recognized as something special. They want to stand out. Above
all, they want to be loved and, in particular, they want to be loved by
someone they cry out to love.
Having judged carefully how to fit in, how to belong, how to be
united with others, they become less and less constrained from within.
They become more and more open to entreaties from without. Tomorrow's
hopes and dreams often collapse and find expression in today's needs.
Time stops its seemingly intractable flow to the future. Its
continuity--a flow of past, present, and future--is dissolved into
discrete moments, each slightly tinged with hedonistic seductions, each
crying out like a siren song laced with the lure of pleasure,
advantage, or other reward. Time has become the here and now. But it is
a here and now that is not only deceptive, but also alluring,
imperious, and dangerous.
Bit by bit, this nascent web of relationships begets a secret inner
life, a haughty life that swallows up previous innocence. A new,
clandestine, and seductive center of gravity emerges. It is driven by
the existential need to belong. Yet this need has an elusive side and
can easily tempt one to descend into a darkness where impersonality and
servitude take command. Here, where the allure of authentic
relationships was anticipated, only existential retribution and sorrow
is to be found.
For our part, we notice in our children traces of silent
disengagement. We perceive in them qualities and dispositions that
never were--the brooding, the vacant smiles, the ill humor, the
crankiness. We perceive subtle departures in attitude, interests, and
behavior. We discern an unpleasant indifference to past friends and
activities that once caused happiness and joy. We detect vague
incongruities between the past and the present.
We take note of these changes, but confusion clouds our thoughts
and fear forces a wavering judgment. We are flushed with uncertainty
and torments of doubt. Seeing only through blurred outlines, our hearts
refuse to acknowledge that we have arrived at the crossroads. We resist
suggestion that our children have retreated into the distance. We seek
solace and strength in what remains familiar about them. But we also
take notice that a subtle metamorphosis has occurred. Something about
them is different. Something about them is troubling. Yet, we fail to
realize that we cannot penetrate the obscure shadowy depths of their
now secret lives. Without ever knowing what has happened, they have
become lost to us. They have become strangers.
This same dialectic can be written of either husband or wife. It is
an existential dialectic that flows out of the intrinsic structures and
dynamics of the human person.
The Human Person: A Spiritual Inadequacy
The chilling truth is that, like the helpless infant and the young,
no human being can reconcile spiritual alienation--``the unmet need to
belong''--except through the love of an other. One may cry out to
belong, but it is only by being permitted that an individual can
transcend their separateness, or spiritual alienation.
The simple truth is: within the heart of every person resides a
spiritual inadequacy, an unconditional incompleteness. No individual,
regardless of socio-economic or other conventional status, has an
intrinsic capacity to become self-sufficient.
The mythology of the self-contained individual--a myth that shapes
and distorts much of our culture and socio-economic life--is only a
mask that enshrouds an inner emptiness and aloneness. It is the same
mask worn by Citizen Kane whose lust for power denied him the
fulfillment he sought. It is the mask worn by Tom and Daisy in The
Great Gatsby. It is a truth that permeates the paintings of Edward
Hopper and the photographs of Robert Frank. It is the cry of anguish
unleashed by the spirituals of the cotton picker, the pain of the rural
and urban Blues artist, the social voice of 1960s R&B, and the modern
prophets of the street, the poetic artists of Rap and Hip Hop.
Neither power, nor wealth, nor reputation can free a man from this
aloneness. Behind every Horatio Alger story is a human tragedy waiting
to unfold. Only love is liberating. Only love can make man free.
Only by being permitted and affirmed through the love of the other
can alienation be mitigated and the person made whole. Such is the
intrinsic logic of the human person. Such is the intrinsic logic of
freedom. Such is the intrinsic logic of marriage. And such is the
intrinsic logic of the family.
Impact of Spiritual Alienation: The Stories of Youth
The impact of fractured relationships between husband and wife--
father and mother--on the spiritual life of the child is immense.
Examples abound. An alienated boy may turn to abusive substances as a
means of belonging to a group or of numbing the pain that comes from
not belonging. A boy or girl may join a gang as a substitute for the
family he or she never had. A lonely boy may be encouraged to sell
drugs on the street by one who cares--a kind of big brother--or he may
do so just to belong. A student may disrupt class to get the attention
that was not received at home. A young girl may decide to have a child
in order to love and to be loved. A group of estranged teenagers may
steal a car to satisfy their need to be with others and, in doing so,
will test and verify the strength of their bonding. Or a young boy may
commit violent acts--even murder--in an attempt to gain the respect of
others.
The following are excerpts taken from recorded, free-flowing non-
structured conversations I've had with troubled youth. They, each in
their own way, underscore the spiritual dynamic of ``the unmet need to
belong.'' Here's one:
``My biological father, he was never around. He had his own
house . . . he had other kids. So . . . he came around only on
holidays. I called them holidays because that's the only time I
see him at all. And when I'd call . . . try to go over to his
house . . . it was no, or wait, or something. He was rejecting
me all the time and when I wanted to go places with my mother
or my stepfather it'd be the same thing--rejection!''
Here's another:
``I'd rather be with people I didn't know . . . because they
seemed to care about me more than my own family cared about
me.''
And another:
``My family didn't care so I'd just do my own thing. All my
attention . . . everything was towards gangs. That's all I
wanted . . . gangs were my life, you know what I mean, because
I loved them and they loved me.''
And another:
``I committed my crimes because of him . . . because I wanted
that acceptance from him. And that's where a lot of crimes come
from . . . they want acceptance from other people. They want to
feel big and be seen as being big in the eyes of others. They
don't want to be seen as scared, or weak, or feel rejected by
anybody. Because that's what they're scared of--scared to be
alone!''
And another:
``Separating teen pregnancy, substance abuse, gangs, and
violence is a waste of time because I've got them all in my
life. They all revolve around the same thing . . . it all
revolves around love . . . that's all I really needed. I gang
banged for love and attention. I did drugs because I was lonely
and needed some understanding. I did violence to gain the love
of someone else. I got females pregnant because I wanted love
and attention. So, they all stem from the same thing . . . love
and understanding.''
And finally:
``And I'd tell the parents--get to know your kids . . . get to know
us . . . ask us about us . . . ask the kids: `Who are you, really.'
They might think it's a joke at first, but just ask them: 'Who are you
really.' What do you like? What kinds of things do you like to do? What
don't you like. What do you want to be in life? How do you feel? Am I a
good parent to you? . . . Listen to them when they say: `I don't feel
that you love me enough. I don't feel that you give me enough
recognition. Can you understand what I'm going through.' . . . Talk to
them. Understand the kids. That's all parents need to do. Just get down
to their level.''
Lest we have forgotten, let met state in concise terms what is at
issue in these stories: whenever a nation's young people become
spiritually alienated, the collective future of the entire society--
including all that for which preceding generations have struggled and
died--is called into question.
To be sure, the precise way these spiritual forces might impact
tomorrow cannot be foretold. But we can reasonably expect that whatever
happens will neither be desirable nor welcome.
Culture and Society: An Ethos of Spiritual Alienation
To an extent that would have seemed impossible only a few decades
ago, America has been transformed by spiritual alienation. Individuals
today carry greater burdens in their hearts than they do on their
backs.
Reflect for a moment. Who is unaware that our national language has
become coarse and shrill, self righteous and judgmental? Who is unaware
that our legal system has become excessively litigious, that
competition takes precedence over cooperation, that bureaucratic
control prevails over genuine human interaction? Who is unaware of the
pervasive atmosphere of cynicism and distrust, violence and fear,
intemperance and injustice, isolation and aloneness, spiritual
emptiness and indifference?
All these are forces of spiritual alienation. They dishonor our
national life. Yet they are the spiritual dynamics shaping our future.
Plato argued: ``the state is man writ large.'' This statement could
be amended to read: ``the state is marriage or the family writ large.''
Whatever happens in our own lives, and the relations that govern
marriage and the family, also takes place in the state or culture.
Conversely, if there is an ethos of alienation ranging throughout
society and culture, a dialectical exchange will penetrate the family,
impacting the relationships between husband and wife, father and
children, mother and children, and even among children. It will suffuse
and fragment the general life of the entire family.
The exigencies of the ``unmet need to belong'' flows through the
family and into society and the culture. Once outside the family, they
shapes our relations with other individuals. The same dialectic
continues on a new battlefield. Children want to be accepted by their
friends. Parents seek acceptance outside the home. The person who feels
alienated at work, brings that alienation back into the home. The child
who is bullied at school becomes alienated and seeks refuge wherever
possible. Each person struggles to find a way to belong with whomever
they associate. The struggle to belong is the central quest of life.
Even ideas impact the structures and dynamics of society and the
relations between husband and wife, mother and father, and children.
And they determine the formation of the child. They do so by defining
our aspirations and goals, and the meaning of the freedom and dignity
of the human person. They define our sense of responsibility and our
future. The utilitarian notions that define success in society, and the
hedonistic notions that define pleasure, are brought into the home and
affect relationships within the family. Our common practical
materialism places primacy on having and doing over being, on things
over persons, on subservience over personal creativity, on manipulation
and control over openness and service to others. Our understanding of
the quality of life emphasizes economic efficiency, excessive
consumerism, physical beauty, and pleasure over spiritual qualities.
There should be no doubt. Ideas have consequences. Insofar as they
promote spiritual alienation, ideas have the capacity to seep turmoil
into the life of the person, unleash fragmentation into the dynamics of
marriage and the family, and effect widespread disruption throughout
society and culture. Yet, insofar as they promote loving relationships,
they have the capacity to heal the spiritual alienation and rid the
aloneness that undermines personal existence.
Decisions: The Concreteness of Spirituality
The question of personal freedom was raised earlier. It must be
raised again. What are we to do with our freedom? How shall we exercise
creativity? Shall freedom be used to create a self-sufficient ego,
alone and distant from the intrinsic life of others? Or shall freedom
heed the intrinsic call to belong and create an integral self made
whole by the love of others? Is the human person intrinsically
relational or merely an opaque density? These are our choices. Only one
choice is responsible. Only one leads to freedom.
The crisis of marriage, the family, and culture is a spiritual
crisis. To alleviate this crisis, we must choose. But simple practical
choices will not suffice. Success requires that choice be proportionate
to the nature of the crisis. For this reason, the choices to be made
must be spiritual.
But, what are spiritual choices? What do they look like? Are they
something set apart from other choices?
The answer is simple but difficult to grasp. In essence, spiritual
choices are about the quality of relationships we establish with
others. They give a dimension to choice that either generates
alienation or qualitative relations with others. They bring an aspect
of transcendence to the concrete.
Alienation or love, aloneness or brotherhood, indifference or
compassion, emptiness or purpose, pride or humility, judgment or
mercy--these contradictory qualities depict the unavoidable spiritual
choices each person must face in every concrete situation and every
moment of their lives. Whether rich or poor, socially placed or
displaced, educated or uneducated--whether Caucasian, Afro-American,
Hispanic, Asian, or Native American--each person must struggle along an
inescapable yet perplexing path in order to come to terms with these
transcendent and universal challenges.
There is an unavoidable concreteness to these spiritual choices.
Indeed, spiritual qualities constitute the very substance of every
thought we consider, every action we undertake, and every relationship
we establish. Too often we forget how concretely it matters whether our
thoughts, actions, and relationships are suffused with alienation or
love . . . indifference or compassion . . . judgment or mercy. And yet,
it is the dialectical clash of these destructive and perfecting
qualities that shapes our lives, shape our marriages, shape our
families, and impact the lives of whomever we encounter.
A display of personal indifference will not only sour one's own
life. It can easily cause radical and enduring disruption in the lives
of others. And, when the dynamics of alienation gain the ascendancy and
begin to ripple throughout society, they can easily acquire the
momentum to unleash a collective intensity that can quickly fragment
and distort the spiritual fabric of a marriage, the life of a family,
the integrity of our Nation's most fundamental institutions, and the
``living dynamics'' of our entire society.
Freedom, like the person, also depends upon the quality of
relationships individuals have with one another. Wherever spiritual
alienation exists, freedom--and the person--have already been
diminished.
The Crisis of Marriage and the Family: A Crisis of Public Policy
The crisis of marriage and the family poses a serious challenge to
public policy.
Traditionally, social policy has rested on two practical
assumptions. The first is that causes of human behavior are correlated
to the material conditions and circumstances of the individual. The
second is that behavior can be rectified through the management of a
complex system of material incentives and disincentive whose purpose is
to alleviate the impact of risk factors on the life of the individual.
These assumptions are adequate for a treatment strategy. The
material conditions and circumstances of the individual can indeed be
changed and the life of the individual be improved. But they are
inadequate as a foundation for a strategy of prevention.
Prevention requires, more than anything else, a clear apprehension
of the nature and root cause of the threat in question. Without a
substantive articulation of these formal and efficient elements, there
will invariably ensue an incongruity of means and ends, and a failed
result.
But, here lies the critical challenge for public policy. The crisis
of marriage and the family--not to mention a host of other behavioral
problems, including: homelessness, substance abuse, youth violence,
gangs, and risky sexual behavior--is a spiritual crisis. It is a crisis
rooted in ``the unmet need to belong.''
The question is: can public policy address a spiritual crisis? Can
it complement its characteristic focus on improving the material
conditions and circumstances of the individual and begin a new
initiative that will enhance the quality of relations among persons? It
is my judgment that it can.
Towards a Strategy of Prevention
The crisis of marriage and the family--a spiritual crisis--is
essentially a crisis of intellect and of truth. It is at bottom a ``war
of ideas'' in which fundamental notions like freedom, the person,
responsibility, love, alienation, marriage, family, root cause, and
purpose have conflicting meanings. Yet, these contradictions are never
discussed or even acknowledged in policy debate. Whether the person is
intrinsically relational or not makes a fundamental difference in how
issues are addressed. Yet, those differences are never addressed. The
same can be said for other ideas such as freedom, responsibility, and
so on.
To address this crisis--and to prepare the way for a strategy of
prevention--it seems to me four things must be addressed:
A. A New Political Language Reflecting the Spiritual Dynamics
of
Behavior
There is a great need to enrich our political lexicon by making
way for a new political language that includes a recognition of
the contribution of both spiritual dynamics and mechanical
dynamics, including their interrelationship. An understanding
of the spiritual dynamics of love and alienation is as
important to comprehending social dysfunctions as are
correlations, material conditions. and circumstances. We also
need to reclaim the word spiritual--and disassociate it from
its religious connotations--so that we can meaningfully debate
in the public forum the intrinsic dynamics of such ideas as
freedom, the person, responsibility, belonging, love,
alienation, dignity, and their impact on human behavior and
interaction. The intrinsic content of these ideas is as
critical for understanding policy issues as are extrinsic
factors. Policy debate would be further enriched if, as the
debate deepens, there is an effort made to reach out to the
creative community--the artists, lyricists, dramatists, and
others. They are keenly aware of the cultural and spiritual
dynamics that operate in our society and culture.
B. A New Political Leadership
Armed with a new political language, policy debate in the
Congress on critical issues like marriage and the family--and
homelessness, youth violence, substance abuse, gangs, risky
sexual behavior, and even obesity--will begin to take on new
meaning. New questions would be asked at hearings. A new body
of knowledge would emerge. Research would be encouraged along
new lines. People never before involved in public policy--
philosophers, artists, musicians, experts in culture, for
example--would enrich the debate. Intellectual horizons would
expand. New possibilities for action would emerge. The
constraints that currently stifled public policy would be
lifted. Individuals would become engaged. A small nucleus of
Members of the Senate and the House would be sufficient to
begin the development of this language.
C. Mass Means of Communication
As a new language is developed and utilized, new ideas would be
introduced into the public forum. Senate and House resolutions,
Member's speeches, floor statements, Dear Colleague letters,
Special Orders, and other means of congressional
communications--much of which is transmitted over the C-Span
television network--could be employed. This language would
engender a dialogue among religious, community service
organizations, business, fraternal and student organizations,
government agencies and departments, and think tanks. A new
dialectic of ideas would emerge. Over time, ideas would be
circulated through newspapers, magazines, television, radio,
drama, musical lyrics, and other modes of expression that
impact popular opinion. A national dialogue would evolve.
D. Hearts and Minds
Ideas sufficiently profound would strike a resonance with the
``hearts and minds'' of individuals throughout the country. The
more profound the more striking the resonance. The ``cry for
freedom''--an idea located in the mysterious depths of the
human spirit--resonated throughout Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union and unleashed a democratic revolution that is
still ongoing. In a similar way, a new political language of
community will reach beyond institutions and programs into the
``hearts and minds'' of individuals. It can have a profound
transformative effect on the spiritual dynamics of the person,
the family, the society, and eventually the culture. In this
way, untold energies would become involved in bringing about
change.
In conclusion, let me admit that many will judge the prospects I
have set forth to be overly ambitious and insufficiently practical. And
that should come as no surprise. History records that the ``hounds of
cynicism'' are always on guard along the pathway to human betterment.
And yet, it would be wrong to allow ourselves to be deterred by
these forces. Cynicism should be challenged wherever it is found.
Indeed, a mighty and revolutionary power already lies dormant within
the spiritual depths of each individual--within their hopes and dreams,
their existential desires and talents, and their intrinsic ``crying
out'' to belong with others through love in community--and this
spiritual potential is waiting patiently for the trumpets to call.
If we can begin to tap into that source of strength--and introduce
subtle changes in the prevailing assumptions that shape how we think,
act, create, and relate to one another--a new creative dynamic can
slowly be unleashed that will give greater substance and new creative
energies to the living dynamics of our families, our neighborhoods, our
institutions, and our entire society. Such is the power of dialogue in
the hard practical life of man.
Senator Brownback. Thank you, Mr. Campbell. And that's a
very thought provoking and, I think, accurate description--
discussion.
Mr. Fagan, I want to go to yours first. I was looking at
that chart that you put in the first of your testimony of where
we were in the 1950s, 1960s--early 1960s--and then this thing
just takes off like a rocket on the number of children--for
every hundred children born, those experiencing--you title it
``rejection'' from their family, it goes on a virtual direct
ascent forward. What happened, then, that caused that to occur?
Mr. Fagan. Could I have the Encyclopaedia Britannica
length?
Senator Brownback. But, I mean, there obviously must have
been something in this period of time, because you're going
from 1962 to 1972, a ten-year time period, and you go from 20
percent of the children experiencing family rejection to 50
percent in a ten-year time period.
Mr. Fagan. Sure. I think one of the central, but, by no
means, the only--each one, each issue, was built on something
that leads before that's underneath. But on the behavioral
level, which is the most surface of all, the huge difference
that happened here--Francis Fukuyama, in his book, The Great
Disruption, which is probably the biggest analysis of these
trends, not only in this country, but right across the
developed West--the thing that he, from regression analysis,
regression upon regression, pinpoints, is a sexual revolution
occasioned by the development of mass marketing of
contraceptives of many different sorts, which then changed the
nature of the sexual relationship, the relationship between the
sexes, and the orientation of marriage away from being just
within--our sexuality just being within marriage, to,
essentially, it moving outside. And I would be inclined to
agree that that was one of the big phenomena. Now, what caused
that is a--you can keep going back further. But that is the
huge attitudinal, behavioral, market, economic, sex role,
marital--within marriage, outside of marriage--phenomenon that
occurred.
Senator Brownback. Ms. Waller, would you agree with that?
Ms. Waller. I think it's something more than that. And some
of the folks on the last panel--some of the last panelists, I
think, addressed some of those issues.
I would commend to you a summary of the literature that I
cite in my references, which was prepared by some of the
researchers at the University of Michigan, and they identify a
number of explanations for the decline of marriage mentioned in
the last panel.
Senator Brownback. But I want to get right--if we could--if
you could focus in on that number of children that are then in
a either out-of-wedlock or divorced situation and how it just
took off in that ten-year time period.
Ms. Waller. Your question goes to what was the cause?
Senator Brownback. Yes, what happened there?
Ms. Waller. Well, I still think--I think women's economic
independence was an important factor, a change in social norms
about the expectations regarding sex outside of marriage,
cohabitation outside of marriage, divorce itself, a changing
expectation of what marriage means to couples--that is, whether
it's about economic dependence, which I think it had been for
quite a long time, to an expectation that there should be
something for both individuals, a kind of a compatibility,
relationship satisfaction. The standards are higher.
In some communities, particularly in low-income African-
American communities, I think the lack of what would be called
``marriageable men,'' those men who have jobs or have good
economic prospects, was another factor.
Senator Brownback. Are there policy issues we could do now
to take this number down from the nearly 60 percent level, Mr.
Fagan, that we could see that number go down as precipitously
as we saw it go up?
Mr. Fagan. Well, if you define policy in its broadest
sense, the way I would, but a sense that I don't think
government normally defines it, which is the strategy one
takes, even the cultural strategy, the fundamental ideas--
normally when we talk about policy we're talking about
individual programs packaged together to deliver goods.
And actually if you look at the evaluation research on
this, it is a sad and sorry state. Evaluation research on how
good government is at doing these things is not good.
I was Deputy Assistant Director at ASPE, Planning and
Evaluation, and I remember getting a cross section of the staff
together when I first went there to look over precisely in this
social-policy area. And we got together once a week for about 2
months. At the end of 2 months, I did--I broke a rule
deliberately. I said to the staff, ``Look, you know I'm a
conservative Republican, and I suspect most of you are good
liberal Democrat bureaucrats. And the only reason I bring that
up is, I may be biased. Tell me what's working.'' Zero. The
staff could not find--and ASPE probably is the biggest
repository of evaluation data.
Now, there are some thing where--I didn't go in looking for
that. I come out of a background as a clinical psychologist,
working in programs, knowing there are certain things that
work. But when you get to the macro level of Federal and state
government, it is a very sorry state in government's capacity
in policy to effect changes behaviorally here--that what I
think is probably going to be much more effective is a change
in the culture itself. Dr. Nock did refer to that the 1950 were
very--were probably, you know, a halcyon era, where things are
very good.
But there was, before, a great breakdown in marriage, in
the 1800s. And then it came right back up again. We've seen
this. And if you look further back over history, there are
things in the culture, totally outside government, where
leaders led, not through programs, but through ideas. The ideas
that take hold are much more powerful than any government
program, in my estimation.
So that's why I suggest that actually the biggest program
is a debate here in the Senate, to flesh out and change the
ideas. Whatever ideas are controlling us, are dominant, are
clearly not working for the best for our children. We bought
into, we're locked into ways. We maybe--programs may tinker
around the edges. It's not a strategic sea change in the way
we're approaching. And that, I think, is where, I would
suggest, Mr. Campbell is touching on some of these deeper
things. But that is very much in the culture. And the role of
the Senate, I think, would be to head toward those things which
would provoke a much wider debate by raising these issues,
these deeper issues.
When I put the--if I put the research in terms of structure
and correlations, as the chart book that I have as the extended
testimony, I get resistance from people who are out in the
field working, good social workers who are probably, at the
core, liberal on policy, using the political terms, than I am.
But if you put it in the deeper terms of belonging and
rejection, their attitude toward the data totally change; the
capacity to talk about these deeper things is very, very
different because you're getting to more universals.
People know that rejection never helps anybody. There's
nobody who has been improved or strengthened by being rejected.
We know it in the workplace. It makes us more anxious, makes us
less productive. We know what it's like at home. We know what
it's like when it happens between friends. All of these things
weaken us, weaken us socially. What we do grow in strength by
is when we're together.
So to come back to your question, What can people begin to
do to be more aware of how they drive wedges between themselves
and increase the probability of rejecting each other? What are
the ways you've got to build belonging to each other within
marriage and outside of marriage? There are lots of things in
the data. I think the data and the research is very
provocative. Clearly, what I'm saying is not something that
everybody would agree with. But that itself, I think, is reason
for engagement in debate, because we do have to change the
ideas that are leading us to have 60 percent of our children
reaching age 18 without ``mom and dad.'' And behind every one
of those is that rejection.
Senator Brownback. You know, it's--I mean, it seems to me
that that's a key reason and a thing that we've got to start
talking about in here. And you raised that we need to have a
debate in the Senate. I think we clearly need to have a big
discussion on this as a nation. And the data's here, it's in
every family. My--you know, you see it everywhere.
Mr. Fagan. It's in every family, yes.
Senator Brownback. And, you know, the closer you are--and
I'm close to a number of people that have had this sort of
alienation. It is so tough. And yet then we pretty quickly
break it out into partisan categories, ``OK, I'm going to win
on this one, and you're going to lose on that one,'' and then
we're back in the soup here of what we know best how to do,
which is fight with each other, but where we generally get the
least amount of results. But if you could back up and just say,
``You know, wait a minute, none of us like where this situation
is today. This just isn't good. It isn't good for society, it's
not good for America, it's not good for the world, it's not
good for kids, it's not good for anybody,'' OK, what--how do we
unravel the fight position that everybody gets in, and how do
we get to a more basic stance of--I mean, we've got a big
problem here. How would you start to really engage that?
Mr. Campbell, I'm very taken by your thoughts. I think
they're accurate. I also see them in my state. We had a survey
a couple of years ago in the New York Times. They were
surveying high school students about suicide. And half of the
kids in high school that they had surveyed either knew somebody
close that had committed suicide, or they themselves had
thought of committing suicide. And I thought, well, that's--
that might be New York's survey, but it isn't Kansas. So I
started doing a bunch of high school meetings, and met with
senior classes in different places across the state. The same
number. It's about half.
And I was just--I was stunned at it, at first, and then you
just ask the students just a little bit, ``Well, why? Why are
you even thinking about suicide? I mean, you live in the
greatest nation on the face of the Earth, you've got
opportunities, you've got your life ahead of you.'' And almost
all of them would come down to some real alienating thing
inside of them, you know, ``I broke up with this person. I
don't know where my Dad is. I this, I that,'' and it was just--
it was a real deep interior spiritual alienation that was there
within them. And they'd cry. They'd cry right there in front of
me.
The principal of the high school would be astounded that
this is going on in his own school, or her school, and she
didn't even know about it, like it was--it was like this thing
that was so obvious, but nobody would even dare touch it,
because, ``How do I deal with this?'' Just they--they didn't
know how.
And so I'd get--a lot of times, the school administration,
afterward, would be apologizing to me, and say, ``Well, I don't
know if these kids really know what they're talking about. I'm
not sure about this or that.'' And when you really look at it,
it was enormous, and a huge impact.
I hope these hearings can maybe start us on some sort of
new level of discussion about this. Actually, I think the
debate we're engaged in on the institution of marriage across
the country in the issue of same-sex unions is, in a way, going
to probably stimulate the debate here that we've not seen
stimulated for 40 years. But this has been building, it's a
trend, and now we've got an enormous issue in front of us. And
I think you're going to see people start to talk a lot more
about that central alienation that we've had grown between the
marital union that's happened.
Mr. Campbell. What's interesting about suicide is that if
you take the 12 years of the Vietnam War, you had 54,000
deaths. But if you take a 12-year comparable period, the number
of suicides in the United States is around 360,000.
Senator Brownback. In just this--what, this last 12-year--
or the most recent 12-year cohort?
Mr. Campbell. Just take--I did this about 4 or 5 years ago.
But the rhetorical question, you know, Why is it that we are a
country who has so many people committing suicide? And then
when you take homicides, when you put that with it, it's a huge
number. And yet, at the same time, we are blessed with all
these material, you know, circumstances. And so there's
something deeper going on, and it seems like there's an
incongruity between what we are looking for inside and what we
can express outside, and that leads to all kinds of things.
And----
Senator Brownback. Well, we are both physical and spiritual
beings, and we're much better at addressing the physical than
we are the spiritual being, and that's always been a difficult
debate in this country.
Mr. Campbell. Could I make one more point?
Senator Brownback. Yes, please.
Mr. Campbell. Very quick? The reason why I got--when I was
involved with the United States Information Agency doing public
diplomacy, the reason why I got involved in the homeless was
because people overseas were concerned--that we brought here--
wanted to see the homeless. And they had never been here
before. And that struck me as very important, because, in
talking with them, I found out that what was happening was that
we were transmitting pictures of the homeless, and then gangs
and violence, overseas, that we were very quietly presenting to
the world a different image of this country than they had ever
seen before. And when you begin to talk about terrorism and the
conflicts that we currently have, part of what this is all
about is that we are projecting something that isn't very
pretty to the world, and they see it on a day-to-day basis.
And so what we're talking about here has national-security
implications.
Senator Brownback. Oh, it does. As I travel around the
world, you get a number of people commenting on the U.S.
culture, as much as any of it.
Thank you very much. You remind me of a gentlemen I met in
Marysville, Kansas, who was 107 years old. And I got to meet
and talk with him. He had served in World War I. His son was
there, and took me in. And his son was not a spring chick,
either. When your dad's 107, you're not going to be young
either. But I asked him, I said, ``What's the biggest thing
you've seen change in our country in the years you've been
here?'' And he didn't have to think at all. He just said, ``You
know, the thing I've seen change is that when I was younger we
had a lot less, but we were a lot happier.'' That was his
conclusion of the years that he had observed. And I thought,
there's something wrong with that picture if that's the case.
And we really do need to have a good debate, and we need a
good language about it. And, frankly, I don't think it's much
of a debate, more than it is, How do we find common ground to
move on and address this?
You've all been very helpful. I appreciate that. I am
hopeful we can talk about these issues much more in much
greater depth, and address them.
Thank you very much for coming. The hearing's adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:05 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
Testimony of the Children's Defense Fund on the Impact on Children of
Proposed Federal Marriage Initiatives
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) appreciates the opportunity to
submit this testimony on the issue of proposed Federal marriage
promotion initiatives.
CDF is a leading private, non-profit organization with a more than
30 year history of advocating for children, particularly poor and
minority children and those with disabilities. The mission of CDF is to
Leave No Child Behind and to ensure that every child has a Healthy
Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in
life as well as successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring
families and communities. Under the leadership of Marian Wright
Edelman, CDF's President and Founder, the organization has been a
strong and effective voice for those who cannot lobby or speak for
themselves. Issues of family structure are of vital interest to CDF,
given the importance of family in the lives of children and the
influence of parents on children's well-being. As such, we feel it is
critical to thoroughly examine the advisability and likely effects of
President Bush's proposals to invest Federal resources in marriage
promotion.
Background on the Administration's Marriage Promotion Proposal
In the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996,
promoting marriage was defined as one of the major purposes of welfare
reform. However, because states were not required to spend Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds on marriage programs, they
were granted significant flexibility in meeting this goal. Throughout
the TANF reauthorization debates of 2002-2004, the Bush Administration
has been much more insistent in advocating for marriage promotion to
play a more central role in welfare programs. Reauthorization bills
recently passed by the House of Representatives and awaiting action on
the Senate floor each propose to spend $1.6 billion over five years to
promote marriage, including matching funds that states must provide out
of already-stretched budgets. Allowable uses of marriage promotion
funds include activities such as research, demonstration projects, pro-
marriage public advertising campaigns, programs in marriage education
and divorce reduction, and marriage mentoring. Both the House and
Senate bills also mandate that in order to participate in TANF, states
must have a marriage promotion program and must set ``specific,
numerical, and measurable performance objectives'' for meeting program
goals. At the same time as this money was being dedicated toward
promoting marriage, efforts to include or increase funding in TANF
bills for basic income support programs with proven effectiveness in
helping families (such as transitional jobs, tribal welfare programs,
and childcare) have been opposed or defeated by the Administration and
some Members of Congress on the grounds that these investments are not
necessary and that there are not enough funds available.
In addition to the proposal to redirect TANF funds for marriage
promotion activities, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
has already begun to spend significant resources on marriage promotion
by redirecting monies from programs whose purposes are only
tangentially related to issues concerning marriage. Roughly $100
million in grants and contracts is being awarded for this purpose using
funds appropriated for the Child Support Enforcement Program, the
Refugee Resettlement Program, Child Welfare Programs, and the (Native
American) Social and Economic Development Strategies Program, among
others. Shifting funds from proven strategies and critical work
supports such as child care into marriage activities that do not have
the same likelihood of meeting the needs of the TANF population is of
enormous concern to CDF.
Social Science Research on the Effects of Marriage
The base of social science research on marriage has grown
dramatically in recent years. A consensus has emerged that healthy
marriage appears to be related to some positive outcomes for both
children and adults. A significant body of research demonstrates that
children living with their married biological or adoptive parents are
less likely to experience poverty, food or housing insecurity,
behavioral or emotional problems, or academic difficulties when
compared to children living with single or cohabiting parents.\1\ In
one study, the odds of experiencing psychological problems were 39
percent greater among sixteen-year-olds whose parents had divorced
compared to those whose parents had stayed together.\2\ Adults in
satisfying marriages are less likely to be depressed or dissatisfied
with their lives than those who are unmarried,\3\ and more likely to
enjoy longer, healthier lives.\4\
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\1\ For a brief review of this literature, see Parke, M. (2003).
Are Married Parents Really Better for Children?, Couples and Marriage
Series, Brief No. 3. Washington, DC: Center For Law and Social Policy.
Available at www.clasp.org.
\2\ Chase-Lansdale, P. L., Cherlin, A. J., & Kiernan, K. E. (1995).
The long-term effects of parental divorce on the mental health of young
adults: A developmental perspective. Child Development, 66, 1614-1634.
\3\ Myers, D. G. (1999). Close Relationships and Quality of Life.
In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-being: The
Foundation of Hedonic Psychology. New York: Russell-Sage Foundation.
\4\ Waite, L. J., & Gallagher, M. (2000). The Case for Marriage.
NY: Doubleday.
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Recent research also suggests, however, that many of the positive
outcomes that are related to marriage may not be due to marriage
itself. Instead, these outcomes may be due to differences in the
characteristics of people who marry versus those who do not.\5\ For
example, studies have shown that upbeat, happy people are more likely
to get married than people with an unhappy disposition.\6\ Another
recent study found that cohabiting parents are less likely to work, are
less well-educated, and are younger than married parents.\7\ The
characteristics of those who tend to marry, including being happy,
employed, and better educated, have been shown to lead to better
outcomes for families.\8\ Promoting marriage among those who would not
otherwise have married will not magically imbue them with the personal
characteristics responsible for many of the apparent benefits of
marriage.
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\5\ Same as footnote 1.
\6\ Same as footnote 3.
\7\ Acs, G. & Nelson, S. (2004). Should We Get Married in the
Morning? A profile of Cohabiting Couples with Children, Assessing the
New Federalism, An Urban Institute Program to Assess Changing Social
Policies, Discussion Papers. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute. See
also Manning, W., & Brown, S. (2003). Children's Economic Well-Being in
Cohabiting Parent Families: An Update and Extension. Bowling Green, OH:
Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State
University.
\8\ Ricciuti, H. N. (2004). Single Parenthood, Achievement, and
Problem Behavior in White, Black, and Hispanic Children. The Journal of
Educational Research, 97, 196-206.
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Concerns about the Administration's Proposal
Although marriage can entail some benefits for families and their
children, promoting marriage through TANF involves a very complex set
of issues and requires a deep understanding of the fundamental
realities of the lives of Americans living in poverty. Furthermore, in
the course of implementing marriage promotion programs, the
Administration must ensure that TANF recipients and their children are
not inadvertently harmed, either via these programs themselves (for
example, by ignoring, precipitating or prolonging domestic violence) or
through a diversion of funds away from much-needed social services and
safety net programs. If, as stated, the goal of Federal marriage
promotion programs is to improve child well-being, than child well-
being must be front and center in the development and implementation of
these programs and policies. Any legitimate marriage promotion proposal
must address key concerns including whether marriage can be considered
a ``cure'' for poverty, the need for economic supports and education/
training among families living in poverty, the fact that current
marriage programs are not well evaluated, and issues of domestic
violence.
1. Is marriage a ``cure'' for poverty?
On its own, marriage is unlikely to pull substantial numbers of
people out of poverty. In fact, research suggests that marriage has
limited utility in this regard.
One in four American children live with an unmarried parent (27
percent in March 2002)-a figure that has more than doubled since the
early 1970s. The majority of these children live with their mothers; of
all children in the United States, 23 percent live with their mother
only. Single families are disproportionately poor. Forty percent of
female-headed families lived in poverty in 2002 and nearly two-thirds
of all poor children live with a single head of household.\9\
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\9\ CDF calculations based on Census Bureau data.
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Some conclude from statistics such as these that the solution to
child poverty is to encourage more marriage, but marriage would not
lift the majority of these children from poverty. Cause and effect are
often unclear in analyzing marriage and poverty; parents who stay
together generally start out better off financially and emotionally
than parents who split up. A study by the Census Bureau showed that,
even before the father departs, child poverty rates are 75 percent
higher in families that later break up than in those where the marriage
remains intact.\10\ Taking these dynamics into account, Donald
Hernandez, former chief of the Census Bureau's marriage and family
branch concluded that overall child poverty rates for both Blacks and
Whites would still be two-thirds of what they are now, even if all
fathers who do not live with their children and children's mothers were
reunited with them.\11\ Marriage, while economically beneficial, would
not end the majority of child poverty.
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\10\ U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1991). ``Family Disruption and
Economic Hardship: The Short-run Picture for Children'', Table C,
Series P-70, No. 23, Current Population Reports. Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office. Available at www.census.gov.
\11\ Hernandez, D. J. (1993). America's Children. New York: Russell
Sage Foundation.
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Nor is it the case that unmarried women will inevitably be poor.
Sweden and Denmark have much higher rates of out of wedlock births, but
much lower rates of child poverty and hunger as compared to the United
States.\12\ These countries and many others spend a greater proportion
of their resources providing a safety net for families with children
than does the U.S. Rather than focusing on marriage as a cure-all for
child poverty, these countries are ensuring that their children do not
become poor in the first place.
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\12\ Coontz, S., & Folbre, N. (2002). Marriage, poverty, and public
policy. Poverty Research News, 6, 9-11.
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2. Boosting the economic stability of families living in poverty should
be primary
a. Policy changes that boost the economic prospects of low-income
families should come before marriage promotion.
Prior to spending large sums of money on marriage promotion
programs, the Bush Administration should invest in programs that
increase the economic and educational status of Americans living in
poverty. The promotion of marriage should not and must not be used as a
substitute for such programs.\13\ Unmarried couples living in poverty
face many barriers and obstacles including sporadic or no employment,
lack of affordable housing, lack of access to childcare, transportation
problems, difficulty in purchasing food and household necessities, and
many other stressors. Poor married couples often face similar
obstacles, illustrating that even with investment in marriage
promotion, families will continue to need an economic safety net.
Helping single parents succeed requires policies aimed at boosting
their educational and economic prospects. Once economic stability has
been achieved, marriage may become a more attractive option.
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\13\ See also Ooms, 2004, and Barbara Whitehead's testimony before
the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on
Healthy Marriage: What Is It and Why Should We Promote It?, held on
April 28, 2004.
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Data from the ``Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study
(FFCWB)'' \14\ highlights the fact that for unmarried mothers living in
poverty, economic stability is seen as a prerequisite to marriage.
FFCWB is the first national study of unmarried parents, their
relationships and the well-being of their children. 3,712 of the
children in the study were born to unmarried parents. Three quarters of
the unmarried mothers in the study had incomes below 200 percent of
poverty. The results of this study showed that the majority of unwed
parents were strongly connected to each other at the time of their
child's birth and that the majority expressed positive attitudes about
and high hopes for marriage. Nonetheless, few of these couples had
married one year later. More intense follow-up questions with a subset
of this sample revealed that these couples considered marriage viable
only after they had achieved economic stability. Employment was highly
prized as was economic security and the accumulation of some assets.
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\14\ Parke, M. (2004). Who Are ``Fragile Families'' and What Do We
Know About Them?, Couples and Marriage Series, Brief No.4. Washington,
DC: Center For Law and Social Policy. Available at www.clasp.org.
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Several other studies are consistent with the conclusion that the
lack of economic stability is an impediment to marriage. Researchers
have found that the inability of poorly educated, low-skilled men to
economically support their families is a major influence on the fact
that they often do not marry the mothers of their children.\15\ One
study of the marriage market found that in the 1980s, at age 25, there
were three black women for every black man with adequate earnings.\16\
According to the researchers who conducted the FFCWB study \17\ the
poor want to marry but like their wealthier peers, they want to marry
well; otherwise they fear that their relationships will not last.
Indeed, they have some basis for this fear: a large body of empirical
research shows that education and employment are positively associated
with marriage and negatively associated with divorce.\18\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ Testimony of Theodora Ooms before the Senate Committee on
Finance, Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy hearing on
The Benefits of a Healthy Marriage, held on May 5, 2004.
\16\ Lichter, D. T., McLaughlin, D., LeClere, F., Kephart, G., &
Landry, D. (1992). Race and the Retreat From Marriage: A Shortage of
Marriageable Men?''American Sociological Review, 57, 781-799.
\17\ Testimony of Kathryn Edin before the Senate Committee on
Finance, Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy hearing on
The Benefits of a Healthy Marriage, held on May 5, 2004.
\18\ Garfinkel, I., & McLanahan, S. (2003). ``Strengthening Fragile
Families'', in One Percent for the Kids, Isabel Sawhill (Ed.).
Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is also some direct evidence that the relationships of
unmarried low-income parents can be strengthened if their incomes are
increased. One source of such evidence is an evaluation of the
Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP).\19\ MFIP employed a
strategy that combined financial incentives to work (in the form of
greater earned income disregards) with mandated participation in work-
focused activities for TANF recipients. As a result of higher
employment combined with these wage supplements, MFIP participants
experienced increased income which was shown to have a stabilizing
effect on marriage and to decrease domestic violence. Married parents
participating in MFIP were 38 percent more likely to remain together
after three years than those in a welfare program that lacked these
additional economic supports and incentives. A follow-up study found
that the impact remained strong even after seven years.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ Miller, C., Knox, V., Gennetian, L., Dodoo, M., Hunter, J. A.
& Redcross, C. (2002). Reforming Welfare and Rewarding Work: Final
Report on the Minnesota Family Investment Program. New York: Manpower
Demonstration Research Corporation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clearly, for those living in poverty, economic stability is a
priority and a pressing need that weighs heavily in their family
choices. Unfortunately, many low-income Americans lack sufficient
resources and skills to lift themselves and their families out of
poverty. Encouraging women in this position to marry as a way out of
poverty leaves them extremely vulnerable and without control over their
lives and the lives of their children. For example, a mother who
marries the father of her child may find herself in a violent
relationship that she cannot ``afford'' to leave for fear that her low
skill level and inability to get a job will leave her and her children
hungry and living on the streets. Placing these children in a violent
home is often more detrimental than the poverty which the mother sought
to escape in the first place. Another mother may marry the father of
her child and go on to have two additional children with her husband,
only to be left by him a few years later. If this mother has been
caring for her children while her husband developed a resume and job
skills, she will be left with more children and further limited
opportunity for financial stability. Policies that support single
mothers in their own skill development and economic independence
present an opportunity to escape poverty permanently. In order to best
help TANF recipients, the Administration should support a package of
programs aimed at increasing the economic prospects of these families
and their children. Specifically, when TANF is reauthorized, States
should also be allowed to count education and job training as ``work''
for longer periods of time in their welfare programs. Getting an
education is a prerequisite for obtaining a job that pays a living
wage. In addition, substantially more money should be provided to pay
for childcare for the poor. It is a fact that parents cannot work if
their children are not cared for, so child care is the most basic
support needed to allow a family to develop economic independence.
States should also ``pass through'' to families a greater proportion of
the child support money that is paid on their behalf. There are
numerous other policy and legislative changes that would help lift poor
children out of poverty. These include raising the minimum wage,
extending tax cuts that benefit low-income families and increasing the
number of families that can obtain housing vouchers. Only after changes
like these have been made should the Administration spend large sums of
money promoting marriage.
b. Removing marriage penalties from social service programs can
simultaneously
encourage marriage and provide income supports for the working
poor
While investing limited Federal resources in unproven marriage
promotion schemes is ill advised, the Federal Government should
certainly not create barriers to healthy marriages. As such, the
Administration should pursue anti-poverty strategies that remove
marriage penalties from TANF and other programs targeted at the poor.
If encouraging marriage is the goal, building disincentives to marriage
into TANF and income support programs is counterproductive. Many states
have begun this process by changing their welfare program rules in
various ways including by removing restrictions on two-parent family
eligibility, eliminating marriage penalties in computing welfare
benefits, or suspending child support arrearage collections if non-
custodial and custodial parents marry. An additional example of a
program that has benefited from marriage penalty relief is the Earned
Income Tax Credit (EITC) program, which is widely cited as one of the
most successful anti-poverty tools available. In the EITC, marriage
penalties occurred when two people with earnings married and their
combined, higher income placed them at a point in the EITC ``phase-out
range'' at which they received a smaller EITC (or no EITC at all) than
one or both of them would have received if still single. A reprieve for
low-income families that phased out some of the EITC marriage penalty
in the 2001 tax package was nearly eliminated in the 2004 tax debate in
the House of Representatives, but was retained at the last minute. The
Bush Administration should make clear its support for maintaining and
expanding this version of marriage penalty relief. This represents a
positive step in the direction of supporting marriage while
simultaneously providing income supports to the working poor.
3. Further marriage promotion programs should not be funded until
current programs are evaluated
There is little evidence currently available that can address the
question of whether marriage promotion programs are likely to be
successful among those living in poverty. One reason for this is that
most prior relationship and marriage skills programs have targeted
white middle and upper-class couples who are engaged or already
married. Almost nothing is known about how these programs need to be
modified if they are to be used with poor/minority populations and with
couples who may not exhibit high levels of relationship commitment.
Couples living in poverty are likely to experience unique relationship
stressors arising from their economic circumstances that make them
dissimilar to the couples that have participated in marriage promotion
programs to date.
A second reason why it is unclear whether marriage promotion
programs are likely to be successful is that, in general, few such
programs have been rigorously evaluated. This point is frequently made
by experts in this field, including a majority of the scientific
witnesses at a hearing on marriage before the Senate Finance Committee
in May, 2004.\20\ Recognizing a need for increased evaluation of
marriage programs, the Administration recently awarded several multi-
million dollar contracts to prominent research organizations (e.g.,
MDRC and Mathematica Policy Research) to conduct large marriage
promotion test projects which would include rigorous scientific
evaluations. The results of these studies will not be known for some
time.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\20\ Testimony of Scott Stanley, Theodora Oorns, and Ron Haskins
before the Senate Committee on Finance, Subcommittee on Social Security
and Family Policy hearing on The Benefits of a Healthy Marriage, held
on May 5, 2004.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Given that it is currently unclear whether marriage promotion
programs targeted at low income individuals will be successful, the
best course for the Administration to take would be to proceed slowly
and cautiously. Officials should allow trial programs that have already
been funded to proceed, these programs should be rigorously evaluated,
and only then should decisions be made concerning allocations of
additional funding for marriage promotion. It is standard practice that
major initiatives begin with pilot studies prior to full-scale project
implementation and the commitment of millions of dollars. New marriage
initiatives should not be funded before the results of projects that
are already underway are known.
The Administration must also ensure that any marriage programs it
does fund in the future are empirically-based, continually refined, and
scientifically evaluated. There are many marriage promotion and pre-
marital pregnancy prevention programs operating in the United States at
the moment that do not meet these criteria.\21\ Scientifically-based
programs that can be shown to produce results are the only marriage
promotion activities that are worthy of federal support.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ For some examples, see U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services. (2002). Strengthening Healthy Marriages: A Compendium of
Approaches. Washington, D.C. Available at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/
programs/region2/index.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Domestic violence must be addressed in marriage promotion programs
Domestic violence is a tragic reality for many women on TANF and
marriage promotion programs must be particularly sensitive and
responsive to this issue.
Although such violence can be a problem for all American women,
those living in poverty or on welfare experience dramatically high
levels of abuse. In the general population, about 22 percent of women
experience domestic violence at some point in their adult lives, while
most studies estimate that the lifetime prevalence of violence among
welfare recipients is in the range of 50 percent-60 percent.\22\
Estimates of the percentage of TANF recipients experiencing recent
violence consistently range from 15 percent-25 percent.\23\ It is also
quite common for children in households where domestic violence takes
place to witness this violence or to be victimized themselves. A great
deal of research now documents that exposure to domestic violence has
serious negative effects on child development and can result in
attachment problems, cognitive and emotional deficits, anti-social
behavior and posttraumatic stress disorder, among other problems.\24\
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\22\ Lawrence, S. (2002). Domestic Violence and Welfare Policy:
Research Findings That Can Inform Policies on Marriage and Child Well-
Being. New York, NY: National Center for Children in Poverty.
\23\ Raphael, J., & Tolman, R. M. (1997). Trapped by Poverty,
Trapped by Abuse: New Evidence Documenting the Relationship Between
Domestic Violence and Welfare. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan
Research Center on Poverty, Risk, and Mental Health.
\24\ Same as footnote 15.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately, research documents that the majority of TANF
recipients who experience domestic violence are unlikely to report this
fact to welfare caseworkers. Many states do not track reports of
domestic violence but where data does exist, the rates are between 5
percent and 10 percent of the caseload, which suggests significant
under-reporting. This is consistent with evidence that in general,
domestic violence advocates are four or five times more likely than
welfare caseworkers to obtain reports of domestic violence from
women.\25\
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\25\ NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. (2002). Surviving
Violence and Poverty: A Focus on the Link Between Domestic and Sexual
Violence, Women's Poverty and Welfare. Washington, D.C.: NOW Legal
Defense. Available at http://www.legalmomentum.org/issues/wellsurvi
ving.pdf.
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With such a large percentage of the welfare caseload experiencing
domestic violence, any marriage promotion programs that are targeted to
women on welfare must pay serious and comprehensive attention to this
issue. The Administration has made some assurances that domestic
violence issues will be taken into consideration when these programs
are implemented,\26\ however their proposals to date have failed to
include comprehensive and detailed information about violence
prevention efforts and safeguards. While, the Senate TANF bill contains
some requirements that domestic violence experts be consulted in
developing marriage promotion programs, these protections are
conspicuously absent in the House bill. The Administration must do more
to ensure that domestic violence is not treated as a sidebar in the
discussion of marriage promotion. Fully half of the adult women on the
TANF rolls are likely to be affected by domestic violence at some
point, as are their children.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\26\ Testimony of Wade Horn before the Senate Committee on Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions, Subcommittee on Children and Families
hearing on Healthy Marriage: What Is It and Why Should We Promote It?,
held on April 28, 2004.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is likely that the majority of these women will not inform
caseworkers of this fact, even as they turn to welfare as a crucial
source of income while they seek to escape their abusers.
Aggressively promoting marriage in this population of women can
have dangerous consequences. In order to minimize this risk, experts in
domestic violence must be integrated into every facet of marriage
promotion program development and implementation. At a minimum,
caseworkers must be extensively trained to evaluate women for domestic
violence and in no case where a woman has suffered abuse should she be
encouraged to remain with or marry her abuser. An even better solution
is to hire domestic violence experts to discuss this sensitive issue
with TANF clients and to provide counseling and other forms of
assistance if needed. If the goal of these funds is truly to promote
only healthy marriages, the Administration's marriage promotion
proposal must be amended such that domestic abuse counseling is an
allowable use of marriage promotion funds.
Members of the Administration have also said that participation in
marriage promotion programs will be completely voluntary.\27\ However,
some marriage programs may subtly coerce women to marry, whether or not
they are portrayed as voluntary. For example, nine states and one
tribal agency offer welfare recipients financial incentives or
``bonuses'' to marry.\28\ For women living in poverty who are in
desperate need of income, this could be very tempting and may push them
toward marrying an abusive partner. Incentives for marriage such as
these must not be allowed as a component of marriage promotion programs
because they may inadvertently push financially vulnerable women into
making poor life choices.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\27\ Same as footnote 18.
\28\ Ooms, T., Bouchet, S. & Parke, P. (2004). Beyond Marriage
Licenses: Efforts in States to Strengthen Marriage and Two-Parent
Families. Washington, D.C.: Center for Law and Social Policy. Available
at www.clasp.org.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion
The Administration asserts that the over-arching purpose of
marriage promotion programs is to improve the well-being of American
children who are living in poverty. Given that it is clear that
marriage promotion is not the most consistent and proven direct path to
reach this goal, the Administration should ensure adequate investments
have been made to meet the employment, child care and education needs
of single parents before investing scarce Federal resources in this
unproven method. As we have described, if marriage promotion programs
are to succeed at improving child well-being, they must be designed
very carefully and must address a series of important issues. Of
particular importance, in order to avoid unintentionally harming women
and their children, marriage programs must be designed to address the
high levels of domestic violence experienced by women on welfare and
their children. Domestic violence experts must be integrated into all
levels of program planning and implementation, they should be hired to
counsel women who have experienced abuse, and domestic violence
counseling must be an allowable use of marriage education funds. In
addition, all marriage programs must be voluntary and TANF recipients
must not be subtly coerced into marriage via financial ``bonuses'' if
they marry.
As we have described, marriage programs targeted at individuals
living in poverty are rare and those that do exist have not been
evaluated. The Administration should allow currently funded trial
programs in marriage promotion to be assessed prior to funding new
programs in this area. All programs, regardless of when they are
funded, should be empirically (rather than ideologically) based,
scientifically evaluated and continually updated and revised as new
information becomes available.
Given the problems surrounding domestic violence and program
evaluation as well as the unmet need for basic services among those on
welfare, spending large sums of money on marriage promotion programs
does not represent a wise use of funds. Rather, the Administration
should invest in programs that will provide TANF recipients with the
skills and resources they need to lift their families out of poverty.
These families need education, training, child care, substance abuse
treatment, a greater proportion of the child support money that is paid
on behalf of their children, help with transportation, and other forms
of assistance to support them in their efforts to find work and earn
enough to support their families. They also need relief from ``marriage
penalties'' that act as disincentives to marry. In the fight against
poverty, marriage promotion programs should be seen as secondary to
programs that more directly help families escape poverty.
Attachment
Prepared Statement of William J. Murray, Chairman,
Religious Freedom Coalition
Civil unions: A boon for gays or a bane for the American culture?
Date published: 1/18/2004
ON PAPER and without forethought as to human nature, civil unions
for gays sound harmless. However, civil unions cannot be reserved for
``same-sex'' couples, and that is the real danger.
The California and Vermont civil-union laws, because they are
contractual laws, could not pass legal standards unless they were
offered to any two people. Many heterosexual couples, when they see
that civil unions offer financial advantages while being very easy to
dissolve, will choose this alternative to marriage.
Thus, civil unions will promote cohabitation not only among
homosexuals and lesbians but among heterosexuals as well. The civil
unions grant privilege without responsibility. The group most likely to
utilize civil unions is not same-sex couples but rather the elderly.
About one million elderly adults in America currently cohabit--
about half a million couples. They do not marry because of inheritance,
tax, and other, mostly financial, issues. Civil unions will legitimize
these relationships in the eyes of the states and allow medical and
social benefits they do not now have.
For example, one partner may have superior medical-insurance
benefits because of having worked for the Federal Government or for a
large corporation. His or her partner would become eligible for those
same benefits under the terms of a civil union.
Civil unions will quickly become popular with young couples as
well. A man will be able to share his insurance benefits with his live-
in partner but can ask her to leave at any time because they are ``not
really'' married.
Within a few decades civil unions could overtake marriages as the
preferred arrangement of those who want a live-in relationship. Sound
impossible? Right now only 60 percent of marriages are conducted in the
church and sanctified. The rest are conducted by government officials
such as judges. These marriages are secular in nature and have nothing
to do with the biblical base of marriage vows. Why would these 40
percent bother to marry at all if they can have the same ``privileges''
of marriage in a civil union, without the potential difficulties of
divorce? This group will also move toward the civil union.
The fact is that the vast majority of homosexuals will not want to
use civil unions. In the Dec. 1 issue of The Weekly Standard, Maggie
Gallagher rightly points out that General Motors, with more than
342,000 employees, has only 166 people who have applied for health
insurance for a same-sex partner. What will that figure be if the plan
is opened to heterosexual couples that are simply shacked up together
in civil unions? These figures should also give us pause in
understanding how few homosexuals there really are compared to the
power of their voices in Washington.
The problem with civil unions does not lie just in giving same-sex
``couples'' the privileges of marriage, but also in establishing a
second class of marriage using another name that will bestow benefits
to couples who want to shack up without ever really getting married.
The homosexual aspect of civil unions that is perhaps most
dangerous lies within the confines of our public school system and what
will be taught in sex-education classes. If same-sex civil unions are
legal, will the educational system, which is basically run by the
radical National Education Association, force ``how-to'' homosexual
education on the youth of the nation? The answer is of course, the NEA
will do just that. Already the NEA is working to promote ``safe''
homosexual-sex classes in the schools. Civil-union laws will empower
that organization to push for more illustrative classes.
Lastly, even though civil unions go by a different name than
marriage, they do give an important legal stamp of approval to
homosexuality, which is why the majority of homosexuals are pushing
this issue, even though they wouldn't actually want to be involved in a
civil union. Once same-sex unions are sanctioned by law, it becomes
very difficult to voice any disapproval of homosexual behavior in the
schools or the workplace.
Will a boy who refuses to date another boy be singled out for
psychological treatment by school authorities because he is
``homophobic''? Will a teacher who voices any disapproval of homosexual
behavior be more likely to face lawsuits and loss of employment? Will
refusing to date someone of the same sex prove prejudice and result in
workplace discipline? we have already seen cases of Federal employees
being threatened and punished for refusing to attend pro-homosexual
seminars.
Congressional leaders are beating a drum that says only that the
word ``marriage'' is important and that as long as that word is
protected they have won the battle. This is far from true. Creating a
second class of marriage by another name is a danger to our society.
______
Prepared Statement of Irene Weiser, Executive Director,
Stop Family Violence
Welfare Reform and Marriage Initiatives
Marriage Diaries
Pending legislation that would reauthorize the Temporary Assistance
to Needy Families (TANF) Program includes a proposal by President Bush
to spend $1.5 billion on government marriage promotion programs. This
proposal is a waste of taxpayer money that will increase the risk of
domestic violence, fail to stop the rise in poverty, and do nothing for
the institution of marriage. Women are 40 percent more likely to be
poor than men. And women on welfare need education, job training and
child care more than ever to be able to compete in the marketplace. To
squander $1.5 billion on unproven programs urging marriage upon poor
women, particularly in this economy, is fiscally foolish and morally
reprehensible.
Kansas--``I was married to a verbally abusive man [who] was
also an alcoholic, which explains a lot of what happened . . .
verbal abuse does not show physical signs, but there are
definitely scars that remain far longer. Many women have come
from abusive relationships but did not have the education I
did, these women need opportunities to gain [an] education [in
order] to allow them to better themselves and become self
supportive for their children as well. There must be a way for
women to gain success from within themselves.''
Of particular concern are the increased risks of domestic violence
associated with such a program. The reality is that as many as 60
percent of women welfare recipients are survivors of domestic violence.
These women need economic security so they can escape abuse, not
government pressure to remain with their abusers. The Administration
claims that it would never pressure someone to marry, or remain with,
her abuser. But there are no provisions in the House marriage promotion
proposals to ensure that officials will screen out couples in abusive
relationships. It is therefore vital that if marriage promotion
provisions are ultimately passed, the protections included in the
Senate bill be retained and or strengthened and be included in any
final welfare reauthorization bill. Trying to escape an abusive
relationship can be one of the hardest things for a woman to do,
particularly when a women is financially dependent on her abuser. Women
need to hear about how to leave the relationship, not get lectures on
how to work through typical marital strife or cash incentives that risk
further danger.
Mississippi--``Marriage isn't the answer . . . I thought it
was, then that one vicious man taught me with violence that
marriage wouldn't fix everything. And I'm grateful I got out
before it led to my son's or my [own] death. We were lucky . .
. but there are plenty of women who get trapped thinking that
marriage is the only way to make it and provide for their
families. . .and some of these women pay with their lives to
the husband they trusted.''
Government marriage promotion sends the message that the way out of
poverty for women is dependence on someone else to act as a
breadwinner, rather than economic self-sufficiency. They divert welfare
funds from basic economic supports; coercively intrude on private
decisions; place domestic violence victims at increased risk; waste
public funds on ineffective policies and inappropriately limit state
flexibility.
Oregon--``Receiving state assistance has literally been a form
of survival for my family and me. We would not have made it
without these supplement programs in place.. When I divorced, I
decided it was better to be poor by myself than to be married
to someone who was potentially dangerous to me and my family,
and someone who was not reliable or even trustworthy
financially as well. This is my story; I hope it helps you to
understand that being unmarried with children can ultimately be
very good and empowering for some families.''
These Marriage Diaries have been collected by the organization Stop
Family Violence, and they provide real examples of how critical it is
not to coerce women into marriage as a means to move them out of
poverty, but rather to provide them with education, job training, child
care, domestic violence-related services, and health care--programs
that will help move them out of violent relationships, as well as out
of poverty. Unproven marriage promotion programs divert precious funds
away from what we know works.
Inside, you'll find narratives submitted by women from Arkansas,
Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New
Jersey, Oregon, Texas, and Virginia. These powerful stories (a small
sample of the hundreds received from around the United States) show the
importance of public assistance--including education, training,
counseling, child-care, food stamps and health care--in helping women
escape domestic violence and become self sufficient. For more
information on marriage promotion, as well as diaries from other
states, please contact Irene Weiser at Stop Family Violence at
[email protected] or visit www.stop
familyviolence.org.
Arkansas
I know this is hard to believe. I couldn't believe it either. On
the day of our wedding, my husband-to-be threw me down a flight of
steps, and said; ``Now you know how it's going to be and who's the
boss.'' Up to that moment in our relationship, he had been perfectly
charming. I went through the service and it took six months and many
beatings before I got out of the marriage.
Florida
I am a 34-year old mother of one. I met my abuser at age 15 and
married him at age 17. I felt financially and emotionally trapped in
this marriage--unable to escape the abuse. After 16 years of being with
the abuser, I finally got the courage to get out because of the effect
on my daughter and fear that I would be dead either by his hands or due
to my own through depression
[from] my living conditions. Due to public assistance, I was able
to leave and am attending college full time. I will get my degree next
year and become a teacher. At which time, I plan to teach and continue
my degree in law so that I may be able to help those who were in a
situation similar to my own. The welfare system needs to be available
to women in these situations in order to be able to get out and make a
better life for themselves and their children. I believe education
needs to be pushed, not marriage, and that is my story.
______
``Hello, my name is Suzanne and this is my story. I was married in
1984 to someone that I had known since I was 5 years old. We went to
the same grade school and high school. One month after we were married,
my husband tried to kill me with a razorblade. I was in shock for a
while after that. You see, I did not come from an abusive family and
had never experienced something like this and had never known anyone
that had been abused. I was embarrassed and convinced that it must have
been my fault. I was young and didn't know any better. The abuse didn't
stop and it wasn't what you would call the `normal' pattern of abuse.
My abuser is what they call in domestic violence circles a `cobra'. You
never know when they will strike or for what reason. He actually never
needed a reason--he just hit me.
About 2 yrs after we were married, I had a son. When my son was 3
weeks old, my husband had a screaming fit over his bassinet and that
was it. I picked up my child and left him (for the first time). He went
to a treatment program for alcohol and drugs and stopped drinking and
abusing drugs. But the abuse did not stop. I left him twice in the next
few years but in 1990 decided to try it again for my son. We moved to
another city and the day that we moved, he threw a phone book at me and
broke my nose. But I went anyway. During this time, I went to my church
to seek help, but instead of help, they told my husband that I had told
them about his abusive behavior. As you can imagine, that was not a
good idea. I was beaten for that.
In 1992, he left me with 2 mortgages on 2 houses and one income. I
eventually lost my job due to stress and in 1995, I received a phone
call from my 9-year-old son that he had a brother, who I wasn't the
mother of. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I filed for
divorce and it was final in November of 1995. I also ended up having to
file bankruptcy and went through a foreclosure.
In 1997, I moved back to my hometown and went back to college. At
that time, I started working as a case manager under the Welfare Reform
Act. I helped women who had been in similar situations learn to rely on
themselves instead of the abuser. I helped them get jobs and go back to
work. I helped them regain their self-esteem.
In 2002, I graduated from college with a B.A. in English and am
currently in my second year of law school. My goal is to help women who
have experienced the same things that I have. No one should have to go
through the things that I did alone. Most of the women that I dealt
with in my caseload had little or no education and multiple children,
each from a different father. They never had anyone who could teach
them how to take care of themselves. Most have no family members that
are financially or emotionally able to help them. Offering these women
financial incentives to marry the men in their lives is not the answer
to their problems. Education and jobs are what is going to help them.
Teaching them how to proud of themselves is what is going to help them,
not encouraging them to rely on someone else.
My ultimate goal is to offer my legal services to people who cannot
afford them. My story is not unique. What is unique is my drive to rise
above my past and change my life, for the better. I knew that the only
way I could increase my income and better my life for my son and myself
was to go back to college and get my degree. I truly believe that I
have a moral obligation to help other women overcome their abusive
situations and realize their true potential and become self-sufficient
and successful. But take it from someone who is there right now and
continuing the fight--it is not easy. Our society, to this day, frowns
on single women still and does not encourage women to stand on their
own two feet.
Thank you for letting me share!''
Kansas
In my first marriage I had no access to money to leave. My husband
controlled the finances. He counted my change from the grocery store. I
got three different jobs in two years. He called one and told them I
quit. He beat me up so bad that I was fired from the second one for
missing work. I finally got out with the third one.
My second marriage was abusive as well. I believed in working for a
good relationship. My husband and I attended church regularly. When he
started beating me I thought the minister could help. The minister told
me he was a good guy and I should give him some time to change. I did,
but the abuse continued. I tried to leave him several times. Once I got
away for four months. I was living on my own and started attending a
different church. My husband started attending the new church as well,
even though I had a restraining order against him. The minister there
was impressed with my husband's work ethic and contribution to the
church. He encouraged me to give him another chance. He said he would
provide counseling. In the counseling the minister told my husband he
was wrong, that his actions were a sin. But he counseled us together
and never spoke to me separately. He never asked me if things were
still going well. They weren't. He was becoming more and more
unpredictable. I wanted to move away, to leave him, but I had no money.
I worked a good job and made over $30,000 a year, but my husband
refused to pay any of our bills and continued to run them up. I was
only able to escape when a friend offered me a place to stay in another
town and enough money to move. I also was able to get a new job in the
new town. Without those things I would have been forced to continue
being a good wife, being raped, and being beaten.''
______
I was married to a verbally abusive man [who] was also an
alcoholic, which explains a lot of what happened, and is still
happening. Verbal abuse does not show any physical bruises, but there
are definitely bruises of another sort. I divorced this man over 6
years ago, but our 4 children are still suffering. After I left him
with our 4 children (whom he had heavily influenced against me), I was
in a low paying job, renting a 2 bedroom house, not receiving any child
support, and on welfare. At that time, welfare was the only way I could
support my 4 children. My ex-husband called me awful names in front of
our children and in the front yard of my home when he would come pick
them up for his visitation. This continued until I obtained a better
paying job and could move away from him. I was able to get off welfare
at that point. But the verbal abuse continued, by phone and e-mail.
After he called me a b**** on the phone to our daughter, I charged him
with harassment. He pled guilty and was ordered to go through anger
management, but it was nothing more than a slap on the wrist since it
was not enforced. He filed for a change of custody after our children
had been with me for almost 5 years. He lied to the court about his
work history, and was successful in coercing our children into hating
me. Now, he has another failed marriage, been through alcohol treatment
for only 5 days, still drinking, and my children have finally seen him
for what he really is. I have been remarried for 5 years and am in a
successful job.
I did not want to be on welfare because I knew that was not what
would sustain my children or me. I had an education before all this
began so I just needed to put it to use after I could get out of the
chains of the verbally abusive relationship. I remarried because I
found someone who was loving, patient, and not abusive. He has helped
me to overcome some of the abuse. But he has been very patient in this
process, since I still have a lot of the abuse to work through. As I
said before, verbal abuse does not show physical signs, but there are
definitely scars that remain far longer. Many women have come from
abusive relationships but did not have the education I did, these women
need opportunities to gain [an] education [in order] to allow them to
better themselves and become self supportive for their children as
well. There must be a way for women to gain success from within
themselves. Forcing them to marry when they are not ready or to try to
remedy another situation is not the answer. My success came from me,
not from the government or any government program. Do I still have the
verbal abuse to contend with from my ex? YES. This will always be there
until HE learns how to help himself. No government program will stop
him from being abusive. What have my children gained from this? From
their dad, hate. From their mom (me), unconditional love and support.
They now realize I have been there all along for them. But they still
have scars, just like me.
Louisiana
``I was married to a man for 8 months, [and] had known him less
than a year when we got married. I thought he was my soul mate. I
discovered after a few months that he was an alcoholic, and when
cocaine was around he `had' to have some. One night after drinking
about half a fifth of whiskey and snorting some coke, he physically
threw me out of the house. I didn't go back then, we divorced, but he
continued to stalk me and threaten my family and me. After he 'dried
out' for several months, our relationship started again. He promised to
never drink again. Long story short, he starting drinking again and
violence became a part of my life. Not only was there the emotional,
mental, and financial abuse, there was more physical abuse. I have
stared down the barrel of a .357, being promised that he would take my
life in a second. I have had that same .357 fired into the concrete
floor of our house and had bullet fragments & concrete miss my left eye
by less than an inch. I have been beaten, had teeth knocked loose,
[and] been told that he would kill me and everyone in my family if
that's what it took. The last night I spent in our house, he choked me,
screamed in my ear that women didn't deserve respect that they were
worthless, except for one thing--sex, had my head slammed into the
concrete floor, had my clothes torn off my body, [and] had bruises and
scratches on various parts of my body. He then told me to get the **
out of his house and life. I immediately threw on clothes and grabbed
my purse--the whole time praying I would get out of the driveway before
he could open the safe containing an SK47 and an AK47 along with lots
of ammo. By the grace of God I escaped and survived. I am a very low
statistic. We had counseling and he would tell the counselor exactly
what they wanted to hear, just as he would tell me that he would quit
drinking, get a job and start treating me the way I deserved to be
treated--like a human. But he never did. Please, please do not tell
these women that marriage is the solution for them and their children.
Marriage is NOT a solution--it can become the end to the lives of their
children and them or it can make those children orphans.--Gail Kilman''
Massachusetts
I'm a therapist who currently works in a battered women's shelter;
prior to this I did family stabilization (short-term, intensive home-
based work w/at-risk youth and their families). While the vast majority
of my clients have been poor, single-parent families, the idea that
marriage will come to their rescue and to imply in any way that the
lack of a legal commitment is the root of the problem is pathetically
naive and absurd. These women do not need a legal commitment to a man
who is also poor, who is often abusive, and often abusing substances.
First of all, good luck even finding the father(s) of the women's
children. These are women whose lives are often at risk because these
men have been at worst dangerous and violent, at best irresponsible and
non-committal. How about starting with teaching boys to be responsible,
caring, sensitive, committed partners and teaching girls to be
empowered, in control of their own lives, teaching them they have
choices? How about starting with quality, honest, sex education that
includes information about birth control and HIV protection? How about
expanding outreach and mental health services in schools and
communities so that the trauma epidemic can be addressed and young
people can heal and get in the driver's seat in their lives? What
century does Bush think he's living in?
______
``In 1980 I divorced my first husband because he was a violent
alcoholic. Back then, there was a program called the W.I.N. Program, I
believe in stood for Women In Need. This Program was handled through
the local welfare office in Southbridge, Massachusetts. The program
allowed me to attend a secretarial program at the MacKinnon Training
Center; it reimbursed me for my mileage, provided day care for my 3 yr
old son. It also helped restore my self-esteem and self-worth. Before
completion of the course, I finished all the necessary curriculum and
was hired on a temporary basis at a hospital as a ward clerk to fill in
for someone out on maternity leave. I took the position to obtain the
experience and to have something on my resume. However at the end of
the eight weeks she decided not to return and the job was offered to
me. I stayed at the job for five years, during which time I passed the
National Unit Secretary Exam. I then went to work for my local school
department in the Business Office, starting out as a clerk, I worked
there for 16 years and left as the Secretary to the Asst. to the
Superintendent, transferring to the Police Department as Records Clerk.
By the way, I have been remarried for the past 17 years. I do know that
should anything happen to my husband, I can and will be able to take
care of my daughter and myself.
So instead of looking to marry off people on welfare, you should be
looking to make them productive human beings with a sense of pride and
purpose. Those people will then pass on to their children the same
sense of pride and purpose making this country a more productive place.
I strongly agree that there needs to be welfare reform. However, I take
GREAT OFFENSE to the Cupid Project as another male way of insulting and
degrading the women of America. Our constitution states, ``All men are
created equal. . . .'' Let us all live by that and provide single/
divorced parents male or female with the assistance and education to
support their families--instead of just marrying them off and making
them a MAN'S responsibility.''
Mississippi
``I am now a single mother of two children. Granted I was never
married, but it was very close, and I was very lucky to get out of it.
My experience began when I only had one child. I tried my best to make
ends meet on my own when my son's father ran away from us . . . but it
was difficult. I am well educated, but finding jobs that paid well
enough to pay the bills, afford daycare, and provide the basic
necessities was hard. I got re-involved with an ex-boyfriend from high
school, who was at this time my closest friend. I thought I knew
everything about him. Things were going quite well until we agreed to
get married. Then things really changed.
I was no longer allowed to dress as I chose . . . I became a Barbie
doll for him. I was not permitted to have any friends, though he
brought many over. I was forbidden from speaking my opinion because it
was not my place. He made me quit my job and stay at home with my son,
which wasn't so bad. But his temper and drinking problems escalated
until I was afraid to move without permission. I was trapped with a son
I couldn't provide for without this man's help. There were many battle
wounds throughout my home. Holes in the walls to mark just how bad it
could be . . . holes through the doors to remind me that even locking
my son and I up away from him, was not a safe alternative. Everything I
owned and had worked so hard for was broken in front of me. Dishes were
shattered on walls behind me as I dodged them time after time. My
little boy got cut in the back of his head from one of the plates that
missed me and hit the wall, only to ricochet to him where he hid. He
has scars on his knee where he was cut by other broken dishes when he
crawled away. His lip had been split by being hit so hard in the face
when at 1 year old, he mimicked the words that came out of my fiance's
mouth. But I was still too scared to leave him. I figured I'd never
make it on my own. How could I raise a child without someone's help?
One day when I went shopping with a friend who I rarely ever saw .
. . I came home to find the house in complete darkness, a busted pipe
in the hallway leaking water all over my carpet, and every phone in my
home was clipped neatly near the phone plug. That was when I knew I had
no choice but to leave. I called the cops, who weren't too willing to
help . . . but they put patrols out. I lived in fear. My son and I
slept on a mattress in the living room so that we would have numerous
routes of escape. Our door was barricaded nightly. I found myself
completely in debt and looking at being on the street if I couldn't
repair the damages my fiance caused. I found we had been 3 months
behind in rent, though he never mentioned it to me.
I finally sought help. [I] applied through the states job program
to find work. [I] applied for medical assistance for my son, received
food stamps to feed us, got daycare assistance so I could afford to
work, without paying it all to the daycare centers, and sought
counseling for myself. The state services provided all these venues to
help guide me and get me back on my feet. After all, I had a child to
raise.
Now I am working at a decent job in a new state. I have two
children, who make my life worth living, and make me more determined
than ever to protect what is in there best interest. I am receiving WIC
and am applying for Medicaid here so that my children can see a doctor
when they need since my work doesn't provide insurance. I am a
hardworking mother just trying to do her best. I understand I have
never been married, but my experience was just the same. I trusted and
loved a man who I had known for 10 years . . . and I never knew how
cruel, angry and violent he was until we were almost at the altar.
No, I have no intention of marrying anyone for a long time. Because
I have two very important children to look after . . . and no man will
ever hurt my kids again. It was very hard for me to first apply for any
public assistance money that the government provides . . . but I had
to. I do everything I can on my own, but I do need help. Losing this
kind of assistance, which only helps to put back the pieces broken in
someone's life isn't fair. I never asked for a man's cruelty, but I got
it anyways. Marriage isn't the answer . . . I thought it was, then that
one vicious man taught me with violence that marriage wouldn't fix
everything. And I'm grateful I got out before it led to my son's or my
[own] death. We were lucky. . .but there are plenty of women who get
trapped thinking that marriage is the only way to make it and provide
for their families . . . and some of these women pay with their lives
to the husband they trusted. I refuse to be one of those women. I am
stronger. That experience was almost 3 years ago. I am almost able to
make it on my own now, but I wouldn't be able to say that if the public
assistance wasn't there to help out when I needed it. Please take that
into consideration before doing something that will lead to the demise
of women like me. There are reasons that some women are single mothers
by choice--and it's usually fear and love. They fear what they already
had to endure . . . and they love their children too much to do it
again. Thank you.''
Montana
I am a Crime Victim Advocate who works in the criminal justice
system. Just last week a woman came into my office to receive an Order
of Protection against her husband. The story she told me is a good
example of why this legislation is a bad idea. Because this woman did
not have potatoes ready for dinner one night, her husband became angry
and violent. He gave her a black eye in front of their children. The
next Sunday she went to church (one that professes to be very
community-oriented, and tight-knit) and NOT ONE PERSON asked about her
eye. Her mother, who does not belong to the same church, called the
pastor to ask that he intervene with the husband (who respected the
pastor). The next time this woman saw the pastor, he said to her, ``You
just need to do what he says.'' Over the next few days, several women
from the church visited her and insisted that she return to the
husband, despite the violence. When she came to my office, she was
distraught about the violence, but even more so about the attitude of
her church community. She knows she needs to leave this relationship or
she and/or her children will get seriously hurt, but she is also in
fear that God will strike her down for breaking up the family. She is
also concerned that she will be unable to support her children when she
leaves the relationship. She is reluctant to go on welfare, having been
told that it is bad to take handouts from anyone outside the church,
but she knows that neither she nor her children are safe within their
church--and they must eat and have a roof over their heads. She has not
been allowed to hold a job while married to this man, and has few job
skills.
This is not an unusual story of those we hear in my office--of the
1,500 people or so we talk to a year, we frequently hear stories of
women who are forced to live in poverty by their abusers (I remember
one woman who was not allowed to buy shoes for herself or the children,
and so came to my office in flip-flops on a snowy day); who are not
allowed to develop their job skills while in the marriage, and so, if
they choose to leave the violence, must go on welfare to survive; and
who are abandoned by church communities that hold rigid gender
expectations--and thus, perhaps inadvertently in some cases, support
abusive behavior by the men in the church. Additionally, throughout the
country, women are threatened by social services with [the] removal of
their children if they ``allow'' themselves to be abused in front of
them. Yet, if they don't allow it, and get divorced, legislation such
as this threatens both women and their children with more severe
poverty. This is an unacceptable double bind.
We must protect women in this country by not forcing marriage upon
anyone. [Marriage] is not the solution to poverty or violence. Job
skills, child care, and a focus on the person who perpetuates the
violence rather than the victims of violence are the only ways that
women living in poverty will be able to leave poverty and begin to
support themselves.
New Jersey
``I am 42 years old and I am a survivor of an 11 year marriage to
an abuser. I survived because I was able to receive food stamps and
cash assistance. I was also fortunate enough to meet a woman who ran a
group for battered woman. For the first time in my life I was told I
DIDN'T need a man to be okay. I was taught from my parents that
marriage made you who you were as a person. My marriage showed me I was
worthless, stupid, ugly, and needed to be beat into submission.
I now work under that wonderful woman Geri Esposito Reale and I
spend countless hours empowering women to depend on themselves and to
begin their journey alone. Our Agency gives woman a choice in their
future. I can remember living in a trailer counting bread and eating
less so I could feed my children because the man I entered into
marriage with almost destroyed my soul. I thought many times about the
security I left when I ended my marriage. I knew my children would eat,
I never knew, however, if they were going to watch their father drag me
by the hair or spit in my face. Marriage for many women is worse than
prison. Living in this relationship for many, includes having no money,
he controls it all. Having nothing that belongs to you alone including
your thoughts, opinions and your body. Everything you do or say is
subject to his approval. I survived and raised three children because I
was empowered by welfare and the Cumberland County Women's Center to
further my education, to begin to think whole thoughts, and have
feelings that were all mine. I was empowered to break the ridiculous
notion that I needed a man to be whole.
Ending Domestic Violence is to begin to empower women to depend on
themselves. Marriage is a dangerous place for an abused woman.''
______
I was married to an abusive alcoholic and had a child with him. The
courts gave him visitation [rights] even though I had a restraining
order against him. I made a home and a life for us and though it wasn't
easy it was a lot better than the abuse we suffered. The last thing a
women needs to feel is that she can't make it on her own. We should be
encouraging these women instead of keeping them down. They need to feel
secure and made to feel that they can accomplish things on their own
instead of feeling that the need to depend on others.
Oregon
``To Whom It Concerns:
I would like to start off by just saying that I have been married
and divorced twice. So as far as the theory that marriage is an answer
to all problems, I would have to strongly disagree. In my particular
case, it actually made things worse. Instead of just carrying the
weight of my children, I began to have to pull more than my share of
responsibilities. Which is typical for a woman, however, not at all
realistic for a good, lasting, strong, healthy relationship. We are
taught to have to learn to deal with this. There is only so much a
person can take.
A marriage should be a sacred union between two people who vow to
work together no matter what obstacles [arise]. Not an ongoing battle
to protect yourself and your family from your own husband. There are
men in this world today who spend bill money on drugs, or other women,
or who go out with their buddies all the time. There are men who refuse
to hold down a job. There are men who owe most of their checks for
child support in prior marriages. There are men with no skills who
don't earn enough to provide for their families. Not having enough
finances is the root of bitterness, resentment, and finally anger or
rage. That is when abuse can start to take place. A lot of the time the
abuse factor is already there as well.
There are controlling husbands who will not allow their wives to
have a job, or go to school. There are men who won't help out with the
kids. You see, there are a number of reasons why marriage is not the
answer, in fact quite the problem in certain situations. It is
unhealthy for children to grow up in an environment that is counter-
productive. Where only one parent is making all of the efforts for the
whole family. One cannot survive on bread alone. It takes two willing
people in a marriage. Children will grow up to mimic this thought
process and ultimately become a part of the vicious cycle.
Receiving state assistance has literally been a form of survival
for my family and me. We would not have made it without these
supplement programs in place. When I divorced, I decided it was better
to be poor by myself than to be married to someone who was potentially
dangerous to me and my family, and someone who was not reliable or even
trustworthy financially as well. This is my story; I hope it helps you
to understand that being unmarried with children can ultimately be very
good and empowering for some families. I feel that if there was more
affordable housing for people this could also make a huge difference
for the better.
Respectfully,
From someone who remains hopeful''
______
I spent 15 years with an abusive husband. When I was finally able
to extract myself from this nightmarish existence I was forced, for
survival's sake, to receive welfare. I had a son to raise and no means
of support. When I attempted to attend college, so as to become
employable in a family wage job, I was immediately removed from the
state aid. The message my removal from welfare sent was received loud
and clear: We don't want you educated; ``We don't want you independent;
we want to force you to return to a violent husband.'' Well, I was one
of the lucky ones. I didn't return (I would rather have died than
returned to the violence), and I eventually got my college degree, but
I did so in abject poverty. I spent much of my time not knowing if I
would have enough to eat, have electricity, or be able to clothe my
son.
If I had stayed with this man as the, ``system,'' would have
preferred, I would be dead today. Please do not continue to send
battered women the message that I was sent, that abusive marriage is
the place to stay if you want financial security. Women do deserve to
be educated, independent, and live violence free. These are rights
routinely afforded men.
S. Star
Texas
Mine was a second marriage, four years following my divorce. The
wealthy, controlling man I married, promptly took over my life. After
two beatings with two trips to the emergency room, I began divorce
proceedings. Then my troubles really started. He felt that because he
was wealthy (and I wasn't) he could get away with anything. He
constantly harassed me by phone (until I had it changed), and at work
by calling my boss and telling him lies about me. He brought lawsuits
against me for libel. He sued many of our friends, saying they had
libeled him. Then he called me at work and told me that he had hired
someone to follow me and he would eventually kill me with a baseball
bat! This was after I had obtained a warrant to keep him away from me.
In the midst of all this he remarried (90 days after our divorce), but
his harassment of me continued. He would follow me in his car to and
from work. The police at the time (1986) would do nothing, saying that
only after he did something could they take any action. He refused to
pay me the court ordered divorce settlement, saying, ``Sue me!'' I
finally had to quit my job, and move to Ohio. But the phone calls and
letters continued, until about two years later he died of a heart
attack. Only then did my life return to normal. There is a constant
fear of being hunted, [and] being physically and psychologically
abused. At the time it seemed that no one could help me. I am so
grateful that now women in that position have shelters, and some of the
laws have changed to perhaps stop cases of similar terror. All
terrorists are not from other countries. . .many of them are married to
abused women . . . and appear to their communities to be model
citizens.
______
The Ruppert Wedding Album
Hi, my name is Cyndy. I had my first child in March of 1994, and
was on welfare during my pregnancy and for a short time following. This
assistance helped me greatly. I was able to get the medical attention I
needed and buy formula and food. This allowed me to eventually become
self-sufficient. However, I knew I needed an education to be able to
get a good paying job, one that would sufficiently support my child and
I, so I signed up for college. During this time, I met a man with whom
I fell in love with. After my first semester of college, I found out I
was pregnant with my second child. My boyfriend at the time asked me to
marry him. So we married in February of 1996. My husband worked in the
semi-conductor industry making $86,000.00 a year. At that time, I
didn't know how much money he made, but I thought we would make it as a
married couple, and that our relationship would benefit our family. In
the spring came a new semester, but my husband discouraged me from
returning to school. He said that since I was pregnant, I should return
to work to help support our child. I did not return to school, but
instead received training to become a real estate agent. Upon
completion of the courses, I prepared to take my real estate exam; only
to discover my husband would not pay the fees required to do so. He
then told me, it would be better if I stayed home with the kids while
he worked.
The physical abuse started when I was 5 months pregnant. My husband
pushed me into a playpen in the heat of an argument while my son was in
the playpen. My husband then started calling me repeatedly, up to 12
times a day from work. With each phone call, he would become more and
more angry until he was cursing at me and humiliating me. When I was 6
months pregnant, I received my first beating. It started in the kitchen
and finished in the bathroom. He was hitting me on my back and head as
I was bent over with my arms wrapped around my stomach trying to
protect my unborn child. He took the phone off the hook and did not
allow me out of the bedroom for the remainder of the night.
A friend of mine suggested counseling, and my husband and I went to
a local Christian Counseling Center to seek help. The first thing my
husband told me was that I didn't need to mention anything about his
hitting me, because after all, I was partially responsible. I did
mention it to our counselor during one of our sessions, and he then
refused to go back. Marriage counseling won't work unless both partners
really want the help.
The violence continued even after we separated, and he was never
arrested for any of it. If he had paid his support, I would not have
qualified for food stamps or Medicaid. This assistance helped me
tremendously during this time in my life. My ex-husband would not
provide medical insurance for our child, even though he had a full-time
job and had his other children on his insurance [plan]. Without
Medicaid, my child would not have had access to good medical attention,
which he needed for his eczema and other health problems. My oldest
child had asthma, and I wouldn't have been able to afford his
medication without Medicaid. The food stamps helped our family as well.
I was able to feed both of my children and myself.
Marriage is not the answer. Education, childcare, and temporary
financial help are. I have since gone back to school and on June I will
receive my associate's degree. My plan is to go to a four-year
university in the fall of 2004 to receive my Bachelor's degree in
Government with an emphasis in legal studies. My children and I have
lived violence free since January 1998. I have chosen not to marry for
now, but if I do I know I must take serious precautions. I don't ever
[again] want my children and I to be exposed to living in a violent
household. As a matter of fact, my children have told me they prefer
[that] I do not marry until they are grown up and gone. They feel safer
knowing it's just us. Your legislation to encourage single mothers on
welfare to marry will not solve the problem, but may actually add to
it, and affect and endanger the lives of countless women and children.
If anything, increase financial funding for single mothers going to
college to obtain an education [in hopes of] better supporting their
children. Give them a chance to save money and receive assistance
simultaneously so they may become self-sufficient and in turn teach
their children the values of a good education.
I'm Kerry Bibens-Gray and that's my story. Thank you.
Virginia
``I was married to an abusive man. Marriage did not help keep me
out of poverty. My (now ex) husband wanted to control all of the money,
including the money I earned [money] from working, and [saved] the
money my parents had set aside for me to attend college. He refused to
pay our rent on time even though he made twice as much as I did. He was
always making threats on my life and was physically and emotionally
abusive as well. I finally realized that I might lose my life if I
continued to stay in this marriage, so I escaped with our son in 1999.
My infant son and me had to stay in a shelter for battered women for a
few days because I was afraid of what my husband would do to us when he
found out that we had escaped and I had taken out a protective order on
him. When I petitioned the court to get legal custody of our son, my
husband said that he didn't want to pay child support and that nothing
would make him happier than to see me spend my last dime in the courts.
He was able to get legal aid to represent him while I had to empty
my savings account, take out a bank loan, max out my credit cards, and
drain my college account in order to pay for my attorney's fees. Thank
god the judge saw through all of my ex-husband's and his family's lies
and gave me sole custody of my son and supervised visitation to my ex-
husband. I have since had to declare bankruptcy, which has a very
negative impact on one's credit rating, as a result of all of the
thousands of dollars I've had to shell out in attorney's fees. My ex-
husband continues to use the court system to harass and control me. I
have been forced to appear in court at least 75 times in the past five
years because my ex-husband continues to ask the court for custody,
even though custody was decided years ago. I had to go on public
assistance for a period of time and even lost my apartment after I was
forced to declare bankruptcy.
I now have two children and my ex-husband continues to abuse the
judicial system and harass me by bringing me to court almost every
month. Trying to get women to marry abusive men is not going to solve
anything--it just creates more problems.
Signed, Angela D. Sargent''
______
Prepared Statement of Lisalyn Jacobs, Vice President; and Sherry
Leiwant, Senior Staff Attorney, Legal Momentum
Welfare Reform and Marriage Initiatives
Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund)
appreciates the opportunity to submit this testimony on the issue of
TANF Reauthorization and building stronger families.\1\ We adhere to
our long held belief that anti-poverty efforts must focus on
initiatives that will empower individuals to become economically self-
sufficient and permanently free them from poverty.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The authors would like to thank Shawn Chang for his invaluable
assistance in completing this testimony.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Legal Momentum is a leading national not-for-profit civil rights
organization with a 31-year history of advocating for women's rights
and promoting gender equality. Among Legal Momentum's major goals is
securing economic justice for all. Throughout our history, we have used
the power of the law to advocate for the rights of poor women. We have
appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States in both gender
discrimination and welfare cases, and have advocated for protection of
reproductive and employment rights, increased access to child care, and
reduction of domestic violence and sexual assault.
Our testimony today focuses on why, from a policy perspective,
government involvement in personal issues of family formation would not
reduce poverty, but would create a dangerous precedent for the
individual liberty of all Americans. Emphasis on marriage and family
formation sidesteps the underlying causes of poverty, particularly the
poverty of women and children--such as lack of job training and
education, ongoing sex and race discrimination, violence and lack of
child care. At a time of huge budget deficits and high unemployment it
is irresponsible to spend over a billion dollars on untested, unproven
marriage promotion programs. Further, government involvement in highly
personal decisions such as marriage is a departure from our most basic
principles; a threat not just to poor women, but to all citizens who
believe that liberty entails making fundamental personal decisions
without governmental interference. In addition, because of the
prevalence of violence among women forced to turn to public assistance,
promotion of marriage can raise particular and severe dangers. Finally,
the amount of money currently being spent on marriage promotion by the
Department of Health and Human Services is enormous, over $100 million.
The programs currently being funded have not been reviewed or tested to
see if they are useful or successful. Common sense dictates treading
cautiously in this area and waiting for the results of the programs
already funded before throwing another $1.6 billion at promotion of
marriage among the poor.
Poll after poll shows that most Americans are against the
government's involvement in individual decisions regarding marriage and
oppose use of scarce public dollars to promote marriage. This is not
surprising as Americans value their personal privacy and their right to
make personal decisions free of government intrusion, and most adults
who have experience with intimate relationships are rightfully
skeptical that the government can or should try to influence them.
Opposing use of scarce public dollars for this purpose is not the same
as being ``anti-marriage,'' but rather recognizes that there are some
issues that should not involve government. In addition, it is important
for those in Congress to remember that there are currently more non-
marital families than married families in America. These include
single, separated, divorced, widowed, cohabitating, gay and lesbian,
and extended families, among others. Members of Congress are elected by
members of these families as well as by those in traditional nuclear
families and should care about supporting the well-being of all
families, regardless of how they are constituted.
I. Federal and State Marriage Proposals
Both Federal and State initiatives with respect to marriage are
alarming in their invasion of personal privacy and, at the same time,
raise serious questions about the effective use of scarce government
funds, the competence of government to administer programs dealing with
intimate decisions such as marriage, and the very real possibility that
marriage promotion programs will be administered in a way that
discriminates against women. (A Federally funded marriage promotion
program in Allentown, Pennsylvania did just that, offering employment
skills training to the men but not the women in that program.) We are
particularly concerned that scarce public funds will be diverted away
from desperately needed economic supports, child care and job training
into questionable programs unlikely to have any positive effect in
reducing poverty.
Federal Initiatives: Current law allows but does not require states
to use Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) funds for marriage
promotion and for initiatives aimed at decreasing out of wedlock
births. Proposals to reauthorize the TANF program (the House passed
H.R. 4 and the Senate Finance Committee bill, PRIDE) include
significant funding for marriage promotion initiatives. Although there
is no new TANF funding for economic support in either bill, they both
authorize $100 million a year in specifically dedicated Federal TANF
funding for a Marriage Promotion competitive grant program. States
would be required to match the $100 million and would be allowed to use
their basic Federal TANF allocation to do so, thus potentially
diverting an additional $100 million of TANF funds from economic
support to marriage promotion. Both bills also authorize an additional
$100 million a year for new TANF demonstration project funding to ``be
expended primarily'' on ``Healthy Marriage Promotion Activities.''
Finally, both bills create a fatherhood program funded at $20 million
(in H.R. 4) a year ``to promote and support involved, committed, and
responsible fatherhood, and to encourage and support healthy
marriages.''
Both bills also add new requirements that in order to participate
in TANF, states must have a program to ``encourage the formation and
maintenance of healthy 2-parent married families'' and must set
``specific, numerical, and measurable performance objectives'' for
promoting such families. This language suggests that in order to
qualify for any TANF funding, states might have to set numerical goals
for increasing the state marriage rate and reducing the state divorce
rate.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is already
spending a great deal of money on marriage promotion--over $77 million
in contracts and over $25 million in grants. Grant money has been taken
from appropriations for the Child Support Enforcement Program ($2.4
million),\2\from the Refugee Resettlement Program ($9 million),\3\ from
Child Welfare Programs ($14 million),\4\ from the (Native American)
Social And Economic Development Strategies Program (SEDS) ($40
million),\5\ from the Assets For Independence Demonstration Program
($16 million),\6\ and from the Developmental Disabilities Program ($3
million).\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ See HHS 5/9/03 press release ``ACF Approves Child Support
Demonstrations in Michigan and Idaho,'' available at http://
www.acf.dhhs.gov/acf_news.html); and HHS 7/4/03 press release ``ACF
Approves Child Support Demonstration In Virginia,'' available at http:/
/www.acf.dhhs.gov/acf_news.html).
\3\ 67 Fed. Reg. 45131-45136 (July 8, 2002); 68 Fed. Reg. 34617-
34726 (June 10, 2003); 68 Fed. Reg. 43142-47 (July 21, 2003).
\4\ 68 Fed. Reg 34609-34614 (June 10, 2003).
\5\ 67 Fed. Reg. 59736-59746 (Sept. 23, 2002); 69 Fed. Reg. 8266-
8288 (Feb. 23, 2004).
\6\ http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ocs/fy2003ocsfunding/
section2a.html
\7\ 68 Fed. Reg. 41816-41828
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It is difficult to see why Congress should even consider hundreds
of millions of dollars in new funding for marriage promotion before the
results of the Administration's evaluation projects are in. It is
surely putting the cart before the horse to start a major new social
program when the program's potential effects are largely unknown and
demonstration projects to identify and evaluate the effects are just
getting off the ground. Last year, the Administration awarded contracts
to several prominent national organizations to conduct large marriage
promotion test projects with rigorous evaluation methodologies:
Mathematica Policy Research, ($19 million over nine years for the
Building Strong Families demonstration and random-assignment evaluation
project; MDRC (and other secondary contractors) $38.5 million over nine
years for the Supporting Healthy Marriages demonstration and random-
assignment evaluation project); and RTI International and the Urban
Institute ($20.4 million over seven years for evaluation of community
wide initiatives to promote healthy marriage).\8\ Until the results of
these projects are known, Congress should not even consider marriage
promotion funding.
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\8\ See October 3, 2003 ACF press release ``ACF Announces Four New
Projects to Study Healthy Marriage,'' available at http://
www.acf.dhhs.gov/news/press/2003/release_101003.htm; Ooms, Bouchet, &
Parke, ``Beyond Marriage Licenses: Efforts in States to Strengthen
Marriage and Two-Parent Families. A State by State Snapshot'', Center
for Law and Social Policy (April 2004).
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Even ignoring that the test results are not yet in, it is still
difficult to see why Congress should consider additional marriage
promotion funding when there seems to be no need for it. As detailed in
the attached Legal Momentum memorandum on ``HHS Marriage Promotion
Activities'', the Administration has already committed tens of millions
of dollars in existing funding to marriage promotion, and takes the
position that there is no limit on the funding that it can make
available for marriage promotion under its child support demonstration
project authority.
HHS has also issued a ``Compendium'' of approaches for achieving
``marriage promotion'' goals, which is a likely indicator of the
recommendations it would make to states for spending marriage promotion
funds were such spending to be required. This Compendium suggests that
states consider completely unproven and coercive methods, such as
paying a $2,000 cash bonus to poor couples who marry and reducing
welfare payments to poor couples who choose not to marry.
(``Strengthening Healthy Marriages: A Compendium of Approaches,'' U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (August 2002), available at
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/region2/index.htm.) The Compendium
includes marriage promotion organizations that clearly should not
receive large grants of tax dollars. Some of these organizations
recommend reducing the divorce rate by restricting the right to
divorce. Some teach that the husband should be the leader/breadwinner,
and the wife the follower/homemaker. Several are for-profit commercial
ventures which claim that they can help couples avoid divorce for a
substantial fee. It is irresponsible for legislators to enact a program
that threatens to divert government money intended to help the poor to
fund the untested programs of such organizations.
Even witnesses at the Senate Finance Committee hearings on marriage
promotion who spoke in favor of marriage conceded that we don't yet
know what works. Ron Haskins, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute
stated that ``we know so little about marriage promotion programs,
especially with poor and low-income families.'' Theodora Ooms of the
Center on Law and Social Policy stated, ``Given the lack of research on
marriage related interventions, policy makers should proceed cautiously
. . .'' Even the Chairman of this Committee, Senator Charles Grassley
of Iowa stated, ``Do marriage programs effectively reduce dependence
and foster a family's well-being? We don't know. There is still a great
deal of uncertainty around the effectiveness of marriage promotion
programs.''
With such a high degree of uncertainty around what works with
respect to marriage promotion, with millions and millions of dollars
already being spent on marriage promotion programs, why spend billions
more of taxpayer dollars on these programs before the results are in on
which may give direction to a whether such initiatives are successful
and what types of programs work?
State Initiatives: As noted above, since 1996, states have been
free to use TANF dollars to support marriage and two-parent families,
although most states have not done so. States have instituted programs
that range from a simple waste of public dollars to outright
discrimination against struggling single parent families. These
examples demonstrate the risks in pushing states to do more to promote
marriage. For example:
In Oklahoma, former Governor Frank Keating earmarked 10
percent of the state's TANF surplus funds to fund the $10
million Oklahoma Marriage initiative, which includes pre- and
post-marital counseling to Oklahoma families, a marriage
resource center, a marriage mentor program, and the creation of
a Marriage Scholars-in-Residence.\9\ The initiative also
contains a specific ``religious track'' under which the state's
religious leaders sign a marriage covenant, thereby committing
themselves to encourage pre-marital counseling for couples in
their house of worship. A few months after Keating made his
proposal, the state hired a pair of ``marriage ambassadors''
with a $250,000 a year salary to give ``relationship rallies''
on school campuses as well as meeting with ministers and set up
a research project. Last September the state spent $16,000
flying in pro-marriage speakers from around the country for a
two-day conference. It also developed a workshop called
Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) that is
offered in schools and community centers.\10\ Three years after
Oklahoma implemented its marriage promotion programs, the
state's divorce rate has remained unchanged.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Supra Note 156.
\10\ Tyre, Peg. ``Oklahoma is fighting its sky-high divorce rate
with controversial, state-funded ``marriage ambassadors.'' Newsweek,
Feb. 18, 2002, U.S. Edition.
\11\ Ross, Bobby Jr. ``Divorce rate stays steady, study shows'' The
Daily Oklahoman (2/10/2002). Citing that for every 100 marriage
licenses issued in 2001, the state granted 76 divorce petitions.
West Virginia's state TANF plan adds a $100 marriage
incentive to a family's benefits if there is a legal marriage
in a household where both individuals receive welfare
assistance payments. Since West Virginia's monthly TANF benefit
for a family of three is $328, this $100 per month bonus makes
a significant difference in economic support and gives children
in poor married families a significant economic advantage over
children whose poor single mothers have been unable or
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
unwilling to marry.
Programs such as those described above divert funds from direct
support of poor families or provision of services needed to support
employment. Programs like that in West Virginia discriminate directly
against poor single parent families. Endorsing or increasing funding
for such programs is bad public policy.
II. Welfare Reform Reauthorization Should Not Focus on Marriage
Welfare reform reauthorization should focus on ending poverty. In
order to accomplish that goal, we must focus on the barriers to
economic self-sufficiency rather than marriage by investing in
education, training and work supports to help families and individuals
get to a point where they can survive and prosper, whether married or
not.
A. The American Public Overwhelmingly Rejects Governmental
Involvement in Personal Decisions to Marry. According to the PEW Forum
on Religion & Public Life opinion poll, there is broad opposition to
government programs aimed at encouraging marriage. Nearly eight in ten
Americans (79 percent) want the government to stay out of this area,
while just 18 percent endorse such pro-marriage programs. While those
with a high level of religious commitment are more likely to favor
these programs, fully two-thirds (66 percent) in that category do not
want the government to get involved.\12\ In addition, Americans also
strongly reject any proposal that would divert welfare resources for
the poor into marriage promotion programs. A recent poll conducted on
behalf of the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support shows that
a mere five percent of those surveyed select marriage promotion as the
number-one welfare priority for Congress, while fully 62 percent cite
work support for people moving from welfare to good jobs as the top
priority.\13\ Similarly, a poll conducted for the Ms. Foundation found
that less than three percent of Americans believe the principal goal of
the welfare system should be to promote marriage and discourage out-of-
wedlock birth.\14\ By contrast, giving people the skills needed to
achieve self-sufficiency received the most support. Most recently, a
survey conducted for the Annie E. Casey Foundation also found that
proposals to promote marriage through welfare programs do not meet with
even superficial public support. A solid 64 percent of those surveyed
reject proposals to provide financial bonuses to mothers on welfare who
marry the father of their children, and over 70 percent believe pushing
people to get married is the wrong priority for Congress.\15\
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\12\ The PEW Research Center for the People & the Press and the PEW
Forum on Religion & Public Life, ``American Struggle with Religion's
Role at Home and Abroad,'' News Release, March 20, 2002. at 3.
\13\ Peter D. Hart Research Associates. ``TANF/Welfare Survey
Findings.'' National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support Memo, April
12, 2002, at 1.
\14\ Ms. Foundation for Women. ``Americans Say Welfare Should
Provide Self-Sufficiency Skills, Move People Out of Poverty--Not
Promote Marriage.'' (February 6, 2002) at 1.
\15\ Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc. ``Memorandum to
Advocates for Low-Income Families.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
B. Reauthorization Should Not Coerce Low-Income Women into Giving
Up Their Fundamental Rights to Privacy. The Supreme Court has long
recognized an individual's right to privacy regarding decisions to
marry and reproduce as ``one of the basic civil rights of man,
fundamental to our very existence and survival.'' \16\ Significantly,
this constitutional right equally protects the choice not to marry.\17\
Reproductive privacy, initially honored as a right of marital
privacy,\18\ has been firmly established as a protected right of the
individual, irrespective of marital status.\19\ According to the
Supreme Court, ``if the right of privacy means anything, it is the
right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted
governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person
as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.\20\ Furthermore, the
U.S. Supreme Court has specifically rejected the use of the welfare
system to try to influence the marriage decisions of a child's parents.
In National Welfare Rights Organization v. Cahill, 411 U.S. 619 (1973),
a New Jersey welfare provision that limited benefits to families where
there were two adults ``ceremonially married to each other'' was struck
down as a violation of the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. The
Court held that penalizing children by restricting welfare benefits to
them because of the marital decisions of their parents ``is illogical
and unjust.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535, 541
(1942).
\17\ Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967).
\18\ Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 495 (1965).
\19\ Eisenstadt v. Baird 405 U.S. 438, 453-54 (1972).
\20\ Id. at 453.
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Government programs promoting marriage may invade this right to
privacy and may encourage the kind of differential treatment of
children in non-marital families that the Supreme Court condemned in
NWRO v. Cahill. They certainly pose concerns regarding voluntariness
and coercion. It is critical that if Congress insists on funding these
programs with tax dollars, that they neither require nor encourage
incentives for states to coerce low-income women into trading away
their fundamental rights to marry or not to marry. As such, Federal
mandates on states to set numerical goals are not appropriate.
Obviously, voluntariness is key to a non-coercive program, and strong
protections regarding non-coercion should be included, although it is
hard to conceive of provisions that would genuinely protect
voluntariness in a program that supplies a lifeline to desperate
families in need of help in supporting their children. Along the same
lines, states must not be permitted to discriminate based on marital
status or family formation. To that end, TANF reauthorization should
include language that prohibits states from treating equally needy
families differently based on marital status or family formation. This
will correct discriminatory policies and practices against married
families, without swinging the pendulum to permit discrimination
against single or cohabitating families.
C. The Staggering Prevalence of Domestic Violence Among Women on
Welfare Presents an Insurmountable Challenge to ``Healthy Marriage''
Promotion within TANF. When considering marriage promotion within the
context of TANF, Congress must face the reality that violence is one of
the main causes of women's poverty. Domestic violence makes women poor
and keeps them poor. Violence is not an exception to the rule for poor
women; it is an overwhelming reality. Study after study demonstrates
that a large proportion of the welfare caseload (consistently between
15 percent and 25 percent) consists of current victims of serious
domestic violence.\21\ Between half and two thirds of the women on
welfare have suffered domestic violence or abuse at some time in their
adult lives.\22\ Moreover, by an overwhelming margin, these women's
abusers are most often the fathers of their children.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ See Jody Raphael & Richard M. Tolman, Taylor Inst. and the
Univ. of Mich. Research Dev. Ctr. on Poverty, Risk and Mental Health,
Trapped by Poverty, Trapped by Abuse: New Evidence Documenting the
Relationship Between Domestic Violence and Welfare, 12 (1997).
\22\ See Mary Ann Allard, et al., McCormack Inst., In Harm's Way?
Domestic Violence, AFDC Receipt and Welfare Reform in Mass., 12, 14
(1997) (64.9 percent of 734 women); Ellen L. Bassuck, et al., The
Characteristics and Needs of Sheltered Homeless and Low-Income Housed
Mothers, 276 JAMA 640 at 12, 20 (1996) (61.0 percent of 220 women);
William Curcio, Passaic County Study of AFDC Recipients in a Welfare-
to-Work Program: A Preliminary Analysis, 12, 14 (1997) (57.3 percent of
846 women).
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For these women and their children, marriage is not the solution to
economic insecurity. For them marriage could mean death or serious
injury; it will almost undoubtedly mean economic dependence on an
abuser. In the population as a whole, many battered women are
economically dependent on their abusers; 33-46 percent of women
surveyed in five studies said their partner prevented them from working
entirely.\23\ Those who are permitted to work fare little better.
Ninety-six percent reported that they had experienced problems at work
due to domestic violence, with over 70 percent having been harassed at
work, 50 percent having lost at least three days of work a month as a
result of the abuse, and 25 percent having lost at least one job due to
the domestic violence.\24\ Thus, battered women are overwhelmingly
either economically dependent on the abuser or are economically
unstable due to the abuse.
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\23\ See United States General Accounting Office, Report to
Congressional Committees, Domestic Violence: Prevalence and
Implications for Employment Among Welfare Recipients, 7 (1998).
\24\ See Joan Zorza, Woman Battering: High Costs and the State of
the Law, 25 Clearinghouse Rev. 421 (1991).
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Those who would promote marriage in every circumstance sometimes
claim that marriage decreases domestic violence. This idea ignores many
realities of domestic violence. Most importantly, married victims are
less likely to report the abuse. In addition, separation and divorce
frequently incite batterers to increase the frequency and level of
violence.\25\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\25\ See Einat Peled, Parenting by Men Who Abuse Women: Issues and
Dilemmas, Brit. J. Soc. Work, Feb. 2000, at 28.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The experience of Oklahoma, clearly the leader in spending public
dollars for marriage promotion, is instructive. In a survey of Oklahoma
families, referred to in testimony by the Director of Public Welfare in
that state when testifying before Congress, it was discovered that
almost half (44 percent) of the state's divorced women cited domestic
violence as a reason for their divorce.\26\ More than half (57 percent)
of Oklahoma's divorced welfare mothers, the prime target of government
marriage promotion efforts, cited domestic violence as a reason for
their divorce.\27\ Oklahoma is by no means unique. Around the country,
in survey after survey, low income women report high double digit
domestic violence rates.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\26\ ``Marriage in Oklahoma, 2001 Baseline Survey on Marriage and
Divorce,'' at 16, available at http://www.okmarriage.org/pdf/
survey_report.pdf
\27\ Private communication to NOW Legal Defense & Education Fund
from Oklahoma official; copy available upon request.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Should the government encourage women to get married or stay
married to men who abuse them? Certainly, proponents of government
marriage promotion do not intend this. But common sense suggests that
this will be the inevitable result of a government ``get married and do
not divorce'' message, especially when success is measured by
superficial statistics such as the divorce rate.
Congress itself has repeatedly recognized that domestic violence is
a serious national problem and has made efforts to minimize the severe
risk to women and children from that violence, most recently by
reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act in 2000. But marriage
promotion for TANF recipients ignores the reality of domestic violence.
It ignores its pervasiveness: assertions that proponents intend to
promote only ``healthy marriages'' lose credibility in the face of the
reality that as many as two-thirds of TANF recipients report incidents
of domestic violence. Surveys of low-income women in several cities
show that two of the four main reasons for not marrying are fear of
domestic violence and fear of a power imbalance.\28\ Requiring marriage
promotion programs to consult with domestic and sexual violence experts
and child advocates on the development and implementation of policies,
procedures, and training necessary to appropriately address domestic
and sexual violence and child abuse issues, as specified in PRIDE, will
provide some security. But even these safeguards will not make marriage
promotion within TANF safe. Furthermore, the House passed version of
H.R. 4 lacks even the most rudimentary protections for domestic
violence victims; domestic violence is not mentioned in the legislation
and, therefore, use of marriage promotion dollars to keep women in
abusive marriages or to help persuade them to marry their abuser is a
very real threat. Finally, our review of current grant applications to
HHS for marriage promotion funds indicates that very few programs
include any consideration of domestic violence issues in their
applications.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\28\ Kathyrn Edin, Joint Center for Poverty Research Working
Papers, What Do Low-Income Single Mothers Say About Marriage?, Aug. 9,
2001, available at http://www.jcpr.org/wpfiles/edin_WP_ediforweb1-
31.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Those who say that marriage promotion will only be done in
relationships where there is no violence are clueless about the dynamic
of domestic violence and the very clear truth that most women who are
victims of violence are ashamed and afraid and extremely unlikely to
offer the reveal the violence in their lives to others. Many victims
fear the potential consequences of acknowledging the abuse: the stigma
of being a domestic violence victim; the very real possibility of
losing their children to child welfare agencies; the possibility that
disclosure of violence will escalate the abuse. Marriage promotion
programs, no matter how ``sensitive'' to domestic violence on paper,
cannot change the fact that those promoting marriage will probably not
know about violence in the relationship they are trying to make legally
permanent. Thus, programs that push poor women into marriage with the
fathers of their children may inadvertently legitimize abusive
situations; similarly, programs that discourage divorce may increase
the already deep shame and social pressure to remain with the abuser
that women who are married and are being abused often feel. A
governmental message to poor women who are violence victims that there
is something wrong with being unmarried will make it even more
difficult for women who are trying to leave an abusive relationship to
do so. The complexity of domestic violence and the danger to women who
stay in or formalize abusive relationships make any government-
sponsored marriage promotion program extremely problematic.
TANF currently includes a Family Violence Option (FVO) allowing
states to confidentially screen for domestic violence, refer to
services, and modify or waive program requirements that would be unsafe
or unfair to victims of domestic violence. Although nearly all states
have adopted some version of the FVO, not all states have done so. With
such an overwhelming correlation between violence and poverty, it is
both troubling and illogical that Congress would consider mandating
marriage promotion and providing significant financial incentives for
states to fund marriage promotion while not requiring states to address
domestic violence through the FVO. At a minimum, Congress should
require all states to screen for domestic violence and refer
individuals to services and should invest TANF dollars in case worker
training, a study of best practices with respect to addressing domestic
violence in TANF, and dissemination of those best practices to all
states to help them address this very real barrier to economic
security.
D. Marriage Does Not Address the Root Causes of Women's Poverty and
Is Not a Reliable Long-Term Solution to Women's Poverty. Common sense
tells us that two incomes are better than one and thus more likely to
move people off of welfare. But a closer look at the facts shows that
marriage is not the simple solution to poverty that it is made out to
be.
First, forming a two-parent family does not guarantee economic
security. Forty percent of all families living in poverty are two-
parent families. Thus, two-parent families are not immune to poverty or
the economic stresses single parent families face.
Second, due to death and divorce, marriage does not ensure women's
economic security. Approximately 40 percent of marriages end in divorce
\29\ and 12 percent end due to the husband's death.\30\ Among women
currently on welfare, about 40 percent are married or were married at
one time: 18.4 percent are married; 12.3 percent are separated; 8.3
percent are divorced; and about 1 percent are widows. A significant
number of divorces and separations are due to domestic violence. In
these cases it is futile to claim that marriage would provide security,
economic or otherwise. Indeed, there is no simple causal relationship
between single motherhood and poverty.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\29\ The National Marriage Project, Annual Report: the State of Our
Unions: the Social Health of Marriage in America, 2000 (June 2000),
available at http://marriage.rutgers.edu/NMPAR2000.pdf.
\30\ United States Census Bureau, Current Population Reports,
Series No. P20-514, Marriage Status and Living Arrangements: March 1998
(Update) (2000), available at http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/p20-
514u.pdf.
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The reasons that women, more than men, experience an economic
downfall outside of marriage include: primary care giving
responsibility for children which--without attendant employment
protections and due to lack of quality, affordable, accessible child
care--makes unemployment or underemployment inevitable; discrimination
in the labor market; and domestic violence. Without addressing the
factors that keep women from being economically self-sufficient,
marriage and family formation advocates are merely proposing to shift
women's ``dependence'' from the welfare system to marriage. That
certainly does not promote individual responsibility, nor is it a
policy solution for genuine, reliable, economic security.
On the other hand, a policy that invests in education, training and
work supports empowers women to achieve true economic security. In
2000, only 1.2 percent of single mothers with a college degree who
worked full-time year round lived in poverty. Less than eight percent
of single mothers with some college working full-time lived in
poverty.\31\ This is by far the best poverty reduction statistic; a
clear indication of what strategy will work best in lifting families
out of poverty.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\31\ Neil G. Bennett, et. al., National Center for Children in
Poverty, Young Children in Poverty: A Statistical Update, June 17,
1999, available at http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/nccp/99uptext.html.
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In fact, the approach to marriage advocated by H.R. 4 and PRIDE has
it backwards. Economic security is more likely to lead to successful
marriage than is marriage likely to lead to economic security. The
outcomes of the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) support this
conclusion. MFIP reached welfare-eligible single and two-parent
families and focused on participation in employment services for long-
term welfare recipients combined with financial incentives to encourage
and support work. These work supports include child care, medical care,
and rewarding work by helping the family to develop enough earning
power to survive financially without cash assistance before cutting off
their benefits. A study comparing the economic progress of those in the
standard AFDC welfare program with MFIP participants found that only 14
percent of AFDC recipients compared with 25 percent of families in the
MFIP program were out of poverty within 2\1/4\ years and the MFIP
families had on average $1,400 more in annual income. After 36 months
MFIP participants were 40 percent more likely to be married than
participants in the standard AFDC program, and nearly 50 percent less
likely to be divorced after five years. The MFIP program shows that
allowing families to combine welfare and work, and providing work
supports to help individuals become economically secure, are approaches
that will strengthen marriage and reduce divorce.\32\
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\32\ Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. (MDRC), chap. 6,
available at http://www.mdrc.org/Reports2000/MFIP/MFIP-Vol-1-Adult.pdf.
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Investments in education, training and work supports can both
empower women to achieve economic security (thereby economically
empowering couples as well) and strengthen marriages. If Congress takes
this approach it can enable individuals to achieve their own goals,
without invading their privacy or endangering their families.
Conclusion
The solution to poverty is not to interfere with basic privacy
rights of poor women but rather to focus on economic self-sufficiency.
Decisions regarding marriage and childbearing are among the most
private decisions an individual can make. Congress must not use women's
economic vulnerability as an excuse for attempting to control their
decisions regarding marriage and childbearing. Fighting poverty and
promoting family well-being will depend on positive governmental
support for proven policies that support low income parents in their
struggle to obtain and retain good jobs, while at the same time
providing the best possible care for their children. That in turn is
the best way to insure healthy and stable families.
______
Prepared Statement of Timothy J. Casey, Senior Staff Attorney; and
Lisalyn Jacobs, Vice President, Legal Momentum
Recent Marriage Promotion Studies
The Bush Administration and its allies are touting two new marriage
promotion studies as proof that domestic violence is not a concern and
that marriage promotion works. These claims are false.
The Administration's initiative would add marriage promotion to the
Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. Study after
study demonstrates that a large proportion of the welfare caseload
(between 15 percent and 20 percent) are current or recent victims of
serious domestic violence,\1\ and that between half to two thirds of
the women on welfare have suffered domestic violence or abuse at some
time in their adult lives.\2\
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\1\ See Jody Raphael & Richard M. Tolman, Taylor Inst. and the
Univ. of Mich. Research Dev. Ctr. on Poverty, Risk and Mental Health,
``Trapped by Poverty, Trapped by Abuse: New Evidence Documenting the
Relationship Between Domestic Violence and Welfare,'' 12 (1997).
\2\ See Mary Ann Allard et al., McCormack Inst., ``In Harms Way?
Domestic Violence, AFDC Receipt and Welfare Reform in Mass.,'' 12, 14
(1997) (64.9 percent of 734 women); Ellen L Bassuck et al., '' The
Characteristics and Needs of Sheltered Homeless and Low-Income Housed
Mothers,'' 276 JAMA 640 at 12, 20 (1996) (61.0 percent of 220 women);
William Curcio, ``Passaic County Study of AFDC Recipients in a Welfare-
to-Work Program: A Preliminary Analysis,'' 12, 14 (1997) (57.3 percent
of 846 women).
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A new Heritage Foundation study concedes these high domestic
violence rates but argues that they are irrelevant because the marriage
promotion initiative won't target welfare recipients but rather will
target so-called ``fragile families''--unmarried parents of newborns--
for whom, Heritage asserts, domestic violence rates are much lower than
for welfare recipients.\3\ But there is absolutely nothing in the
Administration's proposal that restricts or targets the proposed
funding to fragile families, the Administration itself has never made
such a claim, and the Administration has funded many marriage promotion
programs that target welfare recipients as a group.
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\3\ Melissa G. Pardue and Robert Rector, ``Reducing Domestic
Violence: How the Healthy Marriage Initative Can Help,'' Heritage
Foundation Backgrounder No. 1744 (March 30, 2004), http://
www.heritage.org/Research/Family/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/
getfile.cfm&
PageID=60606
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Heritage also claims that marriage promotion programs have been
shown to reduce domestic violence, a claim that the Administration
itself does not make. Heritage does not cite a single study to support
its claim, offering as the sole evidence a statement from an Oklahoma
official that not a single instance of domestic abuse ``linked'' to the
Oklahoma Marriage Initiative has been reported.
Even assuming this statement to be true, this proves absolutely
nothing about whether even the Oklahoma program has reduced domestic
violence--and, as former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating recently
explained to the Senate, that program makes unusual efforts to address
domestic violence, by working closely with the Oklahoma domestic
violence coalition, training all providers of marriage promotion
services on domestic violence issues, and providing information about
domestic violence services to all program participants.\4\ Much less is
there any evidence about the effects on domestic violence of other
programs in other places which lack the protections that are in the
Oklahoma program. What is more, the Administration has not proposed to
require these protections in its marriage initiative, and is currently
funding many marriage promotion projects without requiring that they
include domestic violence protections.
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\4\ http://health.senate.gov/testimony/86_tes.html
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Heritage also argues that marriage protects women from domestic
violence because unmarried mothers report a higher rate of domestic
violence than married mothers. But it is much more plausible to suppose
that domestic violence discourages single mothers from marrying their
abusers than to suppose, as Heritage appears to do, that an abuser will
cease his abuse if the woman he is abusing marries him. Further, it is
simply indisputable that many married women are victims of domestic
violence, as domestic violence is one of the main reasons that roughly
half of all marriages end in divorce. The Oklahoma marriage program
that Heritage cites recently conducted a study which found that
domestic violence was given as a reason for their divorce by 44 percent
of the state's divorced women and by 57 percent of the divorced women
who had been welfare recipients.\5\
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\5\ Communication from Oklahoma official, copy available upon
request.
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Concerning divorce, the Administration is hailing another new study
as proof that marriage promotion programs reduce divorce. According to
Dr. Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary for ACF, who appeared at an April 5
press conference touting the study, the study refutes critics who have
said that there is no proof that marriage promotion reduces divorce.\6\
This dubious study proves nothing.
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\6\ http://marriagesavers.org/Press%20Release.htm
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The new study evaluates the impact of the Community Marriage Policy
(CMP) program that is operated by an organization called Marriage
Savers, http://marriagesavers.org/.\7\ The study was conducted by the
Institute for Research and Evaluation of Salt Lake City, whose
director, Dr. Stan Weed, was one of the study's authors. The Institute
has no website, and its capacity for performing evaluative research is
unknown.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Stan Weed et al., ``Assessing the Impact of Community Marriage
Policies on U.S. County Divorce Rate,'' executive summary available at
http://marriagesavers.org/Executive%20Sum
mary.htm
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The CMP program lobbies clergy to sign pledges that they will not
marry any couple unless the couple first takes ``rigorous marriage
preparation of at least four months during which couples take a
premarital inventory and talk through relational issues it surfaces
with trained mentor couples, who also teach couple communication
skills.'' The CMP study compared 122 counties in which Marriage Savers
reports that some clergy have signed such pledges with 122 other
counties selected by the study's authors. The executive summary reports
that ``counties with a Community Marriage Policy had an 8.6 percent
(average) decline in their divorce rates over four years, while the
comparison counties registered a 5.6 percent (average) decline.'' Based
on this finding, the evaluators assert that ``[t]he simple explanation
of the results is that Community Marriage Policies are successful and
lead to reductions in divorce rates.''
Only the study's executive summary has been released and the
summary contains less than even barebones details. (For example, only
one of the counties with a CMP program is identified.) Dr. Weed refused
our request for a copy of the full study.
Dr. Weed appears to have thin research credentials. We were unable
to locate any other evaluation studies conducted by Dr. Weed or his
Institute.
Moreover, Dr. Weed appears to be a partisan of the CMP program, not
a neutral evaluator. The Salt Lake Tribune reported on January 12 that
he and the Marriage Savers director had met with leaders of the Mormon
Church to urge that the church adopt the CMP program.\8\ Dr. Weed's
Institute also reported on its 2002 tax return that it had received
$46,737 from Marriage Savers, raising serious questions about his
objectivity in evaluating the Marriage Savers CMP program.\9\
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\8\ ``Could `Marriage Policy' Cut Utah's Divorce Rate'', The Salt
Lake Tribune (Jan. 12, 2004), link to article available at http://
nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives
\9\ Tax return available at http://www.guidestar.org/index.jsp
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Dr. Weed's expertise and objectivity are especially crucial
questions given that the study methodology was so highly subjective.
The finding of positive results for CMP rests entirely on a comparison
of the CMP counties with counties without CMP selected by the
evaluators. A different set of selections might well have yielded
contrary results.
Dr. Horn's endorsement of the CMP study as proof that marriage
promotion works shows that the Administration still embraces the
simplistic and dangerous message that marriage is good and divorce is
bad, a message which is contrary to the Administration's repeated claim
that it intends to promote not marriage per se but only ``healthy
marriage.'' If healthy marriage is the goal, a marriage promotion
program's success must be measured by whether it increases healthy
marriage, not marriage per se. But even taken at face value, the CMP
study offers no evidence that the CMP program increases healthy
marriage. The study focused exclusively on divorce rates. There was no
effort to measure the prevalence of domestic violence or the quality of
the marriages in CMP communities, or to assess how the CMP program
affected domestic violence.
There are also separation of church and state concerns. These arise
from the possibility, apparently envisioned by Dr. Horn when he
appeared at the April 5 press conference promoting the CMP study, that
CMP is one type of program the Administration would like to fund
through the marriage promotion allocations it has requested from
Congress. In fact, Dr. Horn has already provided Federal funding to an
Idaho marriage promotion program seeking to model the CMP approach. The
separation of church and state issue is this: the CMP program relies on
obtaining commitments from churches not to marry couples unless and
until the couples have completed a four month long premarital marriage
education program. It is entirely appropriate for churches to adopt
such a policy if they so choose, and for Smart Marriages or similar
organizations to use their own private funds to encourage churches to
make this commitment. But a central premise of the separation of church
and state that is embodied in our Constitution's First Amendment is
that government must avoid entangling itself in religion. Using public
funds in an attempt to influence churches as to the conduct of their
internal affairs violates the values underlying this fundamental First
Amendment principle.
[all]