[Senate Hearing 108-830]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-830
HEALTHY MARRIAGE: WHAT IS IT AND WHY SHOULD WE PROMOTE IT?
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
EXAMINING HOW TO PROMOTE A HEALTHY MARRIAGE, FOCUSING ON THE HEALTHY
MARRIAGE INITIATIVE, THE TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE TO NEEDY FAMILIES
PROGRAM, AND DISCOURAGING TEEN PREGNANCY
__________
APRIL 28, 2004
__________
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COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire, Chairman
BILL FRIST, Tennessee EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee TOM HARKIN, Iowa
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio JAMES M. JEFFORDS (I), Vermont
PAT ROBERTS, Kansas JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama PATTY MURRAY, Washington
JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada JACK REED, Rhode Island
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina
JOHN WARNER, Virginia HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York
Sharon Soderstrom, Staff Director
J. Michael Myers, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
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Subcommittee on Children and Families
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee, Chairman
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri TOM HARKIN, Iowa
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio JAMES M. JEFFORDS (I), Vermont
PAT ROBERTS, Kansas JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama PATTY MURRAY, Washington
JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada JACK REED, Rhode Island
LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina
JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York
Marguerite Sallee, Staff Director
Grace A. Reef, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS
THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 2004
Page
Sessions, Hon. Jeff, a U.S. Senator From the State of Alabama,
opening statement.............................................. 1
Enzi, Hon. Michael B., a U.S. Senator From the State of Alabama,
prepared statement............................................. 2
Horn, Wade, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families,
Department of Health and Human Services........................ 4
Prepared statement........................................... 6
Whitehead, Barbara DaFoe, Co-Director, National Marriage Project,
Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ; Roland C. Warren,
President, National Fatherhood Initiative, Germantown, MD; Hon.
Frank Keating, Former governor of Oklahoma, and President and
Chief Executive Office, American Council of Life Insurers,
McLean, VA; and Stan E. Weed, President, The Institute for
Research and Evaluation, Salt Lake City, UT.................... 18
Prepared statements of:
Ms. Whitehead............................................ 21
Mr. Warren............................................... 29
Governor Keating......................................... 37
Mr. Weed................................................. 44
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.:
Stop Family Violence, Welfare Reform and Marriage
Initiatives--Marriage Diaries.............................. 60
Legal Momemtum
Welfare Reform and Marriage Initiatives.................. 69
Recent Marriage Promotion Studies........................ 76
HEALTHY MARRIAGE: WHAT IS IT AND WHY SHOULD WE PROMOTE IT?
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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 2004
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Children and Families, of the Committee on
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:02 p.m., in
room SD-430, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator Jeff
Sessions (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Senators Sessions, Bond, and Allard.
Opening Statement of Senator Sessions
Senator Sessions. I think we will go ahead and get started.
I know a number of members plan to attend and I know that there
are conflicts. At this moment there is a conference going on on
the Republican side, but I thought we would go ahead and get
started. I welcome all of you to this hearing.
Marriage is unquestionably one of the fundamental
institutions in our society. There was a time when it would
have been difficult to imagine that such a pillar of
civilization could be threatened. Yet today some say marriage
is outdated and unimportant. We hear this from certain
academics, the popular media, the secular left. The issue is
driven home with emphasis when high courts declare that the
traditional definition of marriage is unconstitutional.
I believe that it is important that we carefully examine
this institution. Let me begin by emphasizing that while
discussing the value of marriage to individuals and to society,
I do not mean to in any way disparage single-parent families.
Certainly there is no doubt that many children who grow up in
single-parent households develop quite well. However, we are
here to discuss what our scientific information will tell us
and what the numbers say. We want to determine what the optimal
arrangement for families might be.
By looking at marriage, we need to answer three fundamental
questions, it seems to me. First, is marriage good for
individuals and for society? Second, if marriage is good for
individuals and society, should Government be involved in
supporting and promoting it? And finally, if Government is
involved, can it make a positive difference?
I believe that after listening to our distinguished group
of witnesses today we will determine that the answers to these
questions are yes, based on the remarkable and excellent
presentations that I have read. First, the evidence will show
that marriage is a social good. Marriage certainly contributes
to the physical, emotional and economic health of men, women,
and children, and therefore is beneficial to the country as a
whole. A plethora of social science evidence demonstrates that
children do best when they grow up with both married biological
parents.
The answer to the second question is also yes, Government
should be involved both in supporting and promoting marriage.
The Government frequently advances policies to promote the
general welfare. For example, we provide incentives for
homeownership, something I believe strongly in, because we know
that communities with high levels of homeownership are safer,
more stable, and families are stronger where homeownership is
common. There are also tax breaks for charitable giving;
grants, loans and tax breaks for educational advancement; and
incentives for preventive health care. All of these are
examples of Government supporting and promoting a social good.
Additionally, Government involvement can be justified
because divorce and unwed childbearing create substantial
public costs borne by the taxpayers. When both adults and
children are members of a family led by a married man and
woman, they suffer from lower rates of crime, drug abuse,
education failure, chronic illness, child abuse, domestic
violence, poverty, and other social problems. These families do
not require as many programs covered by tax dollars such as
welfare expenditures, remedial and special education expenses,
daycare subsidies, child support collection costs,
administrative costs, and social program cost. Therefore,
Government has a very real interest in promoting marriage.
Finally, I would answer the third question by arguing that
Government can make a very real difference by promoting and
supporting marriage. Today we will hear about a recent study
which demonstrates that policies supporting marriage in
communities have led to a decrease in the number of divorces in
those communities. We are going to hear about the Oklahoma
marriage initiative, an innovative program to promote and
support marriage that is serving as a model to other States and
communities.
I do not believe that we have to continue down the same
path that Europe is presently on. It is not inevitable that we
will have 60 percent of our children born to unmarried parents
as they are in Denmark. We do not have to allow other countries
or our own activist courts to tell us that traditional marriage
is outdated. It is not and we will let the facts speak for
themselves today. In fact we will serve our Nation and the
world if we study the issue objectively and take steps to
reverse the trends and prove that the marriage of one man and
one woman is and will always be the most ideal framework for a
family.
At this time I would like to submit a statement from
Senator Enzi for the record.
[The prepared statement from Senator Enzi follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Enzi
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for agreeing to hold this hearing
on healthy marriages. This is not only a vital topic for this
committee, but an issue of great concern to our constituents
across the Nation.
Almost every day, if you pick up the paper or read one of
the weekly magazines you will see a spirited debate on the
topic of marriage going on all over the country. Today's
hearing will examine some of the arguments that have been made
about marriage and send an important message to a wide audience
that will make clear what the ramifications are of this issue
and how they may have an impact on our work in Congress, as
well as the policies we pursue on the local, State and national
level.
I believe a healthy marriage isn't all that difficult to
define. It starts with a heartfelt commitment to a spouse.
Speaking from my own experience, I have often noted the Enzi
tradition of ``overmarriage.'' Simply put, my son and I, along
with many other male Enzis in the past have been blessed to
find that special someone in our lives who helped us to set
goals in our lives and worked with us to achieve them.
One of the most important of those goals has been the care
and nurturing of our children our next generation of leaders. I
have often heard it said that the most important job we have as
a society is raising our children and if we don't do a good job
of that, nothing else we do will matter very much. It's a
philosophy I support and promote in my household and in my
life. It's also the philosophy behind a healthy marriage. I
have recently become a grandfather, so that has added another
dimension to my belief about healthy marriages and the fruits
that continue to be produced by the shared commitment of a man
and woman to their future together.
Yes, you can put me down as a strong believer in the
importance of a healthy marriage to our society because I have
been the beneficiary of it, so I may be biased. Fortunately,
you don't have to take my word for it. There is plenty of
objective evidence to prove that marriage is no longer a moral
issue that has no place in the policy realm. We now realize
that the institution of marriage has a significant impact on
health policies, economic prosperity and the prospects for
child development. Research by several different organizations
and individuals has shown that marriage is a significant part
of the equation to reduce child and family poverty. It is a
major factor in the mental health and development of children,
and it also has an impact on their civic involvement. That
shouldn't come as a surprise to us, because we know that
children learn from their parents as each parent becomes a role
model for their future relationships, including their own
marriage.
Several years' worth of research has demonstrated that
children from stable two-parent homes are much more likely to
succeed in school and in life than their peers. As some of the
witnesses have suggested in their testimony, a healthy marriage
is among the most important indicators of future success, even
to the point that it is a stronger indicator than socioeconomic
factors. Children from stable two-parent homes are also more
likely to marry and stay married themselves.
In economic terms, two-parent families are less likely to
need full-time child care services. The Federal Government
spends billions of dollars each year on child care, but we
spend next to nothing on programs that would encourage
marriage. I have often expressed my concern that Congress is in
the habit of treating symptoms rather than pursuing cures, and
child care is one instance where promoting healthy marriages
would help make the most of the Federal commitment to child
care, by helping to focus that assistance to the families and
single parents that need it most.
In most instances, if someone were to testify that a
specific behavior could practically guarantee lower poverty
rates, higher school achievement, lower participation in high-
risk behaviors and significantly improve opportunities for
long-term success in life, it would be embraced by every Member
of Congress without reservation. Unfortunately, when marriage
is identified as the behavior that would produce those
benefits, the support for the policy doesn't materialize the
way it should.
The benefits of marriage should not be excluded from the
discussion when Congress considers major policy decisions. We
should be considering the reauthorization of the Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and supporting the
institution of marriage should be a critical component of that
reauthorization.
There is no question that the great institutions of our
society serve as teachers to our children and the younger
generation. The institution of marriage certainly qualifies for
that distinction. Healthy marriages teach our children about
long range goals and opportunities, about keeping our word and
our promises, and about the role they will someday play in
life. Marriage is more than the legal bond that recognizes the
union of a man and a woman, it is a heartfelt commitment to the
future of our Nation, our way of life, and ultimately, to our
family and all our children.
Senator Sessions. I look forward to hearing from our
distinguished witnesses today and I think each of you who will
be listening to this hearing will conclude that we have some
extraordinary witnesses and their message is very important to
us.
Dr. Wade Horn is the Assistant Secretary for Children and
Families with the Department of Health and Human Services. It
is appropriate we lead off with you, Dr. Horn. Prior to his
appointment as Assistant Secretary in 2001, Dr. Horn was the
president of the National Fatherhood Initiative and has a
history that demonstrates a commitment to children and
families, including Commissioner for Children, Youth, and
Families and as Chief of the Children's Bureau in the
Administration on Children, Youth, and Families. He is the
author of numerous articles and books on children and family
issues. He received his Ph.D. in clinical child psychology from
Southern Illinois University in 1981.
Dr. Horn, we are delighted to have you with us and are
interested in hearing your thoughts on this important subject.
STATEMENT OF WADE HORN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR CHILDREN AND
FAMILIES, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Mr. Horn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
thank you for calling this afternoon's hearing on marriage and
for giving me the opportunity to share the Administration's
work on this very important issue.
It is a credit that you and other members of the
subcommittee are focused on family formation and healthy
marriages with a very important purpose in mind, to enhance the
well-being of children.
Why should government be in the business of supporting the
formation and stability of healthy marriages? Because the
research literature is now replete with studies showing that
children raised in stable, healthy marriages are less at risk
for a host of negative developmental outcomes compared to
children raised in unstable, unhealthy and dysfunctional
households.
It is not just children who benefit from healthy marriages.
Research shows that adults in healthy marriages are happier,
healthier and accumulate more wealth compared to those who are
not. And communities, as you note, with high rates of healthy
marriages evidence less pathology, such as crime and welfare
dependency, compared to those with low rates of healthy
marriages.
The good news is that in a remarkably short period of time
we have moved past the question of whether government ought to
be involved in supporting healthy marriages to the question of
how. There are many problems worth attending to, but strong and
healthy marriages are the bedrock of strong and healthy
societies, without which we will forever be seeking new
programs and services to cope with the ever-increasing social
problems that result from their absence.
One of the most important lessons that we have learned when
explaining the government's role in promoting and strengthening
healthy marriages is to first talk about what government ought
not to do.
First, government ought not to force anyone to get married.
One very important American tradition is the belief in a
limited government. One of the areas in which government ought
to be limited is the decision about whether or not a person
should be married. That decision should remain completely up to
the individual couple. Government ought not to get into the
business of interfering with that personal decisionmaking.
Second, government ought not, intentionally or otherwise,
to implement policies that will encourage anyone to get into an
abusive relationship. In all that we do in this area we should
always have a mindful eye toward ensuring that we do not
increase the risk of domestic violence for anyone as a
consequence of our work.
Third, government ought not to promote marriage by
withdrawing support for single-parent families.
And finally, government ought not to promote marriage by
being afraid to mention its name. There is something unique
about marital relationships that distinguish it from other
types of relationships. Preparing couples for marriage is
different from preparing them for other types of relationship
arrangements.
What then should government do? Here are three principles
that we believe should underlie government's role in supporting
marriage.
First, we ought to make it clear that government is in the
business of promoting healthy marriages, not just marriage per
se. The fact is that healthy marriages are good for children.
Dysfunctional and abusive marriages are not.
Second, government should not merely seek to be neutral
about marriage. Government is not neutral about lots of things,
as you have noted, things like homeownership and charitable
giving, precisely because it can be shown that homeownership
and charitable giving contribute to the common good. In much
the same way, government, while not forcing anyone to marry,
can and should provide support for healthy marriages precisely
because it can be shown that healthy marriages contribute to
the common good. As such, removing disincentives for marriage
is fine. But that would only achieve neutrality.
Third, while we do not know as much as we would like to
know about supporting healthy marriages, that should not be
used as an excuse to do nothing. We do know, for example, that
what separates stable and healthy marriages from unstable and
unhealthy ones is not the frequency of conflict but how the
couple manages conflict. The good news is that through marriage
education we can help teach couples how to manage conflict in
healthy ways.
With these three principles in mind, the Bush
Administration is undertaking the following bold initiatives to
support the formation and stability of healthy marriages.
First, the President has proposed increased funding for
marriage education services as part of the reauthorization of
the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program known as
TANF. With these funds, organizations could conduct public
education campaigns about how marriage education can help
couples build healthy marriages, offer premarital education and
marriage enrichment programs, and provide targeted outreach to
troubled marriages so that couples do not have to view divorce
as the only alternative when they experience marital distress.
Second, we are already working to integrate support for
healthy marriages into our existing array of social service
programs. We have, for example, begun to integrate marriage
education programs into our child welfare system, providing
marriage education to couples as a way to reduce the risk of
child abuse and neglect. We have also begun to integrate
support for healthy marriages into services currently being
offered through the child support enforcement system, and we
have added marriage education to the range of social services
we offer to couples who come to America as refugees.
The reason we have come so far in promoting healthy
marriage in America in such a short time is because of the
leadership and commitment of President Bush. During his first
year in office President Bush said, ``My Administration is
committed to strengthening the American family. Many one-parent
families are also a source of comfort and reassurance. Yet a
family with a mom and a dad who are committed to marriage and
devote themselves to their children helps provide children a
sound foundation for success. Government can support families
by promoting policies that help strengthen the institution of
marriage and help parents rear their children in positive and
healthy environments.''
Mr. Chairman, I could not have said it better myself. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Horn follows:]
Prepared Statement of Wade F. Horn
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for calling
this afternoon's hearing on the president's healthy marriage initiative
and for giving me the opportunity to share the Administration's work on
this very important issue. I appreciate the subcommittee's interest in
promoting healthy marriages and your continued efforts to improve the
health and well-being of children and families throughout our Nation.
For thousands of years, healthy marriages have been the legacy of
healthy families. President Bush, like members of the subcommittee, has
focused on family formation and healthy marriages with an important
purpose in mind: to enhance the well-being of children. As the
President has stated: ``My Administration is committed to strengthening
the American family. Many one-parent families are also a source of
comfort and reassurance, yet a family with a mom and dad who are
committed to marriage and devote themselves to their children helps
provide children a sound foundation for success. Government can support
families by promoting policies that help strengthen the institution of
marriage and help parents rear their children in positive and healthy
environments.''
Why should government be in the business of supporting the
formation and stability of healthy marriages? Because the research
literature is now replete with studies showing that children raised in
stable, healthy marriages are less at risk for a host of negative
developmental outcomes compared to children raised in unstable,
unhealthy and dysfunctional married households. We know, for example,
that children raised in healthy married households are less likely to
be poor, less likely to fail at school, and less likely to have an
emotional or behavioral problem requiring psychiatric treatment,
compared to those who are not. Moreover, as adolescents, they are less
likely to commit crime, develop substance abuse problems or to commit
suicide. Healthy marriages, it appears, are the best environment for
rearing healthy children.
And it is not just children who benefit from healthy marriages.
Research shows that adults in healthy marriages are happier, healthier,
and accumulate more wealth compared to those who are not. And
communities with high rates of healthy marriages evidence fewer social
pathologies, such as crime and welfare dependency, compared to those
with low rates of healthy marriages.
Unfortunately, too many children today are growing up without the
benefit of parents and grandparents in healthy, stable marriages.
Indeed, more than half of all children today will spend some or all of
their childhood in homes without a mom and dad in a healthy, stable
marriage.
THE HEALTHY MARRIAGE INITIATIVE
That is why President Bush proposed his healthy marriage
initiative. He, like so many others, sees the good that often comes
from healthy marriages. The President recognizes the importance of
helping couples who choose marriage for themselves access services, on
a voluntary basis, where they can develop the skills and knowledge
necessary to form and sustain healthy marriages for the benefit of
children, adults, and society.
The good news is that in a remarkably short period of time, we have
moved past the question of whether government ought to be involved in
supporting healthy marriages to the question of how government should
be involved in supporting healthy marriages. This shift from the
question of ``whether'' to the question of ``how'' is an exceedingly
important one--for it is not possible to seek solutions to a problem
until, and unless, that problem is called by its correct name. Yes,
there are many problems worth attending to. But strong and healthy
marriages are as good as bedrock for strong and healthy societies.
There are few things I know for certain, but here is one: A critical
mass of healthy marriages help all societies to function well, and
without that critical mass, they will forever be seeking new programs
and services to cope with the ever increasing social problems that
result from its absence.
WHAT GOVERNMENT OUGHT NOT TO DO
One of the most important lessons we've learned when explaining the
government's role in promoting and strengthening healthy marriages is
to first talk about what the government ought not to do.
First, government ought not to force anyone to get married. One
very important American tradition is the belief in limited government.
One of the areas in which government ought to be limited is the
decision about whether or not a person should get married. That
decision should remain completely up to the individual, ideally in
consultation with the individual's family. Government ought not to get
into the business of interfering with that personal decisionmaking.
Second, government ought not--intentionally or otherwise--implement
policies that will trap anyone in an abusive relationship. Domestic
violence is, tragically, a terrible reality for far too many couples
today. Marriage does not cure domestic violence. All too often, it
exacerbates it. Whatever policies we implement, none of them should--
either directly or indirectly--contribute in any way to this terrible
problem.
Third, government ought not to promote marriage by withdrawing
supports for single-parent families. I know of no evidence that says
that child well-being is improved by withdrawing supports for single
parents. Promoting healthy marriage ought to be about affirming healthy
marriage, not denigrating single people. President Bush has said
``Single mothers do amazing work in difficult circumstances, succeeding
at a job far harder than most of us can possibly imagine. They deserve
our respect and they deserve our support.'' He's right. Supporting
healthy marriages cannot come at the expense of supporting children
living in other family structures. All children are unique gifts from
God, and each one--every one--deserves our support and encouragement,
no matter what their family arrangement.
Finally, government ought not to promote marriage by being afraid
to mention its name. There is something unique about the marital
relationship that distinguishes it from other types of relationships.
Preparing couples for marriage, therefore, is different from preparing
them for other types of relationship arrangements. Relationship
education, for example, is a good thing, and I support it. I would
certainly favor helping individuals develop all sorts of good
relationship skills. But marriage is fundamentally different from other
types of relationships. As such, we ought not to shy away from using
the word ``marriage'' if it is, indeed, marriage we seek to promote.
WHAT GOVERNMENT OUGHT TO DO
What, then, should government do? Here are three principles that I
believe should underlie government's role in supporting marriage.
First, we ought to make it clear that government is in the business
of promoting healthy marriages. The fact is healthy marriages are good
for children; dysfunctional and abusive marriages are not. Hence,
government, as a strategy for improving the well being of children,
ought to be in the business of promoting healthy marriages.
Second, government should not merely seek to be neutral about
marriage. Governments are--and should be--neutral about lots of things.
Take ice cream preference, for example. Government has no business
promoting one flavor of ice cream over another because there is no
evidence that individuals, couples, children, families or communities
benefit from the choice of one flavor of ice cream over another. Hence,
government is neutral when it comes to a personal preference for
vanilla or strawberry ice cream.
But government is not neutral about lots of things--like home
ownership or charitable giving--precisely because it can be shown that
home ownership and charitable giving contribute to the common good.
Hence, government provides incentives--primarily in the way of tax
incentives--for home ownership and charitable giving. In much the same
way, government, while not forcing anyone to marry, can--and should--
provide support for healthy marriages precisely because it can be shown
that healthy marriages contribute to the common good. As such, removing
disincentives for marriage is fine--but that would only achieve
neutrality. When it comes to something as important to society as
healthy marriages, government cannot afford to simply be neutral.
Third, while we don't know as much as we would like to know about
how to promote healthy marriages, that shouldn't be used as an excuse
to do nothing. While it is true that we don't have perfect knowledge
when it comes to designing initiatives to support healthy marriages, we
do know something. We do know, for example, that what separates stable
and healthy marriages from unstable and unhealthy ones is not the
frequency of conflict, but how couples manage conflict. Couples who are
able to listen to each other with respect, communicate effectively and
problem-solve conflict in healthy ways, report higher levels of marital
satisfaction and are less likely to divorce than those who are not able
to do so. The good news is that through marriage education, we can
teach these skills and in so doing, increase the odds that couples will
form and sustain healthy marriages--to the benefit of their children,
themselves, and society.
And new research is constantly shedding more light on our path. For
example, research is dispelling the myth that couples--and especially
low-income couples--no longer are interested in marriage as a life
goal. Survey after survey shows that most young people continue to
aspire to healthy, stable marriage. Even unmarried parents continue to
aspire to marriage. According to researchers at Princeton and Columbia
Universities, more than half of unmarried parents when asked at the
time their child is born out-of-wedlock indicate that they are actively
considering marriage--not some time to somebody, but to each other.
Yes, we have much to learn--but government ought not to be paralyzed by
imperfect knowledge. For in the words of the Russian novelist Ivan
Turgenev: ``If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely
everything is ready, we shall never begin.''
WHAT THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS DOING
With these three principles in mind, the Bush Administration has
undertaken the following bold initiatives to support the formation and
stability of healthy marriages.
First, President Bush has proposed increased funding for marriage
education services as part of the reauthorization of the Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. Specifically, the
President has requested spending $240 million annually to support
innovative efforts to integrate supports for healthy marriage into
existing government-sponsored welfare programs. Half of the money--$120
million--would be for a competitive matching grant program where
States, territories, and federally recognized tribes could develop
innovative approaches to support healthy marriages. Expenditures would
be matched dollar-for-dollar and Federal TANF funds could be used to
meet the matching requirement.
With these funds, States, territories, federally recognized tribes
and tribal organizations, local governments, and community and faith-
based organizations could conduct public education campaigns about the
benefits of healthy marriages and how marriage education can help
couples build healthy marriages; offer pre-marital education and
marriage enrichment programs to help couples, on a voluntary basis,
develop the skills and knowledge necessary to form and sustain healthy
marriages; and provide targeted outreach to troubled marriages so that
couples do not have to view divorce as the only alternative when they
experience marital distress. The goal in all of these efforts will be
on increasing the number of children growing up in healthy married
households. Why? Because healthy marriages are good for kids, unhealthy
marriages are not.
The other half of the money--another $120 million per year--would
be available for research, demonstrations and technical assistance
efforts focused primarily on healthy marriages and family formation.
Second, we are working to integrate support for healthy marriages
into our existing array of social service programs. We have, for
example, begun to integrate marriage education programs into our child
welfare system, providing marriage education to couples as a way to
reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect, for example, as well as
providing marriage education to couples who adopt to help ensure the
success of that adoption. We also have provided funding for the
development of curriculums that include effective ways of the promoting
of healthy marriages for schools that teach social work. And we've
begun to integrate support for healthy marriages into services
currently being offered through the child support enforcement system.
When it comes to promoting healthy marriages, we don't believe in a
``one-size-fits-all'' approach. Different groups of people need
different types of help. That's why we also are targeting funds to help
particularly vulnerable populations form and sustain healthy marriages.
For example, we have added marriage education to the range of social
services we offer to couples who come to America as refugees.
Each of these initiatives is not about subtraction--but addition.
They are about adding supports for healthy marriages into our publicly
financed service delivery system--a system that for far too long has
been afraid to even speak the word ``marriage.''
Finally, we also are seeking to integrate messages about the
importance of healthy marriages into programs that seek to discourage
teen pregnancy. The good news is that teen pregnancy is down in
America. The not-so-good news is that the rate of out-of-wedlock
childbearing for women in their 20's is increasing. While we have given
the clear message that, all things being equal, teenagers should avoid
becoming fathers and mothers, we are less clear about telling them that
they also should avoid becoming a mother or father until after they are
married. We need to help our young better understand not just the value
of waiting until they are ``older'' before becoming a parent, but also
the value of waiting until they are married.
Of course, if our young people are going to avoid becoming parents
before marriage, the best way for them to accomplish that is to be
sexually abstinent until marriage. That is why President Bush also has
proposed dramatic increases in funding for abstinence education
programs. For as the President has said, ``When our children face a
choice between self-restraint and self-destruction, government should
not be neutral. Government should not sell children short by assuming
they are incapable of acting responsibly. We must promote good
choices.'' He's right, of course. Good choices early on pave the way
for healthy families in the future. If we succeed in implementing this
vision, we will succeed in strengthening marriages and families for
years to come.
But, some critics ask, is this really the function of government?
Isn't supporting healthy marriages too intrusive a role for advocates
of limited government to propose? Good question and we have a good
answer. To the extent to which we are successful in promoting healthy
marriages, we will be successful in reducing the risk of many of the
social ills that impede the healthy development of children, families,
and, indeed nations. And if we are successful in preventing many of the
social ills that impede the healthy development of children and
families, we will also obviate the need for other more costly--and more
intrusive--interventions.
We know, for example, that children who grow up in unhealthy
marriages and experience family breakup are more likely to be abused
and neglected. A compassionate society doesn't stand idly by and
tolerate children being abused and neglected, so we have a child
welfare system, including the investigation of reports of abuse and
neglect, and a foster care system to take care of children who are
abused and neglected. But if we are successful in helping couples form
and sustain healthy marriages, fewer children will be abused or
neglected, and as a result there will be less need for child welfare
services in the first place.
Indeed, as Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, I oversee
65 different social programs at a cost of nearly $47 billion dollars
each year. Go down the list of these programs--child welfare, child
support enforcement, programs for runaway youth, anti-poverty
programs--the need for each of these programs is either created or
exacerbated by the breakup of families and marriages. If we are ever
going to prevent the need for these services, we must begin preventing
these problems from happening in the first place. One way to accomplish
that is to help couples form and sustain healthy marriages.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LEADERSHIP
The reason we have come so far in promoting healthy marriage in
America is because of the leadership and commitment of President Bush.
The President understands that the cry of the hearts of so many
children is for their families and for the important role fathers can
play in their lives. And he understands that the one important way to
answer that cry is to become serious about renewing marriage.
During his first year in office, President Bush said this about the
need to renew fatherhood by strengthening families:
``None of us is perfect. And so no marriage and no family is
perfect. After all, we all are human. Yet, we need fathers and families
precisely because we are human. We all live, it is said, in the shelter
of one another. And our urgent hope is that one of the oldest hopes of
humanity is this, to turn the hearts of children toward their parents,
and the hearts of parents toward their young.''
Turning the hearts of children to their parents, and the parents to
their young is, indeed, the great hope of our efforts to strengthen
marriages in America. I know it is the great hope of members of this
subcommittee as well. Thank you.
Senator Sessions. Thank you, Dr. Horn. We appreciate your
comments and leadership. You have worked steadfast. You have
had an open door to listen to all issues, and I believe you
have won the respect of people throughout the country who deal
with these issues.
Tell me about the situation in a country like Australia. I
understand they may do even more than we do to nurture
families.
Mr. Horn. Australia has had an interesting policy in place
for a decade or more in which their Federal Government provides
funding for marriage education services to couples who choose
marriage for themselves and want to access those services on a
voluntary basis.
Senator Sessions. Would this be before they are married?
Mr. Horn. It is both available before but also after they
are married and is very similar to the kinds of things that we
are proposing. They have been doing it for a good decade and-a-
half or more without much controversy in the country of
Australia. That is because they have structured it in such a
way that it is clearly noncoercive. It is clearly voluntary. It
clearly has a sensitivity to issues related to domestic
violence. These are exactly the same kinds of attributes that
we would like to see a marriage initiative here in the United
States incorporate.
Senator Sessions. I know many ministers and churches insist
on premarital counseling. Some very excellent and detailed
counseling before marriage. Other programs offer that. Would
this encourage that kind of premarital counseling--to prepare a
couple for the inevitable stresses and problems that occur in
marriage?
Mr. Horn. Yes. One of the services that we are particularly
interested in supporting is premarital education, for a variety
of reasons. First of all, as I said in my opening statement,
the research is very clear that what separates stable and
healthy marriages from unstable and unhealthy marriages is not
the frequency of conflict--and as someone who has been married
for 26 years it is somewhat reassuring to know it is not the
frequency of conflict--but how the couples manage conflict. If
couples when faced with conflict either avoid it or escalate
it, that is associated with high levels of marital
dissatisfaction, high levels of divorce. But if they are able
to listen to each other with respect, if they can communicate
effectively, if they can problem-solve conflict in healthy
ways, that is associated with high levels of marital
satisfaction and lower levels of divorce.
The very good news is that we also have research that says
we can teach those skills. We can teach couples how to listen
effectively to each other, how to communicate well, how to
problem-solve conflict, through marriage education. When we do
that, couples report that they are able to implement these
skills in their lives. And when they do, they report higher
levels of marital satisfaction. There is even some evidence to
suggest that 5 years out there are lower rates of divorce. So
the good news is we can teach those kinds of skills through
premarital education.
But there is another benefit to premarital education. That
is that through that process one can identify some couples for
which marriage may not in fact be the best choice, either
because they are completely unprepared for the responsibilities
of marriage, or even worse, there is violence in the dating
relationship. I know of no evidence that would suggest the cure
for violence in a dating relationship is to get married. It
only increases the opportunity for more violence.
So through premarital education we can identify high-risk
couples and divert them away from marriage, particularly where
violence is part of the dating relationship. Doing so may in
fact prevent a bad marriage from happening in the first place,
and in the case of violence, protecting the victim. So we are
particularly interested in premarital education as a service
both to help couples who do get married build skills, but also
as an intervention point for those couples where violence might
be part of their relationship.
Senator Sessions. Now will the present proposal provide
counseling or other assistance in the case of an existing
marriage when the couple would like assistance?
Mr. Horn. The answer is yes. We also know that couples,
after they are married, often experience challenges, and if
those couples are equipped with good skills, listening skills,
communication skills, problem-solving skills and so forth, they
also are less likely to experience marital breakup and in fact
are more likely to report high levels of marital satisfaction.
So it is both about intervening before the marriage but also
after the marriage.
And finally, our efforts address outreach to troubled
marriages. In today's world, unfortunately, we tend to present
only two options to couples who experience marital distress. We
say either stay married and stay miserable or get divorced. The
fact of the matter is, there is a third option, for not all but
for many couples, and that option is to enter into counseling
to learn how to relate better, resolve your conflicts, and
resolve your difficulties. Research shows that many troubled
marriages in fact can be saved and the couples can fall more
deeply in love with each other, sometimes even more than on the
day they were married.
When faced with three options, if you are in a troubled
marriage, one, stay married, stay miserable, two, get divorced,
or three, go into marriage education and marriage counseling
and fall back in love with each other and emerge on the other
side with a healthy marriage, I think a lot more couples will
pick the third option.
Senator Sessions. At this time in which there is no longer
a social stigma of any significance on divorce--there was
probably too strong a stigma at one point in our history--it is
more important it seems to me, and would you agree, that we
advertise and make clear to the public the good things that
come from a stable marriage?
Mr. Horn. I think it is important for us to get the
research out there that shows that there are benefits of
healthy marriages to children, to adults, and to society. I
think, and research and surveys bear this out, one of the
reasons why some in the younger generation are attracted to
cohabitation is not so much because they are fearful of
marriage and a marital commitment, but because they are fearful
of divorce. The evidence of that is that a lot of their
friends, or perhaps themselves, grew up in a household where
divorce occurred. So, what surveys tell us is, a lot of young
couples choose cohabitation, not because they do not want to
get married but because they are fearful of divorce. They use
cohabitation as kind of a trial marriage, a way of determining
whether this person that they are cohabiting with would make a
good marital partner.
The difficulty is, research shows that cohabitation prior
to marriage, and particularly if one or both of the couple had
more than one cohabitation prior to marriage, actually
increases, not decreases, subsequent divorce rates. It is a
little bit like knowing your house is on fire but not knowing
it is better to put water on it than gasoline. So one of the
things we need to do is help our young know this information
and understand it.
It is not government's role to tell people they ought not
to cohabitate or they have to get married, but it is
government's role, it seems to me, to give people good
information so they can make good decisions.
Senator Sessions. I do too, and some of the witnesses we
will hear later on just drive home some of the positive aspects
of it.
Senator Allard, thank you for the leadership on this issue
and I would be glad to recognize you at this time for any
comments or questions.
Senator Allard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank
you for holding this hearing. I think this is really important
and this is a very important subject, not only at this point in
time but I think for the whole country, for the world. I think
we need to fully understand what leads to a healthy marriage.
Dr. Horn, if you have covered this, I apologize, but what
are the things that are going to mean that you are most likely
to have a healthy marriage exist between two people?
Mr. Horn. What the research suggests is a couple of things.
First of all, research suggests that, marriage is to some
degree a matter of luck and chance. But also to a very large
extent--and this is the piece that a lot of people do not
know--it is also about skills. It is about the ability to be
able to manage conflict well.
Again, one of the good pieces of news is that we are able
to teach good conflict resolution skills, listening skills,
communication skills, and so forth. And that couples when
taught these things, report that they in fact can apply them,
and when they apply them they have higher levels of marital
satisfaction.
We also know though that an understanding and a commitment
to the ideal of healthy, stable marriages also helps couples
achieve healthy and stable marriages because the commitment to
that ideal is what helps motivate them to actually apply the
skills that they learn.
Senator Allard. What conditions exist that would drive a
couple to meet that goal of a healthy marriage?
Mr. Horn. First of all, I think every couple that walks
down the aisle on their wedding day is committed to the ideal
of healthy, stable marriages. I do not know of any couples that
say, this is what we would like, let's get married today and
have 2 years of a pretty happy marriage, 3 years of fighting
and bickering constantly, a really messy divorce, and then 15
years of fighting over custody of the kids. I do not think
couples think that way. I think they get married with the
aspiration of this marriage being a healthy and lifelong
marriage. I do not think we have to sell the American people on
the idea that marriage is generally, as an ideal, ought to be
one that is about being healthy and lifelong.
Senator Allard. Let me rephrase the question. What are the
factors? Do you see more healthy marriages when somebody is 16
marrying a 45-year-old, or maybe somebody has a high school
education, another one has a college education, maybe
somebody--what are the factors that make individuals be able to
apply those skills with a common understanding? What makes that
marriage succeed?
Mr. Horn. Certainly we know, for example, that younger
marriage, marriage at a younger age----
Senator Allard. Now we are getting into some of the
specifics I would like to hear.
Mr. Horn [continuing].----does increase the probability of
instability. We also know that poverty presents challenges for
marriages and that you have higher divorce rates in lower
income households. We also know that couples who grew up in a
household where there was a divorce have higher rates of
divorce, and couples that do not have the skills that I have
mentioned also have higher rates of divorce.
So if we are going to help people achieve stable marriages
we have to do a variety of things. One, we have got to help
young people understand it is not only a good idea to wait till
you are older to become a parent, but also to wait till you are
married to become a parent. We also have to continue to work to
eradicate poverty in America so we reduce the stress on low-
income households so that they can achieve stable, lifelong
marriages. And we also have to do a better job of providing
increased access to marriage education services.
Senator Allard. If we have two people marry of the same
sex, has that got a higher likelihood of success than not?
Mr. Horn. In America two people of the same sex at the
moment are not legally able to get married, so there is no
research on this.
Senator Allard. But we do have other countries that have
allowed that. Do we have any data from those that would help us
evaluate the effect it would have on the rearing of children
and a healthy family?
Mr. Horn. I am not familiar with that research so I would
not be competent to give an answer to that.
Senator Allard. Has there been research done? That is my
question.
Mr. Horn. I do not know. I would have to check into that
and get back to you for the record.
Senator Allard. My understanding is there is not a lot of
research that has been done on that, and probably one area that
would have some interest, I think, concerning some of the
issues now facing this country.
Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Senator Sessions. Thank you, Senator Allard.
Senator Bond, a senior member of this committee, we are
glad that you are here. Thank you for your participation and
support of these issues. I asked my Democratic colleagues, and
Senator Gregg said we could have this committee hearing, if
they had any witnesses who would like to provide any
information to the committee as we go forward. They did not
provide any, did not suggest any witnesses. But I think we have
an outstanding group. Certainly, I guess, there are not many
that want to come and testify that marriage is not a healthy
institution.
Dr. Horn, one more question. My home State of Alabama is
confronting the question on divorce, as Governor Keating did in
Oklahoma. They have a project called Family Connections in
Alabama. It was funded through a grant from your department. It
focused on marriage-strengthening skills and family stability,
particularly for lower income families. The Alabama Children's
Trust Fund in cooperation with Auburn University coordinated
this project at four different sites and the evaluation showed
positive program impact in several areas, including an
increased level of trust and happiness in relationships,
problem-solving as a team, several individual empowerment
areas, and verbal aggression in couples decreased.
There is a problem with lack of funding. They would like to
continue that. Do you think this healthy marriage initiative
that the President has proposed might provide funding that will
allow them to continue such a program?
Mr. Horn. Certainly if we ever manage to get TANF
reauthorized and if the Healthy Marriage Initiative is part of
that, which seems to have broad bipartisan support, there would
be an influx of new funds to the tune of up to $240 million a
year in Federal funds to help support efforts like the one in
Alabama. About half that money would be used in a competitive
State grant process, so States would be the eligible applicant,
and about half of it would be used for community-based
organizations and faith-based organizations as well as State
and local government to compete to provide exactly the kinds of
services that the Children's Trust Fund in Alabama provided.
One of the things that we are in the process of doing is
funding evaluation contracts. But I think it is important for
us to keep in mind that while we do know some things, we don't
know everything about how to help couples form and sustain
healthy marriages, and we ought to have a little bit of a
skeptical eye that would encourage us to evaluate what works
and then find out also what doesn't work.
So we will be prepared, if and when the Congress acts and
authorizes those funds, to not only implement the programs, but
also to evaluate them.
Senator Sessions. Thank you very much. I do believe that we
have got to be rigorous in analysis and we will find some
things work and some things we will be surprised to learn are
not as effective as we thought.
Senator Bond?
Senator Bond. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
apologize. I have got four meetings going on at one time, two
of them in Intelligence, but this one is so important I wanted
to come join you and I thank the chairman for calling this very
important hearing on the President's Healthy Marriage
Initiative, because I really do believe that government can and
should support families by promoting policies that strengthen
the institution of marriage and help parents raise their
children in a safe and healthy environment.
There have been times in the near past when we discouraged
marriage by saying you would cut off your welfare payment if
you had a man in the house. We have had a marriage penalty in
the tax code that put a tax penalty on getting married.
But I think years of research in the fields of sociology,
economics, medicine, psychology, has really shown a strong
association between marriage and child well-being, because I
think children raised in healthy, stable marriages are much
less likely to experience poverty, abuse, behavioral and
emotional problems, and more likely to achieve in school, less
likely to commit crimes and develop substance abuse problems.
I want to talk a little bit about how healthy marriages not
only benefit children, but the adults themselves and the
communities, as well. I have had a lot of people anecdotally
suggest that marriage is the best thing that has happened to
me----
Senator Sessions. You look real good.
[Laughter.]
Senator Bond. My wife said, ``Honey, we ought to go on the
Atkins diet.'' She didn't, but I did, so that has helped me in
a lot of ways.
But seriously, benefiting adults and getting stable
marriages benefit communities, and I think both of those things
are vitally important for the proper environment to bring up
children. I am sure you have, and can you share with us some of
the information statistics you have on the benefits to adults
themselves and communities which lead to the benefits for
children?
Mr. Horn. We know that, for example, that adults in healthy
marriages report higher levels of life satisfaction. They are
less likely to be depressed. They are more likely to accumulate
wealth. And they also are more likely to live longer. And if
that weren't enough, we also know that married adults report
more satisfying sex lives, so it has a lot to recommend itself.
Senator Bond. I am sure you can say a lot more about it
than that, but that is good enough to start.
[Laughter.]
How does that impact child rearing, those benefits to the
adults? Obviously, more wealth in the family is going to
provide more benefits to the child.
Mr. Horn. We know, for example, that children who grow up
in married households are five times less likely to be poor
than those who do not. But even after you account for
economics, we also know that kids in healthy married households
are less likely to develop educational problems, less likely to
drop out of school. They are less likely to develop emotional
and behavioral problems requiring psychiatric treatment as
adolescents. They are less likely to develop substance abuse
problems. They are less likely to get in trouble with the law.
And perhaps more beneficial of all, they are less likely to
commit suicide as adolescents if they grow up in a healthy
married household.
So there is a great deal of evidence in support of the
proposition that children who are reared in healthy married
households have advantages. That doesn't mean that children in
single-parent households are doomed to educational failure and
becoming juvenile delinquents and so forth. It is not true.
Most kids in single-parent families do fine.
But there is an elevated risk of poor outcomes for kids in
nonmarried households, and if we can lower that elevated risk
by encouraging and supporting couples on a voluntary basis
forming and sustaining healthy marriages, it seems to me that
that would be good for children.
And as a child psychologist, that is why I am in this. You
know, I am in this because I believe that support for healthy
marriages is an effective strategy for improving the well-being
of children. If I didn't believe that, if I didn't think the
evidence suggested that, I would be looking elsewhere for
strategies. And certainly it is not the only strategy to
achieve that goal, but it is an important one.
Senator Bond. Thank you very much, Dr. Horn, and Mr.
Chairman, thank you again for calling the hearing to highlight
the need to support the institution of marriage and help
parents build strong families.
Senator Sessions. Thank you.
Dr. Horn, I know you had to rearrange your schedule. I know
you have a flight out. So we thank you very much for your
excellent testimony and particularly for your leadership on
this issue. There are few in this country that understand it
better or who have better skills in bringing people together to
make progress. Thank you a lot.
Mr. Horn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Sessions. Our next panel, if you will step forward,
we have the name tags we can put out. I will just be sharing
the introduction while they do that.
First will be Dr. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. She is the Co-
Director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers
University. Dr. Whitehead speaks and writes about family and
child well-being for professional, scholarly, and popular
sciences. She has written numerous books, essays, and articles
for a wide variety of publications and has made multiple media
appearances on national programs. She wrote the script for the
award-winning PBS documentary, ``Marriage: Just a Piece of
Paper?'' Additionally, her 1993 Atlantic Monthly cover story,
``Dan Quayle Was Right,'' was named one of the 10 most
influential articles of the late 20th century by Policy Review.
Dr. Whitehead earned her B.A. from the University of
Wisconsin, studied at Columbia University as a Woodrow Wilson
Fellow, earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in American social history at
the University of Chicago and lives in Amherst, MA. Thank you,
Dr. Whitehead.
Roland C. Warren is the President of the National
Fatherhood Initiative. He joined the board of the Fatherhood
Initiative in 1997, was elected President 5 years later. He has
represented the NFI in many national media appearances.
He has an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University
of Pennsylvania. I guess that means you can count your money,
Mr. Warren. It is a good school. He received an undergraduate
degree from Princeton University. Prior to coming to NFI, Mr.
Warren worked for Goldman Sachs and Company, a leading global
investment banking firm. He has also held management positions
for both IBM and PepsiCo and was an Associate Director of
Development at Princeton University, Kit Bond's alma mater,
where I think----
Senator Bond. I don't emphasize that.
Senator Sessions. Well, do you emphasize you were number
one in your class?
Senator Bond. Move it along.
Senator Sessions. That is the truth, too.
Governor Frank Keating took over as President and CEO of
the American Council of Life Insurers the morning after leaving
office as Oklahoma's 25th Governor. He received his Bachelor's
degree in history from Georgetown University, his law degree
from the University of Oklahoma College of Law.
Governor Keating was elected Governor of Oklahoma in 1993
and again in 1998, becoming only the second Governor of
Oklahoma to serve two consecutive terms. In his 1999 inaugural,
Governor Keating established a series of goals for Oklahoma,
including reductions in divorce, out-of-wedlock births,
substance abuse, and child abuse. With First Lady Cathy
Keating, he organized a statewide initiative designed to
strengthen marriage, enlisting government, community groups,
and the faith-based community. We would like to hear how that
is going, Frank.
I notice they left out you were United States Attorney for
Oklahoma. We served together. He was elected by his fellow
United States Attorneys as President of the, what do you call
it----
Mr. Keating. The Advisory Council.
Senator Sessions [continuing].----the Advisory Council.
That was such an important group, I can't remember the name of
it, but I had the honor to serve on that.
[Laughter.]
Dr. Stan Weed is the President of the Institute for
Research and Evaluation at Salt Lake City, UT. The Institute is
a nonprofit corporation focused on application of research
methodology to address important social issues and policies
related to adolescents.
Dr. Weed completed his graduate work at the University of
Washington in the field of social psychology. Much of his
recent interest and research has focused on the social problems
and programs related to marriage and divorce dynamics. He
recently completed a national study of community marriage
policies in 122 cities. Dr. Weed, we are glad to have you here.
Mr. Weed. Thank you.
Senator Sessions. I think you can see we have an
extraordinary panel who both can share insights into the
scientific data concerning marriage, the difficulties of
marriage, and what we can do as a government to improve
marriage.
Dr. Whitehead, I would be delighted to hear your statement
at this time.
STATEMENTS OF BARBARA DAFOE WHITEHEAD, CO-DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
MARRIAGE PROJECT, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, PISCATAWAY, NJ; ROLAND C.
WARREN, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE, GERMANTOWN,
MD; HON. FRANK KEATING, FORMER GOVERNOR OF OKLAHOMA, AND
PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LIFE
INSURERS, McLEAN, VA; AND STAN E. WEED, PRESIDENT, THE
INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND EVALUATION, SALT LAKE CITY, UT
Ms. Whitehead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am delighted and
grateful for the opportunity to be here today. As you
mentioned, I am Co-Director of the National Marriage Project, a
research organization based at Rutgers, and my colleagues and I
conduct research on social trends affecting the institution of
marriage.
My testimony today addresses three questions. What is
marriage? What do we know about the benefits of marriage? And
do people marry because they are better off, or does marriage
itself make people better off?
First of all, what is marriage? Marriage is a universal
human institution. It is a workhorse institution which performs
a number of necessary social functions. Marriage organizes
kinship, establishes family identities, regulates sexual
behavior, attaches fathers to their offspring, supports child
rearing, channels the flow of economic resources and mutual
caregiving between the generations, and situates individuals
within families, kin groups, and communities. Marriage enjoys
social approval and public recognition. It confers positive
status on men and women and a new social identity.
Well, what does the social science research tell us about
the benefits of marriage? And here, I apologize if I am
redundant and repetitive. Dr. Horn said some of this, but I
will go through it quickly. We now have a substantial body of
research on marriage and its effects, so let me just offer a
quick summary of some of these findings.
First, and in my mind foremost, marriage is good for
children. Again, to repeat, researchers now agree and there is
strong, strong research consensus on this, that excepting cases
where parents are in high conflict, children who grow up in
households with their married mother and father do better on a
wide range of economic, social, educational, and emotional
measures than do children in other kinds of families. This used
to be disputed and now there is a lot of agreement based on the
research.
They are significantly more likely to earn 4-year college
degrees, an important source of individual capital and social
advantage, and to do better occupationally than children from
divorced or single-parent families. They have better emotional
health. And interestingly enough, in their adult lives,
children from intact families are more likely to be married and
stay married than others. In fact, some researchers now argue
that growing up with both married parents in a low-conflict
marriage is so important to child well-being that it is
replacing race, class, and neighborhood as the greatest source
of difference in child outcomes.
Marriage is also good for adults. Again, married people are
happier, healthier, wealthier, enjoy longer lives, and report
greater sexual satisfaction than single, divorced, or
cohabiting individuals. Married men earn more money than single
men with similar education and job histories. Indeed, for men,
marriage reaps as many benefits as education, largely because
they get the help and support of their wives. Some people call
this the nagging factor.
[Laughter.]
Married women benefit economically, as well. Although they
often leave the workforce to care for children, they are
still--women who are married are still economically better off
than divorced, cohabiting, or never married women, and that is
true even among the most economically vulnerable women, that
is, mothers with low levels of educational achievement or low
income.
Finally, marriage is good for the society. Marriage is not
simply a contractual relationship between two people or a
government-sanctioned form of intimate partnership. It is also
a central institution in the civil society, and as such,
marriage performs certain valuable social tasks and produces
certain social goods that are far harder to attain through such
alternatives as individual action, private enterprise, public
programs, or any other kind of alternative we might dream up.
Let me give three quick examples of how marriage benefits
society. First of all, marriage benefits society as a child-
rearing institution. Marriage joins a father and a mother
together in the shared work of bringing up children, helps to
create a more equitable distribution of family responsibilities
between the genders, and boosts the level of parental, and
especially paternal, investment in the children's households.
We have not yet found, though I think we have tried,
substitutes for marriage that can provide equivalent levels of
voluntary and sustained economic and emotional investments in
children over what is now a prolonged period of youthful
dependency.
Again, this was mentioned previously. Marriage benefits
society as a wealth-creating institution, and that is because
of economies of scale, access to work-related benefits that a
couple might share. Marriage promotes savings. And importantly,
it generates help from kin because two groups of kin come
together and the community. On the verge of retirement, one
study found married couples' net worth is more than twice that
in other households, and that, of course, in an aging society
is something we have to pay attention to.
Marriage benefits society also as a source of what
sociologists call social capital, that is, the advantages that
are generated through relationships of mutual aid, obligation,
and caregiving. Married people not only are more likely to be
involved with their own communities, to vote, and to be
involved in civic life, but they also serve as positive role
models for other children whose fathers, for example, might be
absent from their lives, or in households where there is a very
hard-working single parent who benefits from this help and
support of married people in her neighborhood.
Now, my final question, very quickly, because this comes up
a lot in research discussions, are the benefits of marriage
simply due to the characteristics of people who marry? I mean,
are those people better off to begin with, or does marriage
itself create certain intangible and tangible benefits?
Well, the answer is both. People who are better off
economically and educationally, who are religiously observant,
and who grew up in married parent families themselves are more
likely to marry and stay married than others. But at the same
time, marriage itself has a transforming effect on people's
attitudes and behaviors. Being married changes people's
lifestyles, habits, associations, and obligations in ways that
are socially and personally beneficial, and this transformation
is especially pronounced for men.
So let me conclude with a word of caution about the
implications of these amassed findings. Marriage is not a magic
bullet solution to problems of poverty, disadvantage, crime,
and discrimination. And in my opinion, government promotion of
healthy marriage, though I think a very important initiative,
should not be used as a reason for reducing or limiting other
forms of government support for low-income families, such as
child care, health care, education, job training, and other
supports.
Nor, finally, should we expect marriage, even if everyone
is happily married, to bring heaven on earth. Like all human
institutions, marriage is far from perfect, and getting married
does not turn people into saints.
Yet the fact remains, despite all its imperfections,
marriage remains an indispensable source of social goods,
individual benefits, mutual caregiving, parental cooperation
and investment, affectionate attachments, and long-term
commitments, and people who are married, though not saints,
tend to behave in ways that benefit themselves, their children,
and their communities.
So given these advantages, Mr. Chairman, I would say that,
really, it does make a lot of sense to think about marriage
promotion activities both by the public sector and the private
sector to help build these strengths and benefits within our
Nation and communities. Thank you.
Senator Sessions. Thank you, and thank you for your
remarkable remarks that you have made a part of the record. We
will make your complete remarks a part of the record because
they are comprehensive. I think they distill the best known
science that we have.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Whitehead follows:]
Prepared Statement of Barbara Dafoe Whitehead
BENEFITS OF MARRIAGE FOR CHILDREN, ADULTS, AND THE SOCIETY
Marriage is a universal human institution. It performs a number of
key functions in virtually every known society. Marriage organizes
kinship, establishes family identities, regulates sexual behavior,
attaches fathers to their offspring, supports childrearing, channels
the flow of economic resources and mutual caregiving between
generations, and situates individuals within families, kin groups and
communities.
In contemporary American society, marriage is the central
institution of the family. It establishes a family household, typically
organized around the spousal couple and their dependent children. In
this system, marriage plays a key role in fostering the social,
economic and emotional bonds between husband and wife, parents and
children, and the family and larger community. It prescribes a set of
norms, responsibilities and binding obligations for its members. It
shapes family identity, creates a context for intimacy and builds a
sense of belonging among its members. Finally, marriage enjoys social
approval and public recognition. It confers positive social status and
a new social identity on men and women.
When marriage is low-conflict and, ideally, long-lasting, it is
good for children. It brings together under one roof the mother and
father who have brought the child into the world through birth or
adoption and who share a mutual interest in the child's well-being. It
gives children a chance to know, associate with, and develop close
bonds with both parents. Marriage provides for regular paternal
involvement and investment in children's family households. Indeed,
more than any other family arrangement, marriage reliably connects kids
to their dads and fathers to the mothers of their children.
Marriage contributes to the physical, emotional and economic well-
being of individual adults as well. It provides an efficient way to
pool resources, combine individual talents, and recruit kin support for
the purposes of fostering the well-being of the family. It encourages
wealth production and limits material hardship and want. Marriage
unites mothers and fathers in the common work of childrearing and
family life and helps to create a more equitable distribution of family
responsibilities between the genders.
Marriage is also good for the society. Within the civil society,
marriage fosters social connectedness, civic and religious involvement,
and charitable giving. This is especially true for men. More than any
other family arrangement, marriage connects men to the larger community
and encourages personal responsibility, family commitment, community
voluntarism and social altruism.
WHAT SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH TELLS US ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF MARRIAGE
Today, thanks to resurgent scholarly interest in family structure,
we have a large body of social science research on marriage and its
effects. Overall, the available research evidence persuasively
demonstrates the advantages of marriage for children, adults and the
society. Though it is impossible to cover the entire scope of the
research in this limited space, let me summarize key findings.
BENEFITS FOR CHILDREN
Marriage--especially if it is low-conflict and long-lasting--is a
source of economic, educational and social advantage for most children.
Researchers now agree that, except in cases of high and unremitting
parental conflict, children who grow up in households with their
married mother and father do better on a wide range of economic,
social, educational, and emotional measures than do children in other
kinds of family arrangements.\1\ According to some researchers, growing
up with both married parents in a low-conflict marriage is so important
to child well-being that it is replacing race, class, and neighborhood
as the greatest source of difference in child outcomes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ For a recent summary of relevant research, see Mary Parke, Are
Married Parents Really Better for Children?, Center for Law and Social
Policy, May 2003. www.clasp.org. See also Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-
One Conclusions from the Social Sciences (NY: Institute for American
Values, 2002) http://www.marriagemovement.org.
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ECONOMIC BENEFITS
Children from intact families are far less likely to be poor or to
experience persistent economic insecurity. In fact, if it were not for
the demographic shift from married parent families to other kinds of
family structures in recent decades, the child poverty rate would be
significantly lower. For example, according to one study, if family
structure had not changed between 1960-1998, the black child poverty
rate in 1998 would have been 28.4 percent rather than 45.6 percent, and
the white child poverty rate would have been 11.4 percent rather than
15.4 percent.\2\ Children who grow up in married parent families are
shielded from the economic effects of parental divorce. Estimates
suggest that children experience a 70 percent drop in their household
income in the immediate aftermath of divorce and, unless there is a
remarriage, the income is still 40-45 percent lower 6 years later than
for children in intact families.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Adam Thomas and Isabel Sawhill, For Richer or For Poorer:
Marriage As an Antipoverty Strategy, Journal of Policy Analysis and
Management, 21:4, 2002.
\3\ Parke, Are Married Parents Really Better for Children, 7.
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EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS
Children from intact married parent families are more likely to
stay in school. According to a 1994 research review by Sara McLanahan
and Gary Sandefur, the risk of high school dropout for a child from
two-parent biological families is substantially less than that for
those from single parent or stepfamilies.\4\ Children from married
parent families also have fewer behavioral or school attendance
problems and higher levels of educational attainment. They are better
able to withstand pressures to engage in early sexual activity and to
avoid unwed teen parenthood, behaviors that can derail educational
achievement and attainment. They are significantly more likely to earn
4-year college degrees or better and to do better occupationally than
children from divorced or single parent families.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ The risk for an average white child in a two parent family was
11 percent compared to 28 percent for a child in a single or step-
parent family. For an average African American child in a two parent
family, it was 17 percent compared to 30 percent in a single or step-
parent family. For an average Hispanic child from a two-parent family,
the risk was 25 percent compared to 49 percent for single or stepparent
families. Cited in Parke, Are Married Parents Really Better for
Children?, 2-3.
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EMOTIONAL BENEFITS
Warm, responsive, firm and fair parenting helps to promote healthy
emotional development and to foster emotional resilience in children.
Parents, stepparents and grandparents in all kinds of family
arrangements can, and do, manage to establish emotionally warm and
secure environments, often against daunting odds. However, parents in
long-lasting, low-conflict marriages are more likely to have the time,
resources, relational and residential stability to coparent
effectively. On average, children reared in married parent families are
less vulnerable to serious emotional illness, depression and suicide
than children in nonintact families. Further, because parental divorce
is such a commonplace childhood experience, with close to four out of
ten American children going through a parental divorce, it is an
advantage to grow up in a low-conflict married parent household
undisrupted by divorce. As the American Academy of Pediatrics notes,
the effect of divorce on children is more than a set of discrete
symptoms. It can be a ``long searing experience.'' \5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ State of Our Unions (Piscataway, NJ: The National Marriage
Project), 2003. Available at http://marriage.rutgers.edu.
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Finally, in their own future dating and marriage relationships,
children benefit from the models set by their married parents. Children
from married parent families have more satisfying dating relationships,
more positive attitudes toward future marriage and greater success in
forming lasting marriages. According to a nationally representative
survey of young men, ages 25-34, commissioned by Rutgers' National
Marriage Project in 2004, young men from married parent families are
less likely to be divorced and more likely to be married. Among the
never-married young men surveyed, those from married parent families
were more likely to express readiness to be married than young men from
other kinds of family backgrounds. In addition, young men from married
parent households have more positive attitudes toward women, children
and family life than men who grew up in nonintact families.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ The Marrying Kind: Men Who Marry and Why, State of Our Unions
2004, (Piscataway, NJ: The National Marriage Project), forthcoming June
2004.
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BENEFITS OF MARRIAGE FOR ADULTS
Married people are better off than those who are not married in a
number of ways. On average, they are happier, healthier, wealthier,
enjoy longer lives, and report greater sexual satisfaction than single,
divorced or cohabiting individuals.\7\ Married people are less likely
to take moral or mortal risks, and are even less inclined to risk-
taking when they have children. They have better health habits and
receive more regular health care. They are less likely to attempt or to
commit suicide. They are also more likely to enjoy close and supportive
relationships with their close relatives and to have a wider social
support network. They are better equipped to cope with major life
crises, such as severe illness, job loss, and extraordinary care needs
of sick children or aging parents.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ A comprehensive summary of research evidence on the benefits of
marriage for adults may be found in Linda J. Waite and Maggie
Gallagher, The Case for Marriage (NY: Doubleday, 2000).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Married parents are significantly less likely to be poor. For
example, according to a study by economist Robert Lerman, poverty rates
for married couples are half those of cohabiting couple parents and
one-third that of noncohabiting single parents in households with other
adults.\8\ Even poor parents who marry gain economic advantage from
marriage. Though marriage itself may not lift a family out of poverty,
it may reduce economic hardship. This effect occurs because marriage,
especially if it is long-lasting, allows couples to pool earnings, to
recruit support from a larger social network of family, friends, and
community members, to share risks, and to mitigate the disruptions of
job loss, loss of job benefits, or loss of earnings due to absenteeism,
illness, reduced hours on the job, or lay-offs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ See Robert I. Lerman, How Do Marriage, Cohabitation and Single
Parenthood Affect the Material Hardships of Families With Children?,
July 2002; see also Robert I. Lerman, Married and Unmarried Parenthood
and Economic Well-Being: A Dynamic Analysis of a Recent Cohort, July
2002. Available at http://www.urban.org/expert.cfm?ID=RobertILerman.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
BENEFITS TO MEN
Marriage promotes better health habits and greater longevity among
men, largely due to the care, attention and monitoring by their wives.
In fact, men appear to reap the most physical health benefits from
marriage and suffer the greatest health consequences when they divorce.
Once married, men are also less likely to hang out with male friends,
to spend time at bars, to abuse alcohol or drugs or to engage in
illegal activities. They are more likely than unmarried men to attend
religious services regularly, to join faith groups, and to spend time
with relatives. In brief, men settle down when they get married.
Married men earn more money than do single men with similar
education and job histories. Indeed, for men, marriage reaps as many
benefits as education.\9\ The causes for this are not entirely clear.
However, it is likely that married men benefit from specialization
within marriage and from the emotional support they receive from their
wives. It is also likely that married men's domestic routines and
health habits reduce job absenteeism, quit rates, and sick days. And it
may be that men's role obligation to provide for others gives them a
greater sense of purpose and intensifies their commitment to work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ See Robert I. Lerman, Marriage and the Economic Well-Being of
Families With Children: A Review of the Literature, 2002. Available at
http://www.urban.org/expert.cfm?ID=RobertILerman.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marriage strengthens the bonds between fathers and their children.
Married men are more involved and have better relationships with their
children than unwed or divorced fathers. In part, this is because
married fathers share the same residence with their children. But it is
also because the role of husband encourages men to voluntarily take
responsibility for their own children. Paternity by itself does not
seem to accomplish the same transformation in men's lives.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ Steven Nock, Marriage in Men's Lives (N.Y.: Oxford University
Press, 1998); David Popenoe, Life Without Father: Compelling New
Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage Are Indispensable for the Good of
Children and Society (NY: The Free Press, 1996).
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BENEFITS TO WOMEN
Women gain financially from marriage. Although married women often
leave the workforce to care for children or other relatives, on
average, they are still economically better off than divorced,
cohabiting or never-married women. Even among the most at-risk women
(minority mothers, mothers with low levels of educational achievement
or low income), marriage has significant economic benefits.\11\ Married
women also enjoy their sex lives more than sexually active single or
cohabiting women, a finding that researchers attribute to women's
greater trust and expectation of marital monogamy and permanence. In
addition, marriage makes for happier mothers. Compared to cohabiting
mothers or single mothers, married mothers are more likely to receive
the cooperation, hands-on help, emotional support, and positive
involvement from their child's father and his kin. Having practical and
emotional support reduces maternal stress, anxiety and depression and
enhances a mother's ability to parent effectively.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ Lerman, Married and Unmarried Parenthood, 2002.
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INTERGENERATIONAL BENEFITS
Marriage creates a new and expanded set of binding obligations
between spouses; between parents and children; and between the married
couple and their combined kin groups. Such obligations are encoded
within the social norms of marriage and are assumed voluntarily as part
of the status of ``being married.''
Consequently, marriage generates higher levels of help, support and
care from families than other kinds of family arrangements. Though
single parents receive significant family support, they lose the
benefits of sustained help and support from the estranged or absent
biological parent's side of the family. Close to 17 percent of married
parents report support from father's kin whereas just 2 percent of
single mothers and no unwed mothers got financial support from
relatives of the father.\12\ At the same time that married couples
receive more help from family, they are also better able to give help
to elderly parents and relatives, an important benefit in an aging
society.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ Waite and Gallaher, Case for Marriage; Lingxin Hao, ``Family
Structure, Private Transfers, and the Economic Well-Being of Families
with Children,'' Social Forces 75, 1996, 269-92.
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BENEFITS OF MARRIAGE FOR THE CIVIL SOCIETY
Marriage is not simply a contractual relationship between two
people or a government-sanctioned form of intimate partnership. It is
also a central institution in the civil society. As such, marriage
performs certain critical social tasks and produces certain social
goods that are valuable to the community and far harder to achieve
through individual action, private enterprise, public programs or
through alternative institutions.
MARRIAGE IS A CHILDREARING INSTITUTION
Though not all married people are parents, the institution of
marriage reliably creates the social, economic and affective conditions
for effective parenting. Of course, in fulfilling the task of rearing
competent, healthy children, some married parents fail miserably while
some single parents succeed brilliantly. Yet in general, marriage
promotes parental investment and mother/father cooperation during what
has become an increasingly prolonged period of youthful dependency.
When marriages break up or fail to form, the task of rearing children
becomes harder, lonelier and more stressful for parents, especially for
those who are lone parents. When parents divorce or never marry, the
State becomes more involved in requiring and regulating childrearing
obligations that married parents assume voluntarily. Paternity
establishment, child support, child custody, children's living
arrangements, and even their school, sports and religious activities
become matters for government oversight and enforcement. Moreover, from
a child's standpoint, publicly sponsored alternatives for childrearing
such as foster care, group homes or child support enforcement cannot
easily replicate the advantages of growing up in a home with one's own
married mother and father.
MARRIAGE PRODUCES WEALTH
Marriage provides economies of scale, encourages specialization and
cooperation, provides access to work-related benefits such as
retirement savings, pensions and life insurance, promotes saving, and
generates help and support from kin and community. On the verge of
retirement, one study found, married couples' net worth is more than
twice that in other households. Because the accumulation of wealth
usually requires time, the wealth-generating effects of marriage are
strongest among those whose marriages are long-lasting. A study of
retirement data from 1992 by Purdue University sociologists found that
``individuals who are not continuously married have significantly lower
wealth than those who remain married throughout the life course.''
Further, compared to those who are currently married, the researchers
found a 63 percent reduction in total wealth. The study concluded that
``participating in the social institution of marriage can lead to
cumulative advantage'' while not participating or interrupting
participation can ``set the stage for negative outcomes later in
life.'' \13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ Janet Wilmoth and Gregor Koso, ``Does Marital History Matter?
Marital Status and Wealth Outcomes Among Preretirement Adults,''
Journal of Marriage and the Family 64: 2002, 254-68.
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MARRIAGE IS A ``SEEDBED'' OF PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR
Social scientists have long debated this question: Are the benefits
and advantages of marriage due to the characteristics of people who
marry and stay married (the so-called ``selection effect'') or does
marriage itself--and the status of being a married person--create
certain advantages? The answer is: both. People who are economically
and educationally advantaged, who are religiously observant, and who
grew up in married parent families themselves are more likely to marry
and to stay married than others. However, marriage itself has a
transformative effect on attitudes and behavior. Being married changes
people's lifestyles, habits, associations, and obligations in ways that
are personally and socially beneficial.
MARRIAGE GENERATES SOCIAL CAPITAL
Sociologist James Coleman introduced the concept of social capital
to refer to goods that are produced through relationships among
people.\14\ Unlike physical capital (machines, tools, productive
equipment) and individual capital (skills, capacities, competencies),
social capital is generated through relational bonds of mutual trust,
dependability, commitment, shared values, and obligation. Social
capital is not ``acquired,'' as one might acquire a computer or a
college degree. It is generated as a byproduct of social relations.\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ James S. Coleman, Social Capital in the Creation of Human
Capital, American Journal of Sociology 1988,94:S95-S120.
\15\ One illustration of social capital: During the deadly 1995
heat wave in Chicago, poor elderly residents who had regular social
contacts with neighbors, shopkeepers, churches and who lived in
neighborhoods with a bustling street life were far less likely to die
than poor elderly residents who lacked these social contacts. Those who
survived were drawn to familiar, safe, air-conditioned stores in their
neighborhoods whereas those who suffered or died were unaware of, or
reluctant to go to, special city ``cooling centers'' established during
the crisis. Thus, for these elderly Chicagoans, the presence or absence
of ``social capital'' made a life or death difference. See Eric
Klinenberg, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
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As the primary social institution governing familial and kinship
relationships, marriage is a source of social capital. The social bonds
created through marriage yield benefits not just for family members but
for others as well. For example, married parents are more likely to
vote and to be involved in community, religious and civic activities.
Because marriage embeds people within larger social networks, married
parents are better able to connect with other parents, including those
who are working single parents, and to recruit help, friendship and
emotional support in the community. Marriage gets men involved with
others. Married fathers serve as important role models, not only for
their own children but also for other people's children. Their example
and mentorship can be an especially valuable social resource in
communities where there are too few married fathers and too many
children who lack responsible fathers or positive male role models.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
Let me conclude with a word of caution about the implications of
these findings. Marriage is not a magic bullet solution to problems of
poverty, disadvantage, crime, and discrimination. Nor should the
existence of government funding for the promotion of healthy marriage
be used as a reason for reducing or limiting other forms of government
support for low-income families, such as childcare, healthcare,
education, job training and other supports. Nor should marriage
promotion be used as a substitute for other effective anti-poverty
strategies such as reducing the incidence of unwed teen parenthood. Nor
should the advantages of marriage be used to pressure everyone to get
married.
Like all human institutions, marriage is far from perfect. And
getting married does not turn people into saints. Yet the fact remains:
despite its acknowledged problems and imperfections, marriage remains
an indispensable source of social goods, individual benefits, mutual
caregiving, affectionate attachments, and long-term commitments. And
people who are married, though not saints, tend to behave in ways that
benefit themselves, their children, families and communities.
Given these advantages, it makes good sense for the public and
private sector to explore ways to reduce the barriers to healthy
marriage and to make it possible for more parents to form strong and
lasting marital unions. Even a relatively modest increase in healthy
marriage formation and duration would reduce levels of child poverty,
increase parental income and promote higher levels of child well-being
among families with children.
Senator Sessions. Mr. Warren?
Mr. Warren. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and the
members of the committee, subcommittee. Thank you for allowing
me to be a part of this session.
My name is Roland Warren. I am President of the National
Fatherhood Initiative, an organization that was founded in 1994
to really confront what I view as one of the most consequential
social problems of our time, widespread father absence. NFI's
mission is to improve the well-being of children by increasing
the proportion that grow up with involved, responsible, and
committed fathers in their lives.
Before joining NFI, I was employed in the world of business
and finance, working in management for PepsiCo and Goldman
Sachs and IBM. I left that world because I felt there was no
greater issue for our country than connecting the hearts of
fathers to their kids. Like many of the kids, too many of our
kids today, I grew up without my father. I can say with
confidence that kids have a hole in the soul in the shape of
their dads. To this day, it still bothers me, and it is one of
the reasons that I am motivated to do this work and why I am so
committed to it.
That said, when you look at the statistics today, about 24
million kids live in homes absent their biological fathers.
That is one out of every three kids in this country. In the
African American community, in my community, it is about two
out of every three kids, so it is the norm.
When you compare this to 1960, we had about 8 million
children living apart from their fathers, and in the past 40
years, we have seen just an explosion in father-absent
communities. And frankly, we have some neighborhoods that are
father-absent.
There are two factors that really contribute to father
absence. One is the high level of divorce, and a number of
folks have spoken about that here today. And the other is out-
of-wedlock childbearing. Currently in America, about 40 to 50
percent of all marriages end in separation or divorce. That
affects about a million kids. But when you look at the
statistics on out-of-wedlock pregnancy, they are even greater,
about one out of three kids and about 1.3 million kids every
year are affected in this way.
So this epidemic of fatherlessness is important and it has
consequences. On just about every measure of child well-being,
kids who grow up without fathers are worse off, on average,
than kids who grow up with fathers. The children from father-
absent homes are more likely to be poor, five times so. In TANF
homes, about seven out of ten children live with single
parents, according to the most recent data, as opposed to about
one in ten from two-parent families. When you look at kids
living with both parents compared to those living in single-
parent households, living in a single-parent household doubles
the risk that you will suffer physical, emotional, or
educational neglect.
Violent criminals are overwhelmingly males who grew up in
father-absent homes--60 percent of rapists, 70 percent of
adolescents charged with murder, 70 percent of juveniles in
State reform institutions. No matter what their gender, age,
family income, race, or ethnicity, adolescents not living with
both parents, biological and adoptive, that is, are 50 to 150
times more likely to be involved in drugs and to use drugs. And
the list can go on.
Now, the statistics are compelling, and there has been a
growing consensus around the notion that kids need their
fathers and that kids who have them do better across every
economic, social, educational, and behavioral measurement of
child well-being. It is not only that father absence is, on
average, bad for kids, but we know that involved, responsible,
and committed fathers, on average, help kids. In other words,
fathers are not just another set of hands. They play a unique
and irreplaceable role.
And more and more research is discovering the unique
benefits that children enjoy, even from infancy, when they have
involved fathers. Six-month-old babies whose fathers are
involved test higher on cognitive ability and motor
development. When you look at what happens to kids in schools,
the children whose fathers are highly involved in their schools
are much more likely to do well academically, to participate in
extracurricular activities, to enjoy school, and are less
likely to repeat a grade or be expelled than kids who have less
involved fathers.
And let me just note that I am not saying this in any way
to demean single mothers. After all, I was raised by a single
mother, whom I love, and my mother and many single mothers are
doing heroic work to raise their children alone, sometimes
against difficult odds, and we should applaud them. But we
would really be doing our children a grave injustice if we do
not accept the reality that children need, and frankly deserve,
involved, responsible, and committed fathers in their lives.
Given the weight of the evidence that father involvement
benefits children, the challenge for all of us is to really
figure out the best way to ensure that fathers and children are
connected heart to heart. Of all the institutions our culture
has available, marriage is the one that provides the best
pathway to involved, responsible, and committed fatherhood.
When you look at the research on nonmarital cohabitation,
it presents some significant challenges to long-term father-
child bonds. Cohabiting relationships are more likely to end,
and more likely to end quickly, and when we have situations
with noncustodial fathers, there are a number of barriers that
prevent them from being as involved. In fact, about 40 percent
of kids in father-absent homes haven't seen their fathers at
all in the last year.
As Dr. Whitehead said, marriage, although not perfect, is
really the best environment in which men can fulfill their
roles as committed fathers. I think one of the best predictors
of the quality of the relationship a father is going to have
with his children is the quality of the relationship that he
has with the mother of his children.
I experienced that in my own life, that once my parents got
divorced, over time, I saw less and less of my father. He
became involved in other things. He had another family. My
connection to my father after my parents were no longer married
just slowly vanished.
This is an important link, this link between marriage and
fatherhood, that really needs to be addressed. As the President
of the National Fatherhood Initiative, I consistently see how
discussions about responsible fatherhood evolve into
discussions about marriage, and I am not surprised at that
because I believe that the best societal glue that connects
kids to their dads is marriage. And, in fact, even in
communities where marriage rates are low, responsible
fatherhood acts as a bridge to healthy discussions about
marriage.
Once you start talking about the effectiveness of involved
fatherhood in increasing child well-being, it becomes difficult
to not talk about marriage, because if involved fatherhood is a
good thing, then we want fathers as connected as possible, and
good marriages have the unique ability to align the interests
of mothers and fathers in the best interests of their children.
I would like to actually submit three NFI studies, to the
record. One is a study we did in collaboration with others,
``Can government Strengthen Marriage?'' The other two are
focused specifically on fatherhood, and they look at family
structure, father closeness, related to delinquency, and also
related to drug abuse. What you will find in these studies is
that father involvement matters and that kids that have more
involved fathers, even when the fathers are noncustodial, do
better on average.
To confront the problem of father absence, NFI really
started some aggressive work about 10 years ago and over the
last decade, we have really developed a comprehensive strategy,
not only to reduce father absence, but also to help fathers who
are present engage more fully in the lives of their children. I
call it our ``Three-E'' strategy--educating, equipping, and
engaging the culture around this issue, and through this
strategy, we really work to mobilize the three basic pillars of
culture, the government community, the faith community, and the
business community.
The first ``E'' is our education strategy. We do quite a
bit in the area of public education awareness. We are part of
the Ad Council's portfolio of campaigns and we do compelling
PSAs around father involvement. To date, we have generated over
$320 million of donated media against this, one of the most
successful campaigns that they have, and it really speaks to
how important this issue is and how ubiquitous it is.
The second ``E'' is equipping, and the focus here is to get
people from inspiration to implementation. You see a PSA. You
hear someone talk about it. Your neighbor talks to you about
it. But you want to be a better dad. How do you do that?
Frankly, there are not a lot of places where dads can learn how
to be great dads. So we set out to set up a National Fatherhood
Clearinghouse and Resource Center to do that work.
And the last ``E'' is really engaging, engaging every
sector of society in alliances and partnerships to encourage
them to add fatherhood programming to the important work that
they already do, and we are very aggressive and, frankly, very
creative in terms of doing that work.
So social science over the last 25 years has strongly
suggested that kids do best with involved, responsible, and
committed fathers, and people from across different political
perspectives and ideologies have come together around this
issue, largely because the weight of the evidence suggests that
it is important. Additionally, when you look at the abundant
research about marriage, it suggests that kids who grow up with
married parents are better off and have the best chance at
success.
And if we want what is best for children, then we should
ensure that more children grow up with married mothers and
fathers, as Wade Horn is fond of saying, real, live, in-the-
home, love-the-mother, married fathers. And since the well-
being of children is at stake and a litany of social ills
correlates with the breakdown of married fatherhood, the
government has to play a very important and active role in this
regard.
There are a number of pieces of legislation on the Hill now
that talk about this. I think one of the best is the
legislation by Senator Bayh and Senator Santorum, the
Responsible Fatherhood Act, S. 604, which is a real good
bipartisan piece of legislation that talks about the link
between marriage and responsible fatherhood.
In closing, I just want to read an e-mail that I received
not long ago from a young girl. It was a 16-year-old girl and
her e-mail address is ``Always--Flirting''. She said, ``I just
wanted to say thanks. What you all are doing is great. Fathers
should be involved in their children's lives, but sadly, many
aren't. I'm 16 years old and my father acts like he wants
nothing to do with me or my brother, and it hurts sometimes,
but I get over it. So yeah, I just wanted to say thanks and
that I'm glad someone out there cares about the kids, even if
their fathers don't.''
I tell you, at the end of the day, that is what it is all
about. I suspect that she is always flirting because she is
looking for that dad who is not connected to her. I can tell
you personally that this is an important issue and certainly
government and the weight of government is an important player
in terms of making sure that kids are connected to their dads
heart to heart. Thank you.
Senator Sessions. Thank you, Mr. Warren, for those powerful
remarks, and we thank you for your leadership at the National
Fatherhood Initiative. It is a great organization.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Warren follows:]
Prepared Statement of Roland C. Warren
My name is Roland Warren, and I am the President of the National
Fatherhood Initiative (NFI), an organization founded in 1994 to
confront the most consequential social problem of our time--the
widespread absence of fathers from children's lives. NFI's mission is
to improve the well-being of children by increasing the proportion of
children who grow up with involved, responsible, and committed fathers
in their lives.
Before joining NFI, I was employed in the world of business and
finance, working in management for firms such as Pepsi, Goldman Sachs,
and IBM. But I left that world because I knew how important this issue
is for our Nation's children.
I grew up without my father, so I can say with confidence that
every child has a hole in their soul in the shape of their dad, and to
this day, I still experience a longing in my heart for what should have
been. I left Goldman Sachs so that I can help ensure that fewer and
fewer children will grow up with the hole in their soul left empty.
So, I greatly appreciate this opportunity to testify today about
the importance of marriage and fatherhood.
THE FACTS OF FATHER ABSENCE
Today, 24 million children in America live in a home in which their
biological father does not live.\1\ That is one out of every three
children in our country. In the African American community, father
absence is the norm--two out of every three African American children
live in father-absent homes.\2\
Compare this to 1960, when only 8 million children lived in father-
absent homes.\3\ The past 40 years have seen the birth of not only the
father-absent home, but also the father-absent community.
There are two factors that contribute to a majority of the father
absence in our country. One is the high divorce rate. The other is out-
of-wedlock childbearing.
The divorce rate nearly tripled between 1960 and 1980.\4\ Currently
in America, an estimated 40-50 percent of all marriages end in
separation or divorce, affecting over 1 million children per year.\5\
Our country has the highest divorce rate of all industrialized nations
in the world.\6\
In 1960, about 5 percent of all births occurred out of wedlock.
That number increased to 10.7 percent in 1970, 18.4 percent in 1980, 28
percent in 1990, and today that number is nearly 33 percent.\7\ About
1.3 million children are born to unmarried women each year.\8\
This epidemic of fatherlessness has consequences.
On just about every measure of child well-being, children who grow
up without fathers are worse off, on average, than children who grow up
with their fathers.
Children from father absent homes are 5 times more likely to live
in poverty than children whose fathers are in the home. Forty-two
percent of children in female-householder families lived in poverty in
1999, compared to only 8 percent of children in married couple
families.\9\ Additionally, of children living in TANF households, more
than 7 out of 10 lived with a single parent in 1998, while fewer than 1
in 10 lived with two parents.\10\
Compared to living with both parents, living in a single-parent
household doubles the risk that a child will suffer physical,
emotional, or educational neglect.\11\
Children growing up with absent fathers are especially likely to
experience violence. Violent criminals are overwhelmingly males who
grew up without fathers, including up to 60 percent of rapists,\12\ 72
percent of adolescents charged with murder,\13\ and 70 percent of
juveniles in State reform institutions.\14\
No matter what their gender, age, family income, race or ethnicity,
adolescents not living with both parents (biological or adoptive) are
50 to 150 percent more likely to use drugs, be dependent on drugs, and
to need illicit drug abuse treatment than adolescents living with two
biological or adoptive parents.\15\
In studies involving over 25,000 children using nationally
representative data sets, children who lived with only one parent had
lower grade point averages, lower college aspirations, poorer
attendance records, and higher drop out rates than students who lived
with both parents.\16\ Fatherless children are twice as likely to drop
out of school.\17\
The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth found that children who
live in single parent families have more behavior problems compared to
those who live in two-parent households.\18\
In a longitudinal study of more than 10,000 families, researchers
found that toddlers living in single-parent families were more likely
to suffer a burn, have a bad fall, or be scarred from an accident
compared to kids living with both of their biological parents.\19\
Infant mortality rates are 1.8 times higher for infants of
unmarried mothers than for married mothers.\20\
Teenage girls who grow up without their fathers tend to have sex
earlier than girls who grow up with both parents. A 15-year-old who has
lived only with her mother is three times more likely to lose her
virginity before her 16th birthday as one who has lived with both
parents.\21\
The weight of the statistical evidence is compelling, and that is
why there has been a growing consensus around the notion that children
who grow up without dads are economically, physically, psychologically,
behaviorally, and educationally disadvantaged compared to children
whose mothers and fathers are both in the picture.
And not only is father absence bad for children, but father
presence is good for children. In other words, fathers are not just
another set of hands. They play a unique and irreplaceable role in the
upbringing of children. They are not just ``nice to have around.'' More
and more research is discovering the unique benefits children enjoy,
even from infancy, from having consistent contact with their father.
Even 6-month old babies whose fathers are involved score higher on
tests of cognitive ability and motor development.\22\ Preschoolers with
involved fathers display higher levels of empathy and cooperation with
peers.\23\ When boys and girls are reared with engaged fathers they
demonstrate a greater ability to take initiative and display self
control.\24\ Adolescents with involved fathers display higher levels of
self-esteem.\25\ When adolescents rate their dads high on things like
nurturance, they are less likely to engage in deviant social behavior,
including drug use, truancy, and stealing.\26\
Children whose fathers are highly involved in their schools are
more likely to do well academically, to participate in extracurricular
activities, to enjoy school, and are less likely to have ever repeated
a grade or been expelled compared to children with less involved
fathers.\27\
Let me just note that none of what I am saying is meant to be
demeaning to single mothers. After all, I was raised by a single mom,
and my mother and many single mothers are doing heroic work to raise
their children alone, sometimes against difficult odds, and we should
applaud them. But we would be doing our children a grave injustice if
we do not accept the reality that children need and, frankly, deserve
to have involved, responsible, and committed fathers in their lives who
are physically, emotionally, and spiritually connected to their
children. Simply put, kids do better when dad is around.
MARRIAGE AND FATHERHOOD
Given the weight of the evidence that father involvement benefits
children, the challenge is for all of us to figure out the best way to
ensure that fathers and children are connected, heart to heart. Of all
the institutions our culture has available, marriage is the one that
provides the best pathway to involved, responsible, and committed
fatherhood.
Research has suggested that there are significant challenges for
non-marital cohabitation in ensuring long-term father-child bonds.
Cohabiting relationships are more likely to end, and to end quickly,
than married relationships. Non-custodial fathers also face various
issues that prevent long-term, frequent contact with their children.
Forty percent of children in father-absent homes have not seen their
father in at least a year. Of the remaining 60 percent, only one in
five sleeps even one night per month in the father's home. Overall,
only one in six sees their father an average of once or more per
week.\28\ More than half of all children who don't live with their
fathers have never even been in their father's home.\29\
Marriage, although not perfect, is the best environment in which
men can fulfill their roles as involved, responsible, and committed
fathers. One of the best predictors of the quality of the relationship
a father has with his children is the quality of the relationship he
has with the mother of his children. I experienced this in my own life.
When my parents got divorced, over time I saw less and less of my
father. He became involved in other things. He had another family. The
connection between my father and I, after my parents were no longer
married, slowly vanished.
Some would like to keep the issues of responsible fatherhood and
healthy marriages separate. But they are hard pressed to do so. As
President of the National Fatherhood Initiative, I have consistently
seen how discussions about responsible fatherhood inevitably evolve
into discussions about marriage. I am not surprised that this happens
because I believe that the best societal glue to connect kids to their
fathers physically, emotionally, and spiritually is marriage. In fact,
even in communities where marriage rates are low, responsible
fatherhood acts as a bridge to healthy discussions about marriage.
Once you start talking about the well-being of children and the
effectiveness of father involvement in increasing child well-being, it
becomes unavoidable to talk about the advantages marriage has over any
other family arrangement in terms of connecting both mothers and
fathers to their children. Several studies that we have released
demonstrate this clearly.
National Fatherhood Initiative just released two studies entitled,
Family Structure, Father Closeness, and Drug Abuse and Family
Structure, Father Closeness, and Delinquency. One of the things these
studies measured was the levels of both mother and father ``closeness''
in different family structures, as determined by adolescents' answers
to survey questions about their relationships with their parents. The
studies found that levels of both mother and father closeness to
adolescents are highest in two-parent married families, lower in
stepfamilies, lower still in single parent families, and lowest in no-
parent families where a mother or father substitute was named.\30\
Adolescents are closer to both their mothers and fathers when their
parents are married. This occurs because marriage aligns the interests
of mothers and fathers in the best interest of their children. In fact,
studies have found that homes in which both mothers and fathers live
are more child-centered than other homes.\31\ And this is why marriage
is such an important institution--it allows children to benefit from
the unique and irreplaceable contributions of mothers and the unique
and irreplaceable contributions of fathers.
PURPOSE OF THE NATIONAL FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE
To confront, head on, the problem of father absence, National
Fatherhood Initiative has worked for the last 10 years to connect
fathers to their children, heart to heart. As I said earlier, our
mission is to improve the well being of children by increasing the
proportion of children who grow up with involved, responsible, and
committed fathers in their lives.
As NFI has evolved over the last decade, we have developed a
comprehensive strategy for not only reducing father absence, but also
for helping all fathers become more physically, emotionally, and
spiritually involved in their children's lives. It is our ``Three-E''
strategy of educating, equipping, and engaging the culture on the issue
of father absence. Through our strategy we work to mobilize the ``three
pillars'' of culture--the business, faith, and government communities--
to address an issue that effects people and institutions in all sectors
of society. Any social movement that has had any success has been able
to effectively mobilize the three pillars. The American Revolution did
it. The Civil Rights Movement did it. NFI seeks to do it as well.
The first ``e'' of our strategy is educate. If you can't change
people's minds, you can't change anything. Since 1996, NFI has
partnered with the Ad Council to create and disseminate a comprehensive
public service announcement campaign to raise awareness about the
problem of father absence and to provide inspiration for fathers to
connect with their children. Since the campaign's inception, it has
garnered over $320 million in donated advertising on television, radio,
print, outdoor, and Internet media.
Respected individuals and celebrities such as Tiger Woods, Tom
Selleck, James Earl Jones, Tim McGraw, and Ossie Davis have lent their
talents to this unique campaign.
Millward Brown polling that tracks the effectiveness of the ads has
found that Americans' attitudes about important fatherhood issues have
shifted in a positive direction over the past few years. African
Americans especially are experiencing dramatic shifts in the way they
view the institution of fatherhood and its importance to children and
communities.
In addition to the public service announcements, NFI provides
research and other resources to educate the culture about the
importance of fatherhood.
The second ``e'' of our strategy is equip. At NFI we are very
focused on moving people from inspiration to implementation. We have
established a National Fatherhood Clearinghouse and Resource Center
(NFCRC) to provide a comprehensive collection of books, brochures,
curricula, videos, CD-ROMS, and other resources for both individual
fathers and for organizations throughout the country that are serving
fathers. The NFCRC provides training institutes, workshops, and
technical assistance to help grassroots organizations in implementing
fatherhood programs in their communities. Through our online bookstore,
we reach thousands of fathers every day with resources that cover a
wide array of pertinent fatherhood topics.
The third ``e'' of our strategy is engage. NFI works to engage in
strategic alliances and partnerships with organizations that are at the
nexus of children and families. In order to confront, in totality, the
problem of father absence, we cannot just talk to and work with men. We
have to engage the culture as a whole to embrace the importance of
connecting fathers to their children. We have to work with women to get
them involved in the fight to end father absence. This is not a men's
issue, it is a people issue. Accordingly, NFI works with organizations
from all sectors of society--business, faith, and government--to find
intersections in our work so that we can assist them in integrating
fatherhood programming into the work they are already doing. For
example, we are working with the Greater Pittsburgh YMCA to open
fatherhood resource centers in the 14 YMCAs in that area. I like to
call it the ``Willy Sutton strategy.'' That bank robber from the 1930's
was asked why he robbed banks and he responded simply ``that's where
the money is.'' Well, we try to go where the fathers are. When men
enter these YMCAs to play basketball or learn judo, they will also be
able to get resources and training on being involved, responsible, and
committed dads.
Each year, NFI's National Summit on Fatherhood educates, equips,
and engages 500 people from across the country on the latest issues
relevant to the responsible fatherhood movement. It is our way of
allowing folks from the public and private sectors to gather together
to share ideas and get the very best training and inspiration for
successfully creating, marketing, and maintaining fatherhood
programming in their communities.
NFI also engages the popular culture with our annual Fatherhood
Awards Gala and Golden Dads Campaign. The Fatherhood Awards recognize
individuals, organizations, and corporations that do exemplary work in
promoting involved, responsible, and committed fatherhood. The Golden
Dads Campaign awards every day dads in the zoos, parks, malls, and
museums of several American cities each year around Father's Day to
celebrate the positive contributions dads are making to their
children's lives.
CONCLUSION
Social science research over the past 25 years has strongly
suggested that kids do best when they have involved, responsible, and
committed fathers in their lives. People from across the political and
ideological spectrum have come together on this issue, largely because
of the weight of the evidence from the research. NFI's bi-partisan Task
Forces on Responsible Fatherhood serve as evidence of the unity that
exists on this issue.
Additionally, a review of the abundant literature on marriage
suggests that children who grow up with married parents are better off
and have the best chance at success.
If we want what is best for our children, then we have to ensure
that more children are growing up with married mothers and fathers. As
Wade Horn would say, ``real live, in-the-home, love-the-mother, married
fathers.''
Since the well-being of children is at stake, and a litany of
social ills correlate with the breakdown of married fatherhood, the
government has a role to play in helping families achieve exactly what
they would want for their own children. No parent wants his or her
daughter to be abandoned by the future father of her children. No
parent wants his or her son to abandon the future mother of his
children. Therefore, it is important that the government passes
legislation that promotes married fatherhood as the ideal. Legislation
should also do all it can to support children who grow up in father-
absent homes so that they can make better decisions about how they are
going to raise the children they will someday bring into the world.
Legislation should focus on supporting public awareness campaigns
about the importance of involved, responsible, and committed
fatherhood. It should help organizations establish fatherhood resource
centers to provide skill-building materials to all kinds of fathers at
their points of need. Legislation should provide funding for community-
based fatherhood programs that work at the grassroots to engage all
kinds of fathers and connect them to their children. Senators Bayh and
Santorum's Responsible Fatherhood Act, bill S. 604, is a bipartisan
piece of legislation that is exemplary in its addressing of responsible
fatherhood issues.
Legislation is not the answer, but it is a start. Our children
deserve a nation, and that includes a government, that is deeply
concerned about their future. And our Nation simply cannot be neutral
about the way our children grow up. This is a public health issue that
the government, the business community, and the faith community must
all work together to address. We have to ensure that the hole in every
child's soul in the shape of their father is filled with the love,
nurturance, and support of their dad.
I will close by reading an e-mail that came in through our website.
It is from a 16-year-old girl, whose e-mail address was ``always--
flirting'':
``I just wanted to say thanks. What you all are doing is great.
Fathers should be involved in their children's lives but sadly many
aren't. I'm 16 years old and my father acts like he wants nothing to do
with me or my brother, and it hurts sometimes, but I get over it. So
yeah, I just wanted to say thanks and that I'm glad someone out there
cares about the kids, even if their fathers don't.''
Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify before you
today, and I would be pleased to answer any questions you might have
concerning my testimony.
ENDNOTES
1. Horn, Wade F., and Tom Sylvester. Father Facts, 4th Edition
(Gaithersburg, MD: National Fatherhood Initiative, 2001).
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, ``Statistical
Abstract of the United States, 1993,'' (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1993).
5. U.S. Census Bureau. Vital Statistics of the United States.
Statistical Abstract of the United States 1999. Tables 155, 159.
Washington, D.C.: GPO, 2000.
6. National Commission on Children, ``Just the Facts: A Summary of
Recent Information on America's Children and Their Families,''
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993).
7. United States House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and
Means, ``1991 Green Book,'' (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1991).
8. Ventura, Stephanie J., and Christine A. Bachrach. Nonmarital
Childbearing in the United States: 1940-1999. Table 2. National Vital
Statistics Reports. Vol. 48. No. 16. Hyattsville, Maryland: National
Center for Health Statistics.
9. America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2001.
Table ECON1.A. Washington, D.C. Federal Interagency Forum on Child and
Family Statistics, 2001.
10. Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives.
2000 Green Book. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,
2000.
11. America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being.
Table SPECIAL1. Washington, D.C. Federal Interagency Forum on Child and
Family Statistics, 1997.
12. Davidson, Nicholas. ``Life Without Father,'' Policy Review
(1990).
13. Cornell, Dewey, et al., ``Characteristics of Adolescents
Charged with Homicide,'' Behavioral Sciences and the Law 5 (1987): 11-
23.
14. M. Eileen Matlock, et al., ``Family Correlates of Social Skills
Deficits in Incarcerated and Nonincarcerated Adolescents, Adolescence
29 (1994): 119-130.
15. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The
Relationship Between Family Structure and Adolescent Substance Use.
Rockville, MD: National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information,
1996.
16. McLanahan, Sara and Gary Sandefur. Growing Up with a Single
Parent: What Hurts, What Helps. Cambridge. Harvard University Press,
1994.
17. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Center
for Health Statistics. Survey on Child Health. Washington, D.C.: GPO,
1993.
18. Teachman, Jay, et al., Sibling Resemblance in Behavioral and
Cognitive Outcomes: The Role of Father Presence. Journal of Marriage
and the Family 60 (November 1998): 835-848.
19. O'Connor, T., L. Davies, J. Dunn, J. Golding, ALSPAC Study
Team. Differential Distribution of Children's Accidents, Injuries and
Illnesses across Family Type. Pediatrics 106 (November 2000): e68.
20. Matthews, T.J., Sally C. Curtin, and Marian F. MacDorman.
Infant Mortality Statistics from the 1998 Period Linked Birth/Infant
Death Data Set. National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 48, No. 12,
Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, 2000.
21. Smith, Lee. ``The New Wave of Illegitimacy.'' Fortune 18 (April
1994): 81-94.
22. Pedersen, F.A., et al., ``Parent-Infant and Husband-Wife
Interactions Observed at Five Months.'' The Father-Infant Relationship.
Ed. F. Pedersen. New York, 1980. 65-91.
23. Radin, N. ``Primary-Caregiving Fathers in Intact Families.'' In
A.E. Gottfried & A.W. Gottfried (Eds.), Redefining Families:
Implications for Children's Development. New York: Plenum Press, 1994:
55-97.
24. Pruett, K.D. The Nurturing Father. New York: Warner Books,
1987.
25. Field, Tiffany, et al., ``Adolescents' Intimacy With Parents
and Friends.'' Adolescence 30.117 (Spring 1995): 133-140.
26. Barnes, G.M. ``Adolescent Alcohol Abuse and Other Problem
Behaviors: Their Relationships and Common Parental Influences.''
Journal of Youth and Adolescence 13 (1984): 239-348.
27. Nord, Christine Windquist. Students Do Better When Their
Fathers Are Involved at School (NCES 98-121). Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics,
1998.
28. Furstenberg, Jr., Frank F. and Christine Windquist Nord.
``Parenting Apart: Patterns of Child Rearing After Marital
Disruption,'' Journal of Marriage and the Family, (November 1985): 896.
29. Furstenberg, Frank and Andrew Cherlin. Divided Families: What
Happens to Children When Parents Part (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1991).
30. Lerner, Robert. Family Structure, Father Closeness, and
Delinquency (Gaithersburg, MD: National Fatherhood Initiative, 2004).
31. Black, M.M., H. Dubowitz, and R.H. Starr. ``African American
Fathers in Low Income, Urban Families: Development, Behavior, and Home
Environment of Their Three-Year-Old Children.'' Child Development 70
(1999): 967-978.
Senator Sessions. Governor Keating, we are glad to have you
and I look forward to hearing from you now.
Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Allard. I
appreciate the opportunity to be here. I have a formal
statement I would just like to make a part of the record. I
have some very brief off-the-statement comments to make as----
Senator Sessions. We will make your statement a part of the
record.
Mr. Keating [continuing].----as substitutes for ancillaries
or postscripts to those that have been made and will be made.
Oklahoma became the first State in the Union to create and
to implement a marriage initiative. We also were the first
State in the Union to commit public funds, in addition to
private funds, to this purpose and we remain so to this day
under both political parties. The governor that followed me was
a Democrat. He is equally committed to this initiative as I
was.
But I came at this, Mr. Chairman, strictly as an economic
development matter. When I became Governor, I was troubled by
the fact that my State, which is 28th in population, was 45th
in per capita income. I mean, what made this State poor? How
come people that were so enterprising and so good--witness the
reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing, the fact that 302
buildings were damaged or destroyed and there was no act of
looting--how could people like this be so poor?
So I commissioned through the State Chamber of Commerce the
Oklahoma State University and Oklahoma University economics
departments to do an in-depth study of the reason for the
State's poverty. They came back and had a series of things that
probably come as no surprise to many of us. They said, well,
you tax too many things and you don't have right-to-work and
your workers' comp system is too expensive and your civil
justice system is basically in the--under the control of the
trial bar. You have too much welfare. Your infrastructure is
not adequate and your children don't work hard enough.
So with a Democrat legislature in both Houses, over the
course of the next number of years, we became the first State
in 42 years to pass right-to-work, reduce welfare costs, and
cut taxes dramatically. As a matter of fact, the largest
expenditure of public funds ever to build a transportation
infrastructure reduced welfare by 80 percent, and required that
every child take 3 years of math and 4 years of English and 4
years of science and 4 years of history and geography and the
like.
But these economists did something that I have never seen
economists do. They turned the page and said, you have too much
divorce and you have too much in the way of out-of-wedlock
birth. Well, for me, as a Catholic Governor in an
overwhelmingly Southern Baptist State, to begin preaching on
the subject of too much divorce obviously was something that I
was somewhat cautious or sensitive about doing. But I spoke in
my second inaugural message and also to a large group of
Southern Baptist pastors and I said, how come we can be so good
and yet have so much divorce, which results, according to the
study of the economics departments of these two universities,
in large doses of poverty?
So the first thing we did was with no mandate from the
State, and quite truthfully with no State funds, we asked the
faith community to come together and have courses before
marriage to encourage people, as is done in my faith, in pre-
Cana conferences, to prepare for marriage and understand that
marriage is a lifetime contract, to make sure, as has been said
by Dr. Horn and the other panelists, that you are prepared for
marriage and that this is something that obviously is important
for you and your prospective family.
So some 1,300 churches and synagogues in the State signed
up to provide a course before marriage. One of my Southern
Baptist pastor friends said, ``You know, at first, I wondered
what was this guy, this secular figure, preaching to me about
the need to have a course before marriage.'' And he said, ``The
first couple that came to see me to ask for a date for a
wedding, I thought, well, I will just see if Keating has a
point. And I asked this young man and young woman, well, you
understand that this is a lifetime contract, do you not, to
which the young man said, ``Well, we were going to give it a 5-
year try.''
[Laughter.]
And this pastor said, ``Well, did you buy a car on time?''
And this young man said, ``Yes, I did.'' He said, ``What is
your time on the car payments?'' He said, ``Well, 3 years.'' He
said, ``what do you think the bank would have done if you told
it that you were going to try to make those payments for a
year?'' He said, ``Well, they wouldn't loan me the money.'' And
he said, ``Well, I am not going to marry you, either.''
So the State as a faith community, and about 70 percent of
our people go to church twice a month or more, committed at the
outset to do this.
Then we had a series of conferences on marriage, brought in
professionals. As a matter of fact, Wade Horn was one of the
early people that came to help us. We decided we needed to
focus on teachers, public health nurses. We needed a broad-
based education system not only in addition to the pastors and
priests and rabbis and imams of the churches and synagogues and
mosques, but also we needed to have health care professionals
and teachers talk about the importance of marriage as a
contract, the importance of being able to argue, to resolve
problems, and to truly be prepared for the marriage state.
So far, we have some 1,100, 1,200 people who have gone
through or who have become ``train the trainers'' for these
courses. It is a 12-hour course. It is a matter which has been
funded through TANF funds over the course of the last probably
5 years. We have spent about $7.5 million in TANF funds for
this purpose. Obviously, there is a lot of private sector
contribution and nonprofit support, as well.
But the State, the public community, that is the
legislature, men and women of both parties, the governor,
obviously two men of both parties, have committed that if, in
fact, this is a way to make us more prosperous, this is not a
secular statement, it is not--I mean, a sectarian statement, it
is a secular statement, if this is one of those things that we
need to do to make us more successful and more prosperous,
better educated, obviously longer lived and healthier, we are
going to do it, and underway in Oklahoma today is just such an
initiative.
I think it is too early to say what the results will be,
but I cannot imagine that there would not be some positive
result when you have the number of people and the number of
committed people to have a course before marriage and to commit
themselves for a lifetime relationship.
Senator Sessions. Thank you, Governor Keating. It is a very
succinct and great story. It is a great accomplishment.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Keating follows:]
Prepared Statement of Governor Frank Keating
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for
inviting me to talk to you today. My name is Frank Keating and I am
President and CEO of the American Council of Life Insurers. I have been
asked to talk today about the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative (OMI), which
I launched in 1999 when I was Governor of Oklahoma. While this
Initiative began under my Republican Administration, Governor Brad
Henry, a Democrat, was elected in 2002, and the OMI continues to thrive
with his support.
I will talk today about why we decided to launch the Initiative,
what it accomplished when I was Governor, and what has happened since
Governor and Mrs. Henry joined in this important work. I will also
suggest that there are some general lessons from the Oklahoma
experience that may be useful to other States and communities committed
to the same goals of strengthening families and child well being.
HOW DID THE OKLAHOMA MARRIAGE INITIATIVE BEGIN?
In my 1999 Inaugural address, I announced that Oklahoma's high rate
of divorce was an economic and social policy problem, and I put forth
bold goals to reduce divorce and out-of-wedlock birth rates. (In the
last State ranking produced by the CDC in 1995, Oklahoma had the second
highest divorce rate by State of residence, trailing only Arkansas.) As
a first step, I convened a day-long Governor and First Lady's
Conference on Marriage on March 22, 1999, where 200 leaders from many
different sectors and regions of the State came together to hear from
the nation's experts on marriage and to brainstorm ideas about what the
State could do to counteract current negative trends. This event, and
the subsequent ideas and support generated over the next weeks and
months, launched what is now known as the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative.
WHAT IS THE OKLAHOMA MARRIAGE INITIATIVE?
The Oklahoma Marriage Initiative (OMI) is a broad based,
comprehensive attempt to mobilize public and private sectors in a
statewide effort to strengthen marriage and reduce divorce in order to
improve child well-being and benefit adults. Even though Oklahoma has a
long way to go to achieve critical mass in the delivery of services, no
other State has launched as ambitious a plan or invested as many
resources on this issue. As a result, the OMI has received a great deal
of attention in the national and international press. In policy
circles, Oklahoma has become a national model for innovation across
broad systems and diverse groups in furtherance of the goal of
strengthening marriages.
Due in part to the broad-based interest and support of the OMI,
from the public and from a diverse group of stakeholders, and because
of a shared belief that government must do something more to strengthen
families, several other States are now following close behind. At the
time of this testimony, there are seven States that have significant
activities underway to strengthen marriage and two-parent families--
Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, Utah, and Virginia.
Other Governor's have now held statewide Conferences on Marriage, and
in around 36 States new government funded educational programs are
being offered on at least a pilot basis. These programs are largely
designed to prepare couples for marriage and to help them achieve
healthier, long lasting marriages.\1\
WHY DID WE DECIDE TO LAUNCH THE OMI?
In 1998, during my second term in office, I commissioned economists
at the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University to study
the reasons for Oklahoma's low per capita income and low rates of
economic growth. The 1999 report that followed specifically cited
Oklahoma's high divorce rates and teenage birth rates among the factors
associated with its poor economic performance. As noted in an op-ed
piece at the time ``Oklahoma's high divorce rate and low per-capita
income are interrelated. They hold hands. They push and pull each
other. There's no faster way for a married woman with children to
become poor than to suddenly become a single mother.'' Jerry Regier,
who was Oklahoma Cabinet Secretary of Health and Human Services in my
administration (who now serves as Governor Jeb Bush's Secretary for
Children and Families) had also made me aware of the growing body of
social science research that linked high rates of single parenthood to
child poverty and other negative indicators of child well being.
The research basis for taking government action to strengthen
marriage was strong, but I was well aware that there was little
precedent for doing so, and my decision was going to be controversial.
Marriage had always been considered a private issue, and little
attention had been paid to government's role in this important
institution. That is why I thought it was so important to bring
together leaders from different sectors and political persuasions from
across the State to our first conference to hear from the experts about
the compelling research in this area. At this first conference, I
talked about the sensitivity of the issue and acknowledged that, like
the country as a whole, many of the assembled leaders were themselves
divorced or had experienced divorce in their family. My wife, Cathy,
also spoke that day, acknowledging that we have had our own struggles
at times, and have experienced divorce in our extended family. Together
we assured our fellow Oklahomans that our intent was not to point the
finger of blame at anyone but to ask them to join us in a collective
effort to decide how to reduce divorce and strengthen families in the
next generations.
There are additional reasons to justify proposing government
action. In Oklahoma, we believe that by investing in efforts to
strengthen marriage and reduce divorce we will eventually reduce the
level of government intrusion in family life. Judge Helen Brown of
Detroit has pointed out that, ``the best way to keep government out of
your (family) life, is to stay married.'' It is when couples divorce,
she says, that court officials are really intrusive, ``telling you when
you can see your child, how much money you should send each month, how
and when you can communicate and how to divide the assets of your
marriage.'' \2\
My Secretary of Human Services Howard Hendrick, who was retained by
the new Governor, currently oversees the OMI, provided congressional
testimony about the Initiative before the Senate Finance Committee,
where he pointed out the high costs of all human service programs
(artificial supports) that are needed to help single parents when
fathers and mothers do not marry or when marriages break up--such as
child support enforcement, welfare, food stamps, Medicaid etc. Hendrick
testified that welfare reform in Oklahoma, as elsewhere, has been very
successful in reducing the need for welfare assistance, but he said we
must also find ways to strengthen the natural supports provided by
healthy two-parent married families, both to improve child well-being
and to ultimately lessen the need for government assistance.\3\
HOW DID WE DECIDE WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO FUND IT?
As I said in my State of the State Address in 1999, ``There's
something wrong with good people in a good society when it is easier to
get a marriage license in Oklahoma than it is to get a fishing license
and it is easier to get out of a marriage with children than it is to
get out of a Tupperware contract.''
But while it was easy to identify the problem, it was another
matter entirely to decide on any one solution. There were no blue
prints out there and, quite frankly, we didn't know what to do beyond
our commitment to doing something. We decided against setting up a
Commission that would study the idea and report back in a few years, as
our priority was to use our broad-based support to begin implementing
services. Instead we set about consulting widely with marriage experts
in Oklahoma and across the nation, looking for promising ideas and
programs that could be replicated in some form and on a greater scale.
We established a large, broad based steering committee, and through a
competitive bid, hired a public consulting firm, Public Strategies to
manage the planning process and develop a service delivery system.
As a result of our efforts, we discovered that over the past 20
years researchers have learned a great deal about what factors
contribute to the success or failure of marriages. Some of this
knowledge has been translated into a variety of educational programs
designed to teach individuals and couples the information, skills and
attitudes needed to make wise relationship choices, and to build and
sustain healthy marriages. These programs for the most part were not
well known when we began, and they were not widely available. Moreover
they were generally provided to middle class engaged or married
couples. It was not clear whether or not these services could be
offered on a large scale and/or to a more diverse population.
Nevertheless, we were impressed with the promise of the field and a few
outstanding programs, and it was our State's decision that providing
these marriage education services should be the principal objective of
the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative.
After an extensive review of applicable programs, the OMI selected
the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP), based in
Denver, because it was the program with the strongest research basis,
the most promising evaluation results, and the curriculum had been used
widely with military couples. The PREP program consists of 12 hours of
group instruction and interaction, typically delivered in 2-hour
periods over 6 weeks, but the format is easily modified to fit with
specific participant needs and the sponsor's setting. The founders of
PREP also had many years of experience in training professional and
paraprofessional workshop leaders to deliver the program, which was to
be the basic design of the Oklahoma model.
After selecting a core curriculum, the immediate challenge was how
to build the capacity to offer the PREP workshops on an ongoing basis
in every county in the State. Public Strategies worked for many months
with Jerry Regier, Howard Hendrick and DHS senior staff, and many
individuals in the non-governmental sector to design the Marriage and
Relationship Service Delivery System. The system was designed to train
three categories of individuals: staff of publicly funded agencies who
already had experience providing educational or therapeutic services to
low income individuals and families; pastors, ministers, chaplains and
lay leaders from the faith community; and health, mental health and
other community leaders who might be in the position to deliver
workshops to couples.
While the early planning efforts of the OMI were funded with
private foundation dollars and a modest amount of State discretionary
monies, clearly a statewide service delivery system would require
significant funding. Since three of the four goals of the 1996 TANF law
related to marriage, I asked the Department of Human Services Board to
set aside $10 million in TANF funds for this effort and they agreed.
From the beginning, this commitment of resources made the OMI more than
just another policy idea. It gave legs to ideas and demonstrated a real
commitment to developing these services.
WHAT HAS THE OMI ACCOMPLISHED TO DATE?
I do not have ample time to describe in detail all the things that
are going on in the OMI or the wide range of the benefits our State has
received from this Initiative, but I will simply highlight here the
most significant achievements in the areas of research, service
delivery, and community involvement.
RESEARCH--THE OKLAHOMA STATEWIDE BASELINE SURVEY
The OMI has made a commitment to ongoing research through a
partnership agreement with the Oklahoma State University Bureau for
Social Research and the creation of a Research Advisory Group comprised
of State and nationally known marriage scholars, practitioners and
policy experts. These researchers are charged with providing ongoing
guidance to the research efforts that guide program design and
implementation.
In 2001, this research team designed and implemented a
comprehensive statewide baseline survey to learn about Oklahomans'
attitudes, behaviors and opinions related to marriage, divorce and
marital quality. Additionally, the survey over-sampled Medicaid clients
to ensure that the results were representative of the low-income
population. The initial report was published in July 2002 \4\. (Utah
and Florida have since conducted their own State surveys modeled on the
Oklahoma survey).
Among the key findings are:
Oklahomans marry an average of 2.5 years younger than the national
median age at first marriage.
Thirty-two percent of all Oklahoman adults have ever divorced
compared to 21 percent nationally.
Those who have been divorced give as the two top reasons for their
divorces a ``lack of commitment'' and ``too much conflict and
arguing''.
Over \2/3\ of Oklahomans think divorce is a very serious national
problem. Eighty-two percent of Oklahomans said that a statewide
initiative to promote marriage and reduce divorce would be a good or
very good idea.
Sixty-six percent would consider using relationships education to
strengthen their relationships. Interest in relationship education is
especially high among the young (77 percent) and low-income persons (72
percent).
Plans are to repeat the survey in upcoming years to assess whether
there have been any changes in Oklahomans' attitude, knowledge and
behavior related to marriage and divorce, but the data is already used
to influence program design. The survey findings presented by the
research team have helped the OMI target new priorities and activities,
while also confirming many of the previously adopted program
approaches. For example, since learning that Oklahomans marry so young
and that young marriages are much more vulnerable to divorce, the OMI
is implementing a new curriculum for high school students, created
through a partnership between the developers of PREP and a youth-
oriented marriage education curriculum. The OMI also partnered with the
State's family and consumer sciences teachers in 2003, and as a result,
Connections+PREP is currently being offered as an elective course in
Oklahoma high schools.
SERVICE DELIVERY SYSTEM
There are now trained PREP workshop leaders available to deliver
community-based workshops in most every county in the State. In Tulsa
and Oklahoma City, there are sufficient numbers of trained leaders to
begin to offer workshops on a continuous basis (``standing capacity'').
As of April 2004:
OMI has trained 1072 individuals as PREP workshop leaders.
(Individuals receive training at no cost in exchange for a commitment
to conduct four workshops at no charge to participants). Those trained
include staff of three publicly funded agencies with whom the OMI has
cooperative agreements, namely--the Department of Health Child Guidance
counselors; University Cooperative Extension educators; and
professional staff affiliated with the Oklahoma Association of Youth
Services, which has 41 community-based agencies that provide services
to youth and their families. In addition, hundreds of workshop leaders
have been trained from and to serve the faith community, military,
Native American tribes, mental health providers, Department of
Corrections, educational and academic sectors, and many other areas.
An additional 262 Family and Consumer Sciences teachers in 250 high
schools have been trained to provide classes in the Connections-PREP
curriculum. Approximately 10,000 high school students will complete the
curriculum this year.
A total of 1,413 PREP workshops have been conducted to date, with
approximately 18,721 individuals having completed the workshop.
Participants represent a wide range of backgrounds and situations and
include married and unmarried couples, single welfare mothers, parents
of juvenile first-time offenders, and women residents of domestic
violence shelters.
Approximately 35 percent of all participants are estimated to be
low income. The proportion of low-income participants continues to rise
as the OMI has become more focused on recruiting providers who serve
this population. Recent data from workshop participants suggest that of
those who reported income, 50 percent reside in low-income households
as defined by the DHS poverty guidelines of household income at or
below $36,800.
The leadership of the Oklahoma Coalition Against Domestic Violence
and Sexual Assault has worked with the OMI since its early stages of
development to ensure that PREP leaders are provided training and
information regarding domestic violence issues. All workshop
participants are also given information about referral sources for
domestic violence services, counselors, and substance abuse treatment.
Additionally, the OMI has achieved some success in training
workshop leaders from African American, Latino and Native American
communities to deliver the workshops in numerous areas and settings.
The OMI has done much work to date in translating workshop forms,
materials and training information into Spanish to serve the State's
growing Latino population.
Several programs designed for special populations have also been
developed as part of the service delivery system. For example, prison
chaplains have been trained to offer PREP workshops on a voluntary
basis to re-entry prisoners and their spouses/partners; parents who are
adopting children with special needs are participating in PREP
workshops as part of a post-adoption services program; parents and
their teenagers are participating in PREP workshops as part of the
juvenile first offenders program; child welfare families are
participating in PREP services as part of their family service plans;
and refugee resettlement workers are offering culturally appropriate
services through two community-based organizations.
INVOLVEMENT OF THE FAITH COMMUNITY
Since the large majority of first marriages occur in a church
setting, and 67 percent of Oklahomans claim affiliation with a church,
it was clearly important and a logical step early in the development
process for me to invite the faith leaders to actively join this
Initiative. In 2000, leaders of almost every denomination and faith
throughout Oklahoma joined the First Lady and me at the State Capitol
to pledge that they would work towards preparing couples for the
complexities of marriage. These leaders signed a marriage covenant,
committing themselves to encouraging more premarital education and
counseling, enacting waiting periods before agreeing to marry, and
developing a program of marriage mentors within their congregations. To
date nearly 1,300 faith leaders have signed this covenant. Two hundred
forty-six current PREP workshop leaders associate themselves with the
faith sector and are delivering workshops within a congregation or
faith organization. Additionally, mentor couples have been trained to
work in conjunction with these marriage education workshops to provide
congregations with a comprehensive program of family strengthening
services and opportunities.
LESSONS FOR OTHER STATES AND COMMUNITIES
Secretary Hendrick tells me that the Initiative is constantly
adapting and making improvements to meet the needs of new service
populations and to correspond with the latest research. In the next
year, now that services are becoming more available, planning has begun
about ways to increase public outreach and communications, focusing on
letting Oklahomans know about the value and availability of the PREP
workshops. Work is also being done to develop an additional marriage
education service for low-income parents who are becoming parents.
Like most prevention/early intervention programs, it will be many
years before we will know the outcomes of the OMI and whether the
Initiative has been successful in helping more people have better
marriages and fewer divorces. But I think we can still reflect on some
of the general lessons that we have learned thus far about how to
implement marriage initiatives, whether statewide or at a city or
community level. I'm sure those more closely involved than I could list
many such lessons.\5\ I will now focus on four overarching lessons that
stand out to me.
Attract committed high-level leadership. With a new and
sensitive subject it is especially important to obtain the strong
commitment and support of top governmental leadership whether at the
State, city or community level. In Oklahoma, my interest as Governor
helped to overcome much initial skepticism and resistance and opened
many doors. The resolve of Governor Henry to continue the OMI from one
administration to another, and his commitment to support Oklahoma's
initiative publicly has been the measure of true leadership and a
testimony to the broad range of impact and support this Initiative has
garnered.
The steadfast commitment of Secretary Jerry Regier in the early
stages, and then the exemplary leadership of Secretary Howard Hendrick
as the OMI has developed have made progress possible in innumerable
ways. And most importantly, strong leadership at these levels has made
it much easier to build the critical leadership needed throughout State
agencies and in other sectors when one seeks to make a difference for
families and children.
Build a strong, broad and inclusive base of support. Any
marriage initiative must devote the time necessary to having a period
of information sessions and consultations with individuals in many
sectors to help overcome any initial resistance and skepticism about a
marriage agenda. Make sure to invite representatives from the domestic
violence community to participate in meaningful discussions, and to
engage groups who may feel especially nervous about what marriage
promotion means. In Oklahoma we found that this effort was, though time
consuming in the early stages, ultimately very rewarding as gradually
more and more people have come forward to offer their assistance and
support for these services. Nationally, there has developed an
immensely productive and respectful discussion among liberal and
conservative policy experts and researchers about marriage and family,
and I am proud that Oklahoma has played a role in this evolving
discussion.
Build the design and implementation of any marriage
initiative on the best theory and research available. When beginning a
demonstration program where there is still so much to learn, use what
you do know from research as your foundation. Let ``lessons learned''
and research findings guide your next steps to the extent that they
can. Because we based our program and strategies in research, we had
the credibility we needed to help gain support for the services.
Invest significant monies in planning and in developing
services if you want to have any hope of having an effect. You cannot
change social service systems by passing laws with no appropriations or
making declarations about the value of marriage. In Oklahoma we were
fortunate to be able to use TANF funds for the development of these
services, but other departments and agencies also have a stake in
promoting healthy marriage--Health, Education, Justice, and the Armed
Services. Each of these agencies should be encouraged to think of
funding vehicles they may have to support marriage strengthening
activities as well. It is important, also, to include the business
sector as divorces and family relationship struggles can be very costly
to businesses in terms of lost productivity.
Involving the faith-based sector as a vital partner. The
faith community is often well aware that it has a special
responsibility to do more to strengthen marriage, yet the tradition of
separation of church and State makes many in the faith sector nervous
of working too closely with government and vice-versa. Further, it is
our experience that much of the faith community is in desperate need of
training and resources to equip them to support couples and marriages.
I believe our approach in partnering with the Oklahoma faith community
could be a useful model to other States. In effect the OMI serves as an
intermediary in service delivery, allowing the government the
opportunity to work in parallel and along side the faith sector towards
the same goal. In practice, the OMI is able to encourage faith leaders
to make more efforts to strengthen their marriage ministries and is
helping build their capacity to do so without any direct financial
relationship.
I am immensely excited by and proud of everything the OMI has
accomplished thus far. There are literally thousands of Oklahomans who
over the past few years have been involved in meetings, discussions,
trainings or participated in workshops and learning about the
components of healthy marriages. These activities are clearly having a
ripple effect and will continue to do so. As this Initiative moves
forward, I believe we have a good chance of turning things around in
Oklahoma. Over time we will replace a culture of divorce with a culture
that supports strong and healthy marriages, and children will be the
greatest beneficiaries.
Endnotes
1. Ooms, T., Bouchet. S. Parke, M., (April 2004) Beyond Marriage
Licenses: Efforts in States to Strengthen Marriage and Two-Parent
Families. Washington, DC. Center for Law and Social Policy.
2. Regier, J. (2001, May 22) Testimony before the subcommittee on
Human Resource, Ways and Means Committee hearing on Welfare and
Marriage Issues.
3. Hendrick, H.(2003, March 12) Testimony before the Senate Finance
Committee hearing on Welfare Reform: Building on Success.
4. Johnson, C., Stanley, S.M., Glenn, N.G., Amato, P., Nock, S.L.,
Markman, H.J. & Dion, R, (2002). Marriage in Oklahoma 2001 Baseline
Statewide Survey on Marriage and Divorce. Oklahoma City: Oklahoma
Marriage Initiative. Available online at www.okmarriage.org.
5. See for example, Ooms, T. and Myrick, M.( 2002) What If a
Governor Decided to Address the ``M-word''? The Use of Research in the
Design and Implementation of the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, Paper
presented at the APAM Research Annual Conference in Dallas, November 7
2022. Available from [email protected].
Senator Sessions. Dr. Weed?
Mr. Weed. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee. I am pleased to be here today. I would like to share
with you the results of a recent national study conducted by my
colleagues and I at the Institute for Research and Evaluation.
I will summarize from the article being published in the peer-
reviewed Family Relations journal.
I would like to point out that this research was not about
the pros and cons of marriage or divorce. We have accepted the
well-established evidence regarding the negative impact of
family disintegration on children, adults, and the broader
society. We have moved in this research to a broader policy
level question that requires a broad macro analysis of trends
at the county, State, and national level. And so our research
is really not about any one community or any one approach to
helping strengthen marriage or reduce divorce. It was really a
broad look that would help in terms of policy decisions.
We had two questions that we wanted to resolve. First,
whether community marriage initiatives actually reduce divorce
rates across a broad spectrum of States and counties. Now, in
the research field, the common scenario is, well, there goes
another beautiful theory murdered by a brutal gang of facts. We
wanted to answer the program impact question, but we also
wanted to determine if we could develop an objective and
rigorous methodology to test that question.
So we tackled this by looking at a specific community
marriage initiative called Community Marriage Policies under
the umbrella of the Marriage Savers program, developed by Mike
McManus. The premise was that a large majority of marriages,
about 86 percent, occur in the faith community setting and that
religious leaders could be more involved in strengthening
marriage through better education and preparation in their
congregations.
By January of 2004, the clergy of 183 cities and towns in
40 States had adopted a Community Marriage Policy with the goal
of reducing divorce rates among those married in area churches.
You will see in my written testimony a description of that
program, at least in summary form.
We had some challenges in this evaluation. The first was,
to our surprise, the Federal Government discontinued collecting
divorce data at the county level in the mid-1990s and stopped
paying States to do so. As a result, we had to contact most
States and individual counties directly in order to create a
new database for U.S. counties from 1989 to the present.
Second, information about program implementation was not
available from all CMP counties, but we were sure from the data
that we were able to get that there was a broad range of
quality in terms of implementation, which meant that our data
summarizes and averages across strong, well-implemented
policies as well as those that are pretty weak and almost
nonsignificant.
And finally, national divorce rates are already declining
in most U.S. counties. We found from this new data set we
created almost a 15 percent decline in the divorce rates since
1990. So we had to do our analysis in the context of that
ongoing decline.
The test involved a comparison between counties having
Community Marriage Policies with matched counties in the same
State who do not have such policies. And in order to do that,
we had to examine all 3,141 U.S. counties and select comparison
counties within the same State whose divorce rate and level was
declining at virtually the same rate as our target counties. If
you look at Figure 1 in your handout, you will see that our
matching methodology was quite successful. We were able to
match 122 counties with our target counties that had
essentially the same rate of decline and the same level of
divorce rate.
In addition, we controlled in the analysis for other
factors that are directly related to aggregate divorce rates--
percent urban, percent Catholic, median age, median income,
percent female, and the marriage rate. We also looked at
cohabitation rates as a factor that might have influenced the
results of this analysis.
Our hypothesis was that the decline after the CMP was
signed would have accelerated more in counties which adopted a
Community Marriage Policy than in the comparison counties
without the intervention. This hypothesis was supported by the
data, and if you look at Figure 2, you will see that the
decline in the divorce rate accelerated in those targeted CMP
counties at a greater rate than our matched counties.
We concluded from this that CMP counties were experiencing
a greater decline in the divorce rate than the comparison
counties and the significant difference in divorce rate change
over time between CMP and comparison counties persisted after
accounting for changes in marriage rates, cohabitation rates,
and a variety of the key demographic predictors that I
mentioned earlier.
To put it in more common and user-friendly terms, if you
looked at Table 1 in my handout, what you will see there is a
decline in our target counties of 17.5 percent of the divorce
rate compared to a 9 percent decline in the match counties. So
the rate of decline was almost double in the targeted program
intervention counties.
One of the things that is striking about this is that the
deck is really stacked against finding a positive result in
this kind of an analysis, especially on such a broad scale. It
is not the usual thing that you find. I evaluate lots of
different kinds of programs and the most common news that I
take back to the client is, well, I wish we had better news.
This didn't work, and maybe we can figure out why and perhaps
you can improve it.
In this case, we found significant results and we analyzed
it in dozens of different ways to see if those results were
somehow a fluke of a particular analytical approach that we had
used. But in fact, the analyses that we tried, dozens of them,
came up with the same pattern of results. So we gained more
confidence, and I think the important thing about these
findings is not so much that they are large, which they are
not. I mean, this is a modest result. But what is surprising is
that there is any result at all under these circumstances.
So there is promise here. We think that there is good
reason to look carefully at this and programs like it and find
ways to support couples who would like to strengthen marriage
and reduce divorce.
In summary, I would say that at the policy level, we would
do well to invest in and further investigate this and similar
approaches which have the potential of affecting divorce rates
on a large scale through community marriage initiatives. Local
communities with reasonable effort, good coordination, and good
programs can make a difference in the divorce rate on a broad
scale. Our society will be the benefactor. Thank you very much.
Senator Sessions. Thank you, Dr. Weed. That is good news,
indeed, and I do think it is an important question.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Weed follows:]
Prepared Statement of Stan E. Weed
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I am pleased to be here
today to share with you the results of a recent national study
conducted by my colleagues and I at the Institute for Research and
Evaluation. I will summarize from the article being published in the
peer reviewed Family Relations journal. (Assessing the Impact of
Community Marriage Policies on U.S. County Divorce Rates; Paul James
Birch, Stan E. Weed, and Joseph A. Olsen) May I point out that this
research is not about the pros and cons of marriage and divorce. We
have accepted the well established evidence regarding the negative
impact of family disintegration on children, adults, and the broader
society (Doherty, et al., 2002). We have moved to a broader policy
level question that requires a broad, macro analysis of trends at the
county, State and national level. We wanted to determine (1) whether
community marriage initiatives actually reduce divorce rates across a
broad spectrum of States and counties, and (2) whether we could develop
an objective and rigorous methodology to test that question.
Numerous private, professional, religious, and government agencies
have tackled the problem of family disintegration, and with more vigor
in recent years. Coalitions of such agencies, referred to as Community
Marriage Initiatives, have emerged as one of the major thrusts (see
Parke & Ooms, 2002). Our research focused on one of the earliest of
these community based efforts, launched in 1986 by founder Mike McManus
with a group of concerned faith community leaders in Modesto,
California. The premise was that a large majority of marriages occur in
church settings (86 percent according to Hart, 2003), and that
religious leaders could be more involved in strengthening marriage
through better education and preparation in their congregations. By
January, 2004, the clergy of 183 cities and towns in 40 States had
adopted a Community Marriage Policy (CMP) with the goal of reducing
divorce rates among those married in area churches.
THE PROGRAM
Most Community Marriage Policies involve local clergy developing a
community marriage policy in which they pledge, publicly and in
writing, to take five steps to revitalize marriage:
Require rigorous marriage preparation of at least 4 months during
which couples take a premarital inventory and talk through the
relational issues it surfaces with trained mentor couples, who also
teach couple communication skills.
Renew existing marriages with an annual enrichment retreat.
Restore troubled marriages by training couples whose marriages once
nearly failed, to mentor couples currently in crisis.
Reconcile the separated with a course conducted with a same gender
support partner.
Revive step families by creating Step Family Support Groups for
parents in remarriages with children.
As implied in the above components, couples in healthy marriages
are enlisted to be a mentor couple to help others at critical stages of
marriage. To date, about 3,000 mentor couples have been personally
trained by the program founders. Numerous others have become involved
through local congregational efforts.
EVALUATION CHALLENGES
We faced several challenges when addressing the questions of
program impact. First, and surprisingly, the Federal Government
discontinued collecting divorce data at the county level in the mid
1990s and stopped paying States to do so. As a result, we had to
contact most States and individual counties directly in order to create
a new data base for U.S. counties from 1989 to the present. In a few
cases, the county data was not available or not reliable, which meant
that some CMP counties had to be excluded from the analysis. For
example, some States record filed divorces rather than finalized
divorces. Second, information about program implementation was not
available from all CMP counties. From the data we could acquire it was
clear that the level of program implementation varied widely. Some
counties did little beyond the original signing, others followed the
signing with a serious and lasting effort. This means that what ever
results we found would be made up of an average of both strong and weak
policies. Furthermore, since national divorce rates are already
declining in most U.S. counties, additional research had to be done to
assess the effect of community Marriage Policies in the context of that
overall decline.
THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS & RESULTS
The test involved a comparison between counties having Community
Marriage Policies with matched counties in the same State who do not
have such policies. The Institute wanted to identify counties whose
pre-CMP slope was most similar to that of CMP counties. To do so, it
was necessary to look at data from all 3,141 U.S. counties and select
comparison counties in each State whose divorce rate was at the same
level and declining at virtually the same rate as the CMP counties
prior to CMP signing. The matching procedure relied on standardized
squared Euclidean distance measures (using early divorce data) between
CMP counties and all potential comparison counties. Population density
was used as a second matching variable to further establish
comparability between CMP and comparison counties. We were able to
produce a set of counties which provided a good comparison (See figure
1). The divorce rate decline of comparison counties in the pre-CMP
years, on average, was .095 divorce points per year (vs. .084 in CMP
counties). In addition, we controlled in the analysis for other factors
that are directly related to aggregate divorce rates: percent urban,
percent catholic, median age, median income, percent female, and
marriage rate. We also looked at cohabitation rates as a factor.
Our hypothesis was that the decline after the CMP was signed would
have accelerated more in counties which adopted a Community Marriage
Policy than in the comparison counties without the intervention. This
hypothesis was supported by the data. In CMP counties the divorce rate
fell .084 before the CMP and .144 afterward. But in the matched
counties, the slope of the divorce rate decline actually fell from .095
per year to .06 per year. This is a statistically significant
difference (b=^.095, p=.007, df=1852). (See figure 2) Different
analytical models produced minor differences in these results, but the
pattern was consistent regardless of the model we used.
We concluded from this that the CMP counties were experiencing a
greater decline in the divorce rate than the comparison counties. The
significant difference in divorce rate change over time between CMP and
comparison counties persists after accounting for marriage rates,
cohabitation rates, and a variety of key demographic measures.
In more familiar terms, counties with a Community Marriage Policy
had an 8.6 percent decline in their divorce rates over 4 years, while
the comparison counties registered a 5.6 percent decline. Over a 7 year
period, CMP communities had a 17.5 percent decline in the divorce rate
vs. 9.4 percent in comparison counties. Thus, Community Marriage Policy
counties have a decline in the divorce rate that is nearly double that
of control communities (See table 1). The levels of impact would likely
be greater if more communities had higher levels of saturation and
implementation. That is, if more churches and synagogues signed on and
more mentor couples were trained.
The Institute estimates that 31,000 to 50,000 fewer divorces
occurred in 114 cities/counties with a Community Marriage Policy. Since
clergy and community leaders have now created 183 Community Marriage
Policies, the actual number is likely higher.
ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS
We examined other possible explanations for this data, none of
which discredited the basic conclusion that CMP counties showed a
greater decline in the divorce rate than the matched comparison
counties. For example, we looked at factors which often predict divorce
rates to some degree, such as the percentage of the population which is
Catholic (who tend to experience lower divorce rates), percent urban,
percent poverty, percent who cohabit, etc. Controlling for these
factors did not change the results. We also examined whether the
marriage rates were different in CMP counties compared to matched
counties within the same State. No evidence could be found that the
observed differences in divorce were attributable to differentially
changing marriage rates.
We looked at the data in a multitude of ways, using different
analytical models and controlling for different demographic predictors
of divorce: the results persisted. The bottom line is that a Community
Marriage Policy signing and the related activities associated with it
bring down the divorce rate and creates a stronger culture for
marriage. These results are significant, not because of their magnitude
(which was modest) but because there are any results at all. In
reality, the deck is stacked against finding a positive program effect
in this setting. The effort depends on local volunteers with a high
turnover. Local pastors also change frequently. Impact on county level
data would require a fairly large proportion of congregations in that
county signing on, and program implementation varies widely in its
quality. Training of mentor couples did not begin in earnest until
1998. In 1999 when the 100th CMP was signed, Marriage Savers introduced
its Manual to Create a Marriage Savers Congregation, an indication that
the program was still evolving and is relatively new. Recorded divorce
rates lag considerably behind the intervention, making divorce rate
changes harder to detect in a relatively new program. And, CMPs were
adopted mostly at the city level but the data were only available at
the county level, embedding the effect in a larger population than that
which would be affected by the policy. Finding a significant program
effect under these conditions would be surprising. We would expect that
with a more complete and consistent level of implementation, better
results would be achieved.
Can we believe these results? Are there alternative explanations
for the observed pattern?
We have done several things that add rigor to the research and
increase our confidence in the findings:
1. Used multiple policies (122) signed at different times, reducing
the likelihood of some chance event around the time of the policy
signing.
2. Chose comparison group of 122 counties matched on 5 years of the
pre-existing decline. This helps us determine whether changes in the
CMP counties are all that unique, and whether other factors are at work
in these counties that could be affecting the divorce rate independent
of the program.
3. Developed a nationally representative model of divorce rates to
see what factors, observed at the aggregate level, predict divorce
rates and we then controlled for differences on these factors.
4. Used sophisticated statistical analysis techniques (A mixed
effects general linear model with multiple levels) to determine whether
the slope change in the divorce rates before and after the policy would
be different in the CMP counties than the comparison counties.
5. Tested the results with different analysis models to determine
if the results were ``persistent''. (It is one thing to try many
different methods until you find the result you want. It is quite
another to run many analyses after finding significant results to see
if your conclusions hold up. We have done the latter).
CONCLUSION
The slope of the decline in the divorce rate is steeper than in the
comparison counties. The difference in the divorce rate change over
time between CMP and comparison counties persists after accounting for
marriage rates, cohabitation rates, and a variety of demographic
measures which explain the variation between county divorce rates.
IMPLICATIONS
The overall effect is modest but statistically significant and
promising. On average, the policy counties did better than the matched
comparison counties. The simple explanation of these results is that
Community Marriage Policies lead to reductions in divorce rates. This
conclusion is further strengthened by the fact that numerous
communities have adopted the Policy at different points in time (from
1986 through 2000), and in geographically dispersed areas of the
country. At the policy level, we would do well to invest in and further
investigate this and similar approaches which have the potential of
affecting divorce rates on a large scale through community marriage
initiatives. Local communities with reasonable effort, good
coordination, and good programs can make a difference in divorce rates.
Our society will be the benefactor.
Future research of this type should:
Use a larger sample size (more policies, and more years of
data following the intervention).
Provide for a careful tracking of program implementation.
Analyze program components to determine which of them has
the greater effect.
Examine other Community Marriage Initiative programs.
Extend and further validate of the Institutes national
marriage/divorce data set.
CITATIONS
Doherty, W.J., Galston, W.A., Glenn, N. D., Gottman, J., Markey,
B., Markman, H.J., Nock, S., Popenoe, D., Rodriguez, G.C., Sawhill,
I.V., Stanley, S.M., Waite, L.J., Wallerstein, J. (2002). Why marriage
matters: Twenty one conclusions from the social sciences. Institute for
American Values. New York.
Hart, P. (2003). Human Rights Campaign Survey. P.D. Hart &
Associates. July 9-11, 2003. Washington, D.C.
Parke, M. & Ooms, T. (2002). More than a dating service? State
activities designed to strengthen and promote marriage. Center for Law
and Social Policy. Washington, D.C.
Senator Sessions. I have been involved in a number of
different programs, from drugs to other things, and you do
studies and, like you say, frequently, you are surprised that
the numbers don't come out like you would anticipate. But these
numbers are noteworthy, almost a 1.8 times greater decline in
divorce, is that the way I read that, after 7 years----
Mr. Weed. That is correct.
Senator Sessions [continuing].----almost twice as great a
decline in divorce over 7 years with communities that have
Community Marriage Policies.
Mr. Weed. Yes.
Senator Sessions. And I guess we can assume that those
Community Marriage Policies certainly don't reach everybody in
the community.
Mr. Weed. That is right.
Senator Sessions. So you are only touching on----
Mr. Weed. In some cases, we are fortunate if 30 or 40
percent of the county is touched by this policy. In many cases,
it is much lower than that. Some of the policies were well-
conceived and well-implemented and have endured over time.
Others were much lower on the scale of implementation. But we
lumped all of that together and still found positive results.
So what it suggests to me is that there is promise here and
I think that with adequate support and diligent tracking, we
would find a greater effect than what we have reported here.
This is, I suspect, a conservative estimate.
Senator Sessions. Very good. Dr. Whitehead, you have raised
a number of points in your remarks, but one I thought was
particularly valuable for the men around, that men really do
better--it may be more important for men in marriage than
women.
Ms. Whitehead. Men get a great deal from marriage, and
across a spectrum of measures. They enjoy better physical
health. Men suffer big drops in their physical well-being when
they divorce, for example, much more than women. They have the
advantage of having the supervision and support, emotional and
physical, of their wives. And as Roland Warren suggested, being
married does enhance a father's involvement with his children
and really, in some ways, contributes to optimal fathering
behavior. That just begins to chip away at some of the
advantages for men.
This, I think, is significant, because what we see in our
society is that parenthood is asymmetrical in the sense that
the mother-child bond is strong and survives many bumps along
the way, whereas fathers, particularly when they are not living
in the household married to the mothers of their children,
begin to fade out of the picture. So marriage is a particularly
important institution in attaching men to families, and men
themselves personally benefit from this economically and
physically and emotionally, as well.
One of the dark scenarios that people paint for the future
is that if we continue to have extremely high rates of divorce
and nonmarriage, we will have a lot of isolated elderly men
with nobody really to care for them in their declining years.
So I think that is an important feature of marriage, certainly.
Senator Sessions. I agree. Dr. Weed, has anyone done any
study on the marriage penalty tax we have? I know a person that
told me they divorced in January and she said, ``You know, had
we divorced in December, we could have filed separate returns
and it would have saved us $2,400.'' And I am thinking, we have
created a system in which there is a bonus to divorce. We are
paying a bonus. I know it is not clearly visible out there, and
we have eliminated it now and I think we will continue that tax
elimination, but could that have had a factor? Do any of you
want to comment as to whether that would have had any impact or
not on marriage?
Mr. Weed. I have not seen data on that, Mr. Chairman. Maybe
one of the other panel members could share something.
Senator Sessions. I think some of the young people know
about it and have discussed it, but it was a real fact and the
numbers were startling. When two people, a man and woman
working together, both working with a modest income--nurse,
police officer--it was over $2,000 more they paid to Uncle Sam,
Frank, than if they didn't marry. So it is a big deal. We have
eliminated most of that today and I think that is significant.
Dr. Whitehead, until about the time you wrote your famous
article, ``Dan Quayle Was Right,'' there was a genuine dispute
about marriage and its utility, wouldn't you say? Have the
numbers--I mean, has everybody now gotten on board with the
conclusion you have reached?
Ms. Whitehead. Well, that is sort of a mild understatement,
that there was disagreement. I mean, that was 10 years ago. In
1993, I wrote that article. There was just a--I think the
Atlantic Monthly received more letters, most of them angry,
some threatening to cut off subscriptions, in response to that
article than any that they had received in the last 50 years.
So the response was enormous and I found, then, in the
aftermath of the article that there was just great dispute,
particularly coming from academic institutions, academicians,
arguing the point that children overall do better in two-parent
families, which was the thesis of the article. And in the
subsequent 10 years, partly because there has been resurgent
interest in family formation and family structure effects
within this academic world, the research has led to, I think, a
widespread consensus on this point, that you rarely hear
argument of the kind that you had 10 years ago on the
importance of fathers to children and the importance of married
parent families to children.
So to me, that represents some hope that with research and
good evidence and argumentation, that some of these patterns
can be turned around.
Senator Sessions. I think that is very good news, because
just a decade ago, we did not have a consensus that marriage
was better for family relations, and we do have a growing
consensus today. Mr. Warren, does that give you a sense of
encouragement that the culture can reverse a slide we have been
on?
Mr. Warren. Oh, absolutely. I think it, I mean, it took us
a while to get here and certainly it may take us a while to get
back, but there are some hopeful trends, even in father
absence. I think when NFI first started this work, the
statistics were about 4 out of every 10 kids growing up in
homes without dads. We started to see a leveling off in 1995,
1996, to one out of three.
But as we are fond of saying, we don't have a fatherless
kid to spare, so there is still a lot of work that needs to be
done around this issue. That is the wonderful thing about the
human condition, is that we can see that we are heading in a
direction that is not right or not in the best interests
certainly of our children and make a decision to turn and move
in a different direction.
Senator Sessions. Well, we get good information. We
eliminated the tax penalty, which was significant. We involve
church leaders who marry people. Eighty-six percent of the
people, Mr. Weed, are married in some religious setting?
Mr. Weed. That is right.
Senator Sessions. That is remarkable. Engage them, as
Governor Keating did. How did that work? What kind of response
did you get? You mentioned it generally, but how do you feel
about it?
Mr. Keating. If I may, to postscript what Dr. Whitehead
said, at least in my environment, and I would suspect it is
probably fairly similar in Colorado and Alabama, the reaction
wasn't so much marriage isn't important or why do we think that
fathers ought to be in the families or mothers ought to be in
the families. It was, why are you preaching? I mean, why should
the government be involved in telling us that we should have
strong families or strong marriages?
Well, the easy answer, which was accepted on a bipartisan
basis, was we are all over you anyway. I mean, the fact of the
matter is, if this marriage doesn't work out, then you have a
judge who you don't even know who will decide who gets the kids
and where your life savings goes and will go in minute detail
into every bit of your affairs and decide even where the
lingerie goes. I mean, it is somebody that you don't even know.
The determination of child custody, the determination of
asset distribution, I mean, we require marriage licenses. We
require divorce decrees. So the government is very much in the
middle of the marriage relationship, both at the start and at
the end, and it made good sense to us to try to say, okay, if
we are in this thing and if we are spending a lot of money,
hundreds of millions of dollars a year, for example, in Federal
and State funds in trying to put back Humpty Dumpty on the wall
after relationships crash and dysfunction either created that
crash or dysfunction followed that crash, then doesn't it make
sense to spend some of this money, a tiny fraction of this
money, to try to save these relationships in advance and save
these relationships once they are established?
The pretty well consensus answer, bipartisan consensus
answer is, yes. The present situation is miserable. We were
number two in divorce rate in the United States and anything is
better than that.
Senator Sessions. Senator Allard?
Senator Allard. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I would like to
thank all the panel members for their testimony and discussion.
I think you all did a great job. Mr. Warren, I know that your
effort on the National Fatherhood Initiative is greatly admired
by many of us. I appreciate Governor Keating. The last time we
met, I think might have been in Colorado. I think you were
there and hope you get back more frequently.
I just have a general question I would like to have all of
you address. What is the status of a healthy family today as
compared to, say, 50 years ago, half a century ago? Can you
give us some evaluation on that and perhaps why you think there
is a difference one way or the other, or maybe there isn't a
difference. I would just like to hear some comment. Maybe we
can start with you, Dr. Whitehead.
Ms. Whitehead. Well, one thing that I can say that should
be obvious is that a married couple, families today, are not as
numerous as they were 50 years ago. There has been a decline in
the percentage of children who grow up in married parent
families. The majority still do, but compared to 50 years ago,
there has been quite a drop. So people who are married are not,
I think, as well supported, or they don't find as many similar
families within their communities as they once did.
I would also say that if anything, the status of being
married today is probably more important to a couple, a
family's stability and capacity to successfully rear children
for two reasons. One I mentioned, which is the increasingly
long period of youthful dependency. I am the mother of three
children and I was still helping support my single children
well into their 20s.
Senator Allard. We have all experienced that to some
degree.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Whitehead. Happily so, but it takes longer to get an
education. People are marrying at later ages. So there is this
period in between completion of formal schooling and trying to
get traction on the job ladder where parents continue, I think,
to try to help their children to the best they can, and
obviously for reasons we have talked about, married parent
families have greater capacity to do that. So again, lots of
parents do it very well against difficult odds. So that is one
thing.
And then there is, I think, the fact that we live in a
society now that is economically dynamic. People don't stay in
a single job for a lifetime anymore. Bonds and ties are shallow
because we move a lot. We are a big country with a diverse
society. And so it is extremely important for individual, and
particularly children's sense of emotional security and sense
of kinship ties to have a stable family and to feel that they
have an emotional center to their life.
So people talk about family as being kind of an anchor in
this swirling island of--an anchor in this swirling sea of
dynamic economy and diverse society. So I think it gives them a
sense of inner strength to have that kind of support from their
parents.
Senator Allard. Before I give Mr. Warren an opportunity to
say something, I would like to follow up on something that you
said, that we have fewer marriages today as we did 50 years
ago. That was saying that perhaps maybe it is not as healthy as
it was 50 years ago. I understand that, right. And of those
that we have, are they healthier than they were 50 years ago?
Do you see what I am driving at?
Ms. Whitehead. There are many stresses on marriage today.
There is some research, survey research of it and it suggests
that people are less happy in their marriages today than 50
years ago, even though you would think with the high rate of
divorce that really miserable marriages would get weeded out.
So I think that speaks to the stresses that people who are
married encounter, the difficulty of holding together a strong
family and a difficult economy amid a lot of social change, and
then some of the social factors that are inimical to strong
family ties which makes it more difficult to raise children,
including the kind of media culture that parents face and that
we hear about all the time, and that is across the board.
But I think there are across-the-board stresses on families
that may make it harder to stay married and possibly account
for some of the reason behind the persistently high divorce
rate.
Senator Allard. Mr. Warren, do you have any comments?
Mr. Warren. I think Dr. Whitehead covered a lot, but I
would just say, certainly on the fatherhood landscape, I mean,
we have gone from Ozzie and Harriet to Ozzie Osbourne as the
model for fatherhood. Certainly, there were clearly issues with
even the Ozzie and Harriet model, but my sense is that the
landscape has not been good.
When you look particularly at communities like the one I
grew up in and low-income communities, it is particularly
troubling, the absence of fathers, because I think if you want
to turn the corner on ensuring that more kids have the best
chance at success and if you want to even support women,
frankly, in their roles of being full partners in the
workplace, then you are really going to need strategies where
men are full partners at home, encouraged and supported in that
construct. So I think it is troubling, but I am hopeful.
I don't know if I have an overall barometer for sort of the
health of the family, but I do think, as a father of two sons,
it is a more difficult climate. I think that many of the guard
rails that were in the culture are no longer there in the way
that they were before. In fact, instead of the guard rails kind
of working for you, in many cases, there are some forces out
there that are trying to pull down the guard rails that you as
a parent are trying to put up to protect your kids and help
your kids make healthy choices. I think that from that
perspective, to the degree those things continue to happen, it
is problematic.
Senator Allard. The challenges are a little different, I
think. Fifty years ago, you got in trouble for chewing gum in
class. Today, it is drugs of some sort or something like that
that you are dealing with.
Mr. Warren. Yes.
Senator Sessions. Different challenges.
Mr. Warren. Absolutely problematic. And I certainly spend a
lot of my time in the business community and there used to be a
saying that, ``How does it play in Peoria?'' from a consumer
marketing construct. The strategy there was, Peoria was this
community that wasn't affected by the East Coast and the West
Coast in terms of if you were going to test a product, you
really had sort of a pure environment, pure from a marketing
standpoint, an environment where you could test it and really
get good data.
But with the Internet, the media, and various other forces
that are out there, there is no place that you go that your
kids are not going to be affected by some of the more negative
things out there that could hurt us. And that is, from my
perspective, a primary role of fathers, to stand in the gap.
Senator Allard. Family gets more important, doesn't it?
Mr. Warren. Absolutely.
Senator Allard. Governor Keating, do you have any thoughts?
Mr. Keating. All I know is when I first met Jeff Sessions
23 years ago, he had a cute young thing for a wife, I had a
cute young thing for a wife. We are still happily married, and
I don't know what made it possible, but I guess we lucked out
and found two special, two very spectacular women.
To the extent that families and mentors and friends can
preach this subject, we need to do that. But let me tell you,
in my inaugural message when I first raised these issues, I
said something to the effect, tell me the wisdom, tell me the
sense of a system where it is easier to get a marriage license
than it is to get a hunting license? You have to take a course
to get a hunting license. Or tell me the sense of a system
where it is easier to get out of a marriage relationship,
marriage contract with children, it is easier to get out of
that than it is to get out of a Tupperware contract.
We basically have taken the view that marriage is a throw-
away--default divorce was a terrible blunder, and I was a part
of that. I was a legislator in Oklahoma in the early 1970s. We
all figured, well, you know, we ought to just get away from bad
situations. As it turned out, the first argument means reject
her or reject him, and that simply is not the way to develop a
stable life, a stable family, and a stable society.
So to debate these issues today at the Federal level and
the State level, to get the best research, to join the debate,
men and women, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, whatever,
everybody in every social status, every social class, I think
for the safety and security of the country is very important.
Senator Allard. Thank you for coming. I sort of have to
join with you and Senator Sessions. I feel blessed by a
wonderful wife. We have stayed hooked ever since, oh, since we
first took our vows.
Dr. Weed?
Mr. Weed. Two thoughts, Senator Allard. One is really to
reinforce Roland's point about the changing landscape in terms
of what our kids face and deal with. He didn't mention, but I
am sure has thought of the effects of the Internet, for
example, and the things that are available to kids now were
unheard of when I was growing up. It is just an amazing amount
of bombardment that kids and families are exposed to.
So to safeguard that, the family is the best safeguard
against it. A lot of my research is in the area of teen
pregnancy prevention and kids, girls from single-parent homes
are five times more likely to have an out-of-wedlock teen birth
than kids in a two-couple family. These things are all related.
As the culture begins to grasp the realities of that, I am
hoping that we can pull it back together.
The other thing that I would comment on is that prior to my
research emphasis in my career, I did a lot of counseling and
marital counseling work. I guess I came to the conclusion,
perhaps overly simplistically, that the most important and
fundamental factor that kept families together was a commitment
to the idea and the institution of marriage.
I remember one lady in particular who said that she was now
contemplating her fourth marriage. It turned out she did not do
it. She stayed married to her third husband. Her decision, her
conclusion after all of this wrestling around was ``if I had
worked as hard at my first one as I did at the third one, I
would still be married to the first one.''
So the idea of marriage as an institution and placing it
with high value and giving it status and recognition and
support and encouragement and preparation and creating a
greater sense of commitment to that as an institution, I think
would go a long ways toward moving us in the right direction.
Senator Allard. And actually, your community initiative
that you talked about in your testimony, in effect, that is
what you were doing to those communities where you had the
problem. You were elevating or emphasizing the importance of
marriage more, which wasn't happening in other communities. I
think that is----
Mr. Weed. That is correct.
Senator Allard [continuing].----the thing that made the
difference. Don't you think that was----
Mr. Weed. That is correct.
Senator Allard. And people focus in on that, and so they
are more willing to kind of work out their differences and work
together as a team.
Mr. Weed. I think that is true. I think the dynamic of it
is that when a couple comes in and the person who is going to
marry them says to them, this is a serious commitment and how
ready are you and here are some steps that I think you should
take in preparation for that, all of a sudden they say, gee,
this is a bigger deal than I thought. I had better take it more
seriously. So I think that does happen, as you have described
it.
Senator Allard. Mr. Chairman, I have some more questions
but I know my time has run out so----
Senator Sessions. We have got such a great panel.
Governor Keating, I will ask you this and see what you
think about it. I remember a great lawyer in Mobile. He wrote
the Bar bulletin editorial and he railed against no-fault
divorce. People laughed at him. We all thought that was old
fashioned. He is a brilliant man. It is J. Ed Thornton.
Do you think the changing of divorce so radically from a
fault-based system to a totally no-fault system was more
significant than just that legal change, that it led the
culture in some fashion? And if you would like to, you might
comment on the same-sex marriage issue. Would that have a
cultural significance beyond just the legal matter at stake?
Mr. Keating. I happen to believe that marriage is a state
between a man and a woman, but that said, the default divorce
or no-fault system basically said that this was a lesser
important contract than many other contracts. You know as an
attorney, and Senator Sessions and I were U.S. Attorneys
together back in the early 1980s, but if you have a bilateral
contract, there are obligations between two people. In the
default divorce or no-fault divorce environment, basically, it
is mutual incompatibility, but it means one person's
incompatibility. I just don't like you anymore, for any reason.
I am walking away.
I think many of us reflect, and in my State, we weren't
able to make any changes there because there still is that
feeling, well, if they can't get along, they shouldn't be
married. But many of us were of the view, and I am very firmly
of the view, that if we think that the marriage contract is the
most important contract two individuals can enter into in the
United States, then it ought to be more difficult to get in and
it ought to be more difficult to get out.
In other words, you ought to have sense and preparation to
get into it. Certainly, as in the case of premarital contracts
for individuals who lose a spouse, those are only solid when
both people have a full awareness of what this asset mix is.
Well, people need to have a full awareness of what this marital
relationship means.
But to get out, there ought to be fault. We had in my State
a list, you know, violence, drug abuse, abandonment, those
kinds of things that you had to show before you could walk
away--one of those things--before you could walk away from the
marriage. In the trendy 1970s, we felt that that was certainly
old fashioned and we were going to get rid of it. As I said, I
was a part of that and I think it was a terrible mistake,
because I think that accelerated people's view that the
marriage contract was not as important as a Tupperware contract
to society's great chagrin.
Senator Sessions. Ms. Whitehead, would you like to comment
on what that signaled?
Ms. Whitehead. Well, I do agree that there was cultural
momentum behind the no-fault divorce revolution. The only other
point I would like to make is that once--one of the lessons of
the no-fault divorce revolution, I think, is that once these
changes become institutionalized, it is hard to change. It is
hard to reverse them. Although there are some interesting ideas
about divorce law reform--a longer waiting period, some
introduction of fault, particularly where dependent children
are involved--it is a hard sell in the State legislatures.
So it is just another lesson, and I agree with--I wrote a
book on the divorce culture and I think that there are
measurable effects of divorce and then there are cultural
effects of divorce. I agree with Governor Keating that one of
the major cultural effects was to change our idea about the
norm of permanence in marriage so that marriage became an
easily disposable contract, and that changed a lot of things
even generationally, so that kids today have a different
conception of marriage and the ease with which one gets into it
and gets out of it as well as a fear of divorce that makes them
reluctant to marry that our generation simply did not have.
Senator Sessions. Dr. Weed, would you like to comment on
no-fault divorce?
Mr. Weed. Well, from a research perspective, we tried to
account for that statistically rather than analytically. That
is, we made sure that when we matched our counties up for
comparison purposes, they came from within the same State so
that the same legal system would be operating. So we can't
explain the effects of it. All we can say is we accounted for
it and it doesn't change our results.
Senator Sessions. It doesn't affect your results and you
are not expressing an opinion as to whether or not there was a
cultural signal that marriage was no longer permanent when we
removed----
Mr. Weed. Oh, as an opinion, yes, I would express that. I
just don't have the data to support it.
Senator Sessions [continuing]. With regard to the
educational initiatives that could strengthen marriage, I mean,
I was traveling last week with a lady that works for me,
Valerie Day. She is an African American. She and her husband
are vitally interested in marriage and they counsel at their
church, premarital counseling and when families have trouble. I
said, why you? She said, well, they say that people think we
have a good marriage and we have credibility and we just do a
lot of it.
She has talked about the same problems--money, sex, power,
lack of communication. I guess she said money, lack of
communication, sexual relations falling apart as a result of
problems with the first two, is her experience. Can premarital
counseling and education lessen those stresses and help people
cope with the inevitable difficulties that occur? Dr. Weed, you
have counseled yourself. I will ask you.
Mr. Weed. The answer is, yes, it can help, but I think it
is also important to point out that it is not only prior to
marriage that people need support and help in marriage. There
are troubled marriages that need help. There are reconstituted
families that need help, step-families, step-parent situations.
So I think that when we think about policy-level
strategies, we ought to think about not only the preparation
period, but also, as we might describe it, the life cycle of
marriage and the stages and phases that it goes through. We can
do a better job not only in preparation, but in support of
married couples and families throughout that life cycle.
Senator Sessions. Dr. Whitehead?
Ms. Whitehead. One particularly important point to support
married couples after they have been married is with the birth
of the first child, because that does change the marital
relationship. The mom usually falls in love with the baby and
the father very often feels neglected or he has to assume a new
role. Because the expectation is that the family is overjoyed,
as they are with the birth of a child, it is hard to
acknowledge that it also changes the spousal relationship.
So some of the good--and a good idea about marriage
education and marriage skills training has to do with
intervening at some of these key crisis moments in the
marriage, and that is one of them. I would suggest, having been
through it myself, that another might be when the children
leave home.
Senator Sessions. Any other comments? Governor?
Mr. Keating. When our daughters turned 15, then I needed
counseling.
[Laughter.]
No, I would say this, Mr. Chairman. I think that as a
consumer of marriage counseling services, I think it is very
important to say to the society at large, it is not an
embarrassment to admit that in the course of a long marriage or
not-so-long marriage you need help. Cathy and I have had
counseling and it has strengthened our marriage. It has made
us, I think, understand what each of us generally need, but
each of us had made mistakes and it was important to correct
behavior so that we could have a stronger marriage and be
better parents, because obviously if the parents are clashing
frequently, the children are bloodied.
But I think as Governor, I made it abundantly clear that
marriage counseling is good and people ought to not have so
much pride as to say, well, I don't need some other person to
tell me what I am doing wrong or how I could improve. We ought
to be willing to listen to other people.
Senator Sessions. Wayne?
Senator Allard. I do not know whether I have the expertise
on this, but I will try this question. Maybe this is a matter
of perception for members of the panel, but if you were to
compare judicial marriage here in America as compared to other
countries, is our marriage uniquely American, or what we are
experiencing here in this country, are we seeing the same
trends worldwide? And if not, I'd like to have some comments
why. Would any of you like to comment?
Ms. Whitehead. Well, we do know that these trends are not
unique to American society, that in other advanced European
nations, we see some of the same patterns, increases in
cohabitation, high levels of divorce. Until recently, maybe
even still today, we do have an exceptionally high rate of
unwed teen parenthood. And in general, the weakening of
marriage as a form of lasting partnership. Similar trends in
England, in certainly the Scandinavian countries, though there
are different reasons perhaps there, and so yes, these are
global trends, and perhaps others would--I have a few ideas
about why that is so, but----
Senator Allard. Would you like to share them?
Ms. Whitehead [continuing]. One reason is cultural. It has
to do with, I think, a greater--a loss of some of those key
institutions of social life in the family, greater
individualism. That is a very good thing in many domains of
life, but perhaps when it comes to the family domain, it can
have negative effects.
The pressures of surviving in a difficult and turbulent
economy would be another factor. But also, one of the
exceptionally--one of the differences between our society and
many of the--Canada and some of the Western European nations is
that we are a more religious society, and some scholars believe
that that is an advantage in sustaining or giving us at least a
chance at renewing our family life. So, though we are
increasingly secular, but still, compared to the other nations
and societies, more religious.
Senator Allard. Mr. Chairman, I was struck by the comment
about the lessening importance of marriage, less emphasis on
the institution. We saw over here with Dr. Weed's study where
they emphasized the importance of things that all seem to kind
of strengthen the institution. That is a very important
concept.
I think that is one of the more significant things I have
gotten out of this hearing. I think that is a very important
concept. I think we need to continue to stress the importance
of marriage. I like to think of it as a building block. It is
fundamental to our country, and if you have a functioning
family, there is less need for government and that does have an
appeal. So I think it is something that we need to continue to
emphasize.
Thank you for letting me join here on the committee. I want
to thank the panel members.
Senator Sessions. Thank you so much. This has been an
extraordinarily valuable hearing, I believe. It deals with an
important subject, and I came away with the feeling more than I
have in many years that we actually can make a difference. We
do not have to preside over the total collapse of the American
family.
I remember riding in the subway about 6 years ago with the
great Senator and professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and he
said, in the history of the world, we have never seen anything
like the collapse of family that we are seeing today, and he
was concerned about it.
But we don't have to yield to these trends. I believe that
if we talk about it openly, if we talk about the advantage of
marriage that appears to be pretty indisputable, we talk about
the advantage for children in marital relationships, as the
Fatherhood Initiative is dedicated to, if we look at our
economic tax policies, if we look at our welfare policies--as
Mr. Horn is trying for the first time to really put some
marriage component into welfare reform instead of just having
it purely economic, but have a cultural-social connection
there--and if we engage in education and counseling programs
through churches and through government and through
encouragement of that kind and we just basically stand up and
affirm the institution, I don't think this trend is inevitable.
I think America can preserve marriage. And for those who
don't want to marry, they are perfectly free not to do so. But
choices do have consequences and the numbers that we have seen
today indicate that, by and large, people do well and better
when they live in a stable family environment.
Is there anything else that you feel like you would like to
add? I would just note that the record will remain open for 2
weeks for questions and submissions that you might like to
offer. Mr. Warren, I would like to place in the record the
publications you have brought, particularly that one on
government activities, what can be done.
Mr. Warren. Thank you.
Senator Sessions. If there is nothing else, we will stand
adjourned.
[Editor's Note: Due to the high cost of printing previously
published materials submitted by witnesses can be found in the
committee file.]
[Additional material follows.]
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Prepared Statement of 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.
Tennessee--``If it were not for shelter, food stamps, and other
assistance it would have been impossible for us to survive. I had no
car when I left my parents' for the second time. I had nothing but what
I could carry for my child and myself. That was 14 years ago. I now
have a home, a van, and some better things in life. Without the help
that the State offers women like me, what would the children have?''
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.
Connecticut--``Public assistance was the only money that I had
during the relationship to put food in my children's mouths . . .
afterward, it was the only way I was able to regain custody of my
children and put my life back together. I went to school and finished
my education and now am a professional, working a full-time job.''
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.
Massachusetts--``There is never any reason for a woman to remain in
an abusive relationship. The best thing that a woman in poverty or an
abusive situation can do is to get out of it by becoming self-
sufficient. With the help of the government . . . we can empower abused
women to make a life for themselves without the `help' of an abusive
partner.''
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 Alabama,
Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, North
Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming. 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.stopfamilyviolence.org.
ALABAMA
As a strong supporter of many things our government has done to
maintain our liberty as Americans, I strongly disagree with the program
that encourages low-income mothers to get married. I have worked for
2\1/2\ years for organizations that support and advocate for victims of
domestic violence. I have seen victims controlled emotionally and
physically, to the point where they don't feel life has purpose. I have
seen women murdered by their intimate partners because he wanted
control over them.
Since research has shown a strong correlation between poverty and
domestic violence, I believe that encouraging marriage for low-income
mothers could be very dangerous--even deadly. Although I do believe
strongly in the sanctity of marriage for couples in healthy
relationships, promoting this program allows a perpetrator to maintain
control over his victim. Therefore, I plead that this program be
dismissed or reevaluated to ensure that more people do not become
victims of the crime we know as domestic violence.
I am a counselor, and I have worked primarily in the community as a
Vocational Adjustment Counselor. In that role, I have helped people
with disabilities to enter or re-enter the education system or the
workforce. I have worked with many women who [have] become disabled
(mentally and/or physically) as a direct result of domestic violence.
These women absolutely had nowhere else to turn financially during
their time of escape and healing but public funds. I was glad to be
part of the process as they continued to heal and entered the education
system or the workforce, many for the first time as they had worked
without pay in their homes for years. The most detrimental, cruel, and
ignorant thing I could have told these women, as their counselor, was
to return to the abusive situations that contributed to their
disabling, sometimes near-fatal outcomes. It's simply irrational and
has nothing to do with family values. Forcing marriage, as some kind of
superficial political bandaid fix is not good for women; it's not good
for children; it's not good for violent perpetrators who are never held
accountable or taught a better way. It's not good for my community. I
know because I work hard in my community trying to make it a better
place.
CONNECTICUT
I was involved in a relationship with a man from another country,
who in a very short time became very abusive. I suffered broken ribs,
nose, wrist, cheekbone, and fingers. Public assistance was the only
money that I had during the relationship to be able to put food in my
children's mouths. . . . [Afterward it was] the only way I was able to
regain custody of my children and put my life back together. I went to
school and finished my education and now am a professional, working a
full-time job. My children are honor roll students and contribute
regularly to the community to help those that were once in our
situation. This man did want me to marry him--the man who did things
like burn me, whip me with an electrical cord, smack me over the back
with a crow bar, sexually assaulted me with a screw driver--all of this
while I was pregnant. What would have happened if I had married him.)
Well, maybe the next time he played Russian roulette with me I would
not have been so lucky and my children would have been bringing flowers
to me at a cemetery on every holiday.
IOWA
Growing up, I knew that the relationship between my mother and
father wasn't good. He was physically and emotionally abusive to her,
and I remember hearing their yelling and him hitting her at night. I
remember one morning, I woke up and found her in the bathtub, bruised,
and covered in vomit--he had beaten her unconscious and she threw up
all over herself. I was 5 years old. He sexually abused my sister and
I, and even 20 years later we are both still dealing with the
consequences of HIS actions. Mom tried to get help from family on both
sides, but they all told her that she needed to keep her mouth shut,
[and] be a ``better wife.'' When I was 6 years old they finally got
divorced, and the three of us were on our own. Dad was only ordered to
pay $150 per month in child support, which was not nearly enough to
cover our needs. My mom was humiliated the day she had to go in and
apply for welfare, and cried the first time she used food stamps in the
grocery store. That government assistance helped provide childcare and
meet our basic needs so that mom could go to work. Welfare gave us
enough of a cushion that she could take that leap to self-sufficiency.
Over the next year, Mom worked three jobs (simultaneously) and was able
to get off of welfare. She was lucky that she already had a college
education--jobs would have been a lot scarcer without that.
Women and children cannot be expected to stay in situations where
they are hurt and exploited. Promoting more marriage is NOT the answer!
In doing this, you are telling women that their government (which is
supposed to protect them) would rather see them beaten and their
children raped than help them achieve a better life. Please continue to
help these women and children, as government assistance helped my
family all those years ago.
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 2 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 4 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] 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
four children are still suffering. After I left him with our four
children (whom he had heavily influenced against me), I was in a low
paying job, renting a two-bedroom house, not receiving any child
support, and on welfare. At that time, welfare was the only way l could
support my four 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
email. 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.
MASSACHUSETTS
I have not personally been a victim of domestic violence, but I
work at a social service agency that offers, among other things, a
domestic violence program and mental health counseling. A cardinal rule
that we abide by here is to not offer marriage or couples therapy to
couples with a history of domestic violence. There is never any reason
for a woman to remain in an abusive relationship. The best thing that a
woman in poverty or an abusive situation can do is to get out of it by
becoming self-sufficient. With the help of the government and agencies
like mine, we can empower abused women to make a life for themselves
without the ``help'' of an abusive partner. The proposed budget for
this plan would be much better spent on education, child-care and
career counseling.
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 with 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?
I am a social worker in Massachusetts and have been working
primarily with low-income Latino women for 14 years. I know from
listening to [the life stories of] many women that domestic violence is
rampant in our society. Keeping women in an abusive relationship
victimizes children, and is not the answer to poverty in our society.
Taking financial resources away from mothers only further ensures that
the next generation will continue to live in poverty. Supporting
marriages will not solve the problem of poverty. This is my firm belief
after spending my entire working career listening to the life stories
of women of color living in poverty.
``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 it 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-
year-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 8 weeks she decided not to return and the job
was offered to me. I stayed at the job for 5 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 of the
Assistant 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.
NEW MEXICO
I am Kayla Michael. Ten years ago, my mother and older brother
forced me to marry the man that had impregnated me. He was 30 and I was
19. It was a ``shotgun wedding'' at the courthouse. During the year of
living with that man, I was mentally, emotionally, and physically
abused in the worst way. I was locked in the house with my baby son (no
food). When I heard about the women's shelter on the radio, I packed
one grocery bag full of baby things, broke out of the window, and went
there.
[I spent] 3 months in the women's shelter, a few months homeless,
[and] 2 years in the homeless housing projects. During that time, I
entered and graduated UNM. [I] got a job as a social worker. [I] am
still a social worker, working with victims of domestic violence. When
you have kids and you're poor, as welfare mothers are, you don't find a
nice man to marry. The welfare mothers that marry, marry abusive men.
Abusive men seek us out, we're vulnerable.
I have never received child support and have never been able to
afford a lawyer at all. A better idea (instead of making us get
married) would be to provide us legal assistance to obtain child
support from the fathers of our children. (And to file for divorce for
us.)
Thank you,
Kayla Michael
NEW YORK
``Hi, my story will be a little different. I was a child recipient
of food stamps. I am 41 years old and my parents divorced in 1972 when
it was very difficult to get a divorce. My mother showed great courage
in doing so. My father, like so many, never paid child support after he
left. He then moved out-of-state and court orders did not go past State
lines at that time. My mother had married right out of high school and
never had a full time job. She worked for minimum wage in a factory.
She then put herself through nursing school while raising the remaining
two of five children, with myself [being] the youngest. I started doing
``chores'' in the neighborhood at age 11 and full-time summer
babysitting at 12. I paid for all my clothes and anything else I
needed. We also got free lunch at school. Without those programs,
survival would have been at the barest level. Had the government
``encouraged'' my mother or rather ``forced'' my mother to stay married
by elimination of programs, my life would have been totally different.
As I said, I am the youngest female of five children. Because I watched
my mother walk away, I am the only one out of five to not be in
unhealthy relationships. My sisters followed my mother and were married
and [became] mother[s] by 21. My brothers have both had multiple
marriages, children, stepchildren etc. I saw a different way of life.
Growing up with a single mother is not easy, but you band together and
it was certainly better than the constant fear. My father was a high
functioning alcoholic and abusive. We had a beautiful home, went to
church, had the right friends and to the outside world, looked great.
The inside was a nightmare. I learned from that and watched my mother
take control of her life. I did the same. I am the only one out of five
with a bachelor's degree. I worked my way through school. I was
determined to never be dependent on a man. That it would always be my
choice to stay with someone. The trickle down effect, in that I sought
help, educated myself and now am happily married in a healthy
relationship raising two wonderful kids. I broke the cycle. My children
and grandchildren will never know the realities of that kind of life,
because my mother was able to leave with the help of free lunch and
food stamps. Forcing people into ``survival marriage'' is opening the
gateways to hell that so many have worked so hard to shut.
Susan Morgan-Rosicka, New York
``The times that I was on welfare were when I was married. I tried
marriage twice and was on welfare for 3 years with the first marriage
and for a few months in the second marriage. Now that I am single I
have not been on welfare for over 14 years. When I was able to get off
welfare it was because I became educated. I am now an R.N. I don't
think I will ever be on welfare again. I needed welfare because the two
husbands I had, wanted children and then didn't support them. I didn't
want children. The first marriage was dangerous. I was physically and
mentally abused and he threatened to take away my girls if I left the
marriage. It took years and some risky steps to achieve a divorce. I
have been the soul supporter of my family, neither ex-husband paid
child support. If anyone thinks a husband is the answer to support the
children, they need to look at the specific situation much closer.''
NORTH CAROLINA
``I am a disabled vet, a single mother, and an unmarried survivor
of an abusive relationship. I was married to an abusive man for 9
years. I would have done almost anything (at that time) to make my
marriage work for the sake of my child. Indeed, I actually did,
including marriage counseling in which my husband lied to the therapist
about the abuse in every session. My last straw incident was October
12, 1996, being smacked in the face in a vehicle he was driving after
he attempted to break my arm (again while driving the truck) in front
of our daughter.
The only reason I was able to change my life, Thank you God, is
that two friends who had been in abusive relationships and are married
to each other (heterosexual) made me come to their house when I called
after the incident, showed me both of their files about their
respective abusive ex-spouses, and all the help that was available to
them and to me to get out of the abuse. Because of their direction to
programs: domestic violence shelter and the empowerment classes, child
support enforcement through DSS, and the protective order and ex-parte
order in the State of North Carolina, I was able to extricate myself
from this horrible and dangerous marriage.
Because of those programs, and my friends, I gained the support and
courage I needed to go back to school and get my masters degree in
family therapy, gain an immeasurable understanding that if I did not
make my health (emotionally and physically) the utmost priority, I
would chose another abuser and stay in that pattern. As a result of my
education, I was able to transcend my abusive past, work for 3 years on
the domestic violence council, and am now screening for family
violence, providing personal safety plans, and linking victims (male
and female) to programs to get healthier.''
TENNESSEE
My name is Kathy McCann and I am a survivor. I was sexually abused
as a child, which is one of the reasons [why] I married my first
husband. I wanted to leave my abusive home and he seemed to be the man
of my dreams. He turned out to be a nightmare. I was not allowed to see
my family. I was not allowed to drive. I could not work because he
would not let me, the one time I got a job he forced me to quit because
I made more money than he did. After 3 years of beatings and being
sexually abused by him, I left. I was lucky or unlucky to have a place
to go. My parents let me stay with them. I tried to go back to school
to get an education. After 3 years of being told I was stupid, I had
something to prove to myself. My parents agreed to watch my two small
children and help me get through college. That did not happen because
my father began beating my oldest son. I had no choice but to be
homeless once again. If it were not for shelters, food stamps, and
other assistance it would have been impossible for us to survive. I had
no car when I left my parents for the second time. I had nothing but
what I could carry for my child and myself. That was 14 years ago. I
now have a home, a van, and some of the better things in life. Yet, my
first husband still does not pay child support that has been ordered
through the courts. He still is not helping raise his children. Without
the help [that] the State offers women like me, what would the children
have? He is no dad, and never will be. I have been trying to get this
support for the children, but every time we track him down and get the
order for the company to pay the support, he quits his job, leaving me
to raise the children. His abuse will never end, and it is a shame that
my children suffer. I am thankful for all the help I get from the State
and without it I do not know where we would be today.
VERMONT
Marriage is not the answer. Believe me I know. I married just
because I was pregnant and I would never have left if it wasn't for
public assistance. I was so afraid I would never have made it on my own
if I didn't have the help and support programs out there for single
mothers with children. Marriage, especially, with abusive
relationships, only gives more power to the ``man.'' He thinks he has
the control and essentially he does.
Twelve years ago I dropped out of college to marry a man I thought
I loved. I thought, since I was expecting our first child, that I was
``doing the right thing.'' I ended up in a marriage to a man I really
didn't know. My husband was controlling and abusive. So here I am,
trapped with one son and another one on the way, always living in fear.
I had to stay in my marriage because I couldn't work anywhere. I had no
skills. Then in the summer of 1996 my husband decided he didn't want to
be married or be a father anymore and threw us out onto the street. So
pregnant and with a 4-year-old son, I ended up in a shelter for abused
women. I stayed in that shelter for 7 weeks. During those 7 weeks I had
to get back on my feet. I signed up for public assistance and began
looking for an apartment. I found nothing. Even the shelter had to
shorten my stay due to [a] shortage of beds, and the need for abused
women to be in shelter. So once again I found myself on the streets.
Finally my grandmother, in Vermont, heard of my ordeal and said she
would take us in. So from Illinois to Vermont, I moved half way across
the country for a chance to make a life for my children and myself. In
Vermont I found my way. Not by getting married, but by hard work.
Because of the educational, child care, and social welfare programs
instituted in the State of Vermont, by Governor Howard Dean, I was able
to graduate from the Vermont Adult Diploma Program and the Office
Administrative Assistant course at my local Technical Center. I was
able to find employment with my skills through the Job Training
Partnership Act at my local town office. And while I was getting an
education my children were able to go to daycare, paid for by the State
of Vermont. I was able to access many social programs and supports like
counseling (paid for by the generous allotments for Medicaid) and
parenting classes in order to enrich my life and the life of my young
children. Marriage didn't save me, community support and my own hard
work saved me. I have worked many jobs since then as an Executive
Administrative Assistant. I live in a beautiful low-income townhouse, I
drive a fairly new mini-van, and I am still a SINGLE working mother.
This year I'll be 31. I am not looking for a husband but for ways to
consolidate my college loans. And this summer I'll be starting courses
at the Community College of Vermont. A man with a bank account or a job
to support me DID NOT get me here. I GOT ME HERE!
VIRGINIA
I was a victim of domestic abuse for 8 years. Marrying my abuser
was the worst decision of my life. After our marriage, he was able to
control me to an even greater degree. He controlled our finances, so
that I felt I was unable to leave him, because [if I did] I would be on
the street. Although I worked, he insisted on seeing my pay stub, and
had me account for every penny I spent. All of my pay had to go into
our joint account. I was unable to hide any money in order to make a
getaway. Of course, he had already done all that he could to destroy my
support network, so I felt that I didn't have anyone close enough to
ask for help. Getting married was exactly the opposite of protection--
it was a horrifying prison.
``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 5
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
WASHINGTON
``I broke up with the father of my child because he was using my
AFDC grant to buy marijuana. After 9 months, I started to hear from
friends how he had been sleeping with various female[s] and
`experimenting' with drugs more potent than marijuana. He never hit me,
but the mental abuse I was subjected to had convinced me that I was
lower than dirt, and that I was incapable of becoming anything more
than his doormat. Since leaving him in 1986, I have gone on to complete
an Associates of Applied Science, regained my self-esteem, and I now
earn a respectable living as an Administrative Assistant. Our child was
not subjected to his abuse and so I have hope that she too will live a
productive life. Marriage does NOT solve all problems!''
I was married to my abuser for nearly 20 years. He was a successful
businessman and a corporate vice president. We moved often, so my
support system was always changing, which worked in his favor. For most
of those years, I attempted to get him actively involved in couples
counseling. He went for a few visits, until he felt secure that he had
adequately charmed the therapist; he's very intelligent and very
charming, when he wants to be. At some point, he would always say,
``I've done all the changing that I want to do; you're the one who's
sick!'' At one point, he was the Vice President of the State Mental
Health Association in the State where we were living, and he was
addicted to cocaine, and abusing me mentally and physically every
weekend when he came home from his travels! It was not until he beat up
our 16-year-old daughter, that I got the nerve to leave. The financial
uncertainties were always the reasons that kept me from leaving; I knew
that he would do everything he could to make sure that I lived in
poverty. He took me to court every chance he could to whittle away at
my funds. Because I could never afford the retainer to get an attorney
to represent me, he was successful at reducing me to poverty. If it
weren't for public assistance, I wouldn't be here today. My children
are now grown and gone, and I'm currently working as an advocate for
domestic violence victims in Washington State.
``Twenty years in an abusive marriage. Four children. Twenty years
of walking on egg shells. Sixteen years of welfare because he wouldn't
work. Raising children in poverty. Volunteering everywhere and anywhere
just to further my education. [But] finally, freedom. He hurt our
daughter and was arrested. Single mother now, but 4 more years of
welfare. Formal education and volunteerism. Finally a job, a very good
job. Off of welfare and on a roll. Freedom from fear, hunger, poverty.
I know I would never have been able to travel the path that I have,
with him still in my life. He dragged me down, told me I was stupid,
told me I was ugly, told me that my family was ashamed of me, pitied
me. HE was the one, for 20 long years, that used everything in his
power to make me feel that I was only worthy of scorn. I now work in
the same organization that helped me gain my freedom, the domestic
violence program in my county. Everyday I see women who reflect my
past, who are mired in the same slime that held me down for so long. I
also see many of these women break free of their abusers, and I watch
as they begin to grow strong in their own rights. The struggles they
have to contend with are difficult, but not impossible. For so many of
them, it is an uphill battle, but at least the dead weight of their
former abuser is one less impediment.
Do not force us back into the dark ages, but light the path to
freedom with health care, affordable childcare, education, counseling,
and mentorship.
I became pregnant at age 18. I married the father even though he
was extremely physically abusive to me throughout my pregnancy and
after my baby was born. I married this man not out of love but because
I felt I had no other choice. This man couldn't keep a job for more
than 1-2 days. He was an abusive drug addict. We lived on what was
known as AFDC. This was barely enough to survive on. My husband sold
drugs to make ends meet. On one particular night, about 2 months after
my son was born, my husband beat me severely [all] because I did not
want to have sex with him. He broke my ribs and left me black and blue.
I made a plan and left a few weeks later. I never went back. I got off
welfare. I obtained a full time job. [I] put myself through college and
now help other battered women. I gave my son a chance to grow up in a
healthy, loving home free from abuse. I definitely feel that marriage
should not be promoted as an answer to women's poverty or to keep women
from receiving welfare benefits. The only answer is job training and
[obtaining a] college education [in order] to [achieve] self-
sufficiency. Toni
WYOMING
Because I was in an abusive [and] controlling relationship, I am
getting divorced. Because of my decision to leave my husband and better
my kids lives, and me I had to move out of my nice home and into a
significantly smaller house. I have had to spend every last penny to
hire an attorney, and he fights [with] me on everything I've asked for
in the divorce, even after I've told him to take the kids and
everything else and leave me with nothing. Because he is still living
with me (the police can't force him out and the kids want to see him),
I cannot receive any assistance until he does leave. I have called the
police on several occasions. We [have] tried couples counseling but
during every session he accused me of sleeping around and I've found
myself defending myself not only to him but to my counselor. Throughout
this horrific process of getting divorced I have come up against every
obstacle, including being ostracized by my church, family and friends,
coworkers, and community members. They ask me things like ``why did I
get married so young?'' and ``why can't I love him for who he is?''
Throughout my journey I have learned that there is a much larger burden
for the victim to carry than anybody knows. Because we aren't
technically divorced and Wyoming doesn't have benefits for mere
separation, I struggle monthly to pay rent, daycare, and bills. He
gives me $500 at the beginning of the month, [but] only if I ask and
beg him for this money. My kids and I don't have the luxury of cable or
the Internet. Because of him, my credit is ruined. I am working to get
that [back] on track and it is getting better. Because I have to work,
my kids must learn to be strong and get on the bus after school or be
consoled by daycare providers when they are sick because I can't pick
them up from school or stay home with them. If I have the opportunity
to cash out any sick leave so I can have extra money, I will. My
estranged husband wants me to fail so I don't have any choice but to
drop the divorce, and the system is backing him up. There are two
ironies to my story. First, my husband and I are both educated and have
graduate degrees. Second, I work at a safe house and am a domestic
violence victim's advocate. If leaving a violent man is so hard for me,
imagine how hard it is for anyone else.
There were so many more events of abuse. It suffices to say that
most of this marriage I was on welfare so that my children could live.
I was married to a man who kept me isolated and was abusive. I could
not have raised my children without the help I got from these agencies.
Many times he attempted to sabotage by being an a** in the welfare
office. After he had quit the job he had kept the longest (2 years). I
took my last beating. I was working five jobs at the time and most of
the time he didn't like it that I worked, but I refused not to work.
This is a very condensed version of my story, but to say that I was
financially successful because I was married is ``horse hockey.''
Welfare helped me, but he had such low self esteem that he could not
get out of his abusive, unemployed, slouched state. So my children
would be overjoyed when they came home and the fridge was full. The new
food stamps came that day. I usually always worked, but there was
always some public assistance or another. Marriage did not make my life
better. My mate was not a provider for his family. I had to work twice
as hard to provide because I had to give my children some sort of role
model.
Finally, when I found out that I did have a brain and I could
learn, I got an education. I am a social worker now. I have a good
life, a great husband, great children, [and] wonderful grandchildren;
three [of which,] belong to my [first] son who I reunited with after I
finally left [my] abuser.
Welfare Reform and Marriage Initiatives
LEGAL MOMENTUM
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. 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.
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, cohabiting, 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 two-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/acfnews.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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 9 years for the Building
Strong Families demonstration and random-assignment evaluation project;
MDRC (and other secondary contractors) $38.5 million over 9 years for
the Supporting Healthy Marriages demonstration and random-assignment
evaluation project); and RTI International and the Urban Institute
($20.4 million over 7 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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ See October 3, 2003 ACF press release ``ACF Announces Four New
Projects to Study Healthy Marriage,'' available at http://
www.acf.dhhs.gov jnews/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).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 2-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 5 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 3 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\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 cohabiting 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).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 3 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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\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).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 to 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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 8 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.eduj dept/nccp/
99uptext.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 $1400 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 5 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\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\32\ Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. (MDRC), chap. 6,
available at http://www.mdre.org/Reports2000,MFIP/MFIP--Vol--l-
Adult.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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. (The authors would
like to thank Shawn Chang for his invaluable assistance in completing
this testimony.)
Recent Marriage Promotion Studies
LEGAL MOMENTUM
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\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\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).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Melissa G. Pardue and Robert Rector, ``Reducing Domestic
Violence: How the Healthy Marriage Initiative 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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ http://health.senate.gov/testimony/86 tes.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
5th 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%2ORelease.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 web site, and its capacity for performing evaluative research is
unknown.
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\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%20Summary.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 4 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 4 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 5th 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 4-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.
[Whereupon, at 3:56 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]