[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 49 (Thursday, April 8, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3960-S3962]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MARRIAGE
Mr. BROWNBACK. Madam President, what I wish to talk about this
morning is the overall issue of marriage, and I will go through some
charts, factual information, and some data. It is a current topic. It
is one of great interest in the country. What I want to do is back up
and say, Why is this institution even significant to us as a country?
Why would a governing body be interested in marriage at all? Isn't this
just simply a private matter?
What I want to do is go through, on a factual basis, and outline and
make clear why marriage is so important to a government. At the end of
the day, it comes back to raising children in a society to be
productive, good, strong, healthy citizens, and the best setting to do
that in is between two married biological parents, if at all possible,
male and female. That is what all the statistical studies show. That is
what the sociological studies show. I want to go through that because
it lays the groundwork for why we are interested in marriage in a
governmental body.
It turns out that if you have strong families, at the end of the day
you are going to need less government infrastructure and support for
them. If you have a very weakened family structure, you are going to
need a lot more governmental structure to surround that child to make
up for the lack of two dedicated male-female biological parents.
This is not to say people cannot raise good children outside of that
setting, because people do, and they struggle sometimes heroically to
get it done, and they get it done. I want to recognize and honor them
as well.
I want to talk about the macropicture as a broad society. As a
society of millions of people, why are we interested in it? The reason
is that, by and large, it produces stronger, more capable citizenry.
In the wake of all the recent debates about defending marriage from
some of the new and unique challenges it faces and promoting marriage
as an essential component in addressing some of our more intractable
social problems in this country, I think it is important we come back
to some fundamental questions: What is marriage? Why is it important to
the health and continuance of our society? Why is the Government
interested in marriage at all?
The answers to these fundamental questions are no longer so obvious
or self-evident, as is apparent from the fact that many today question
our civilization's traditional understandings of the institution of
marriage, its purpose, its necessity for society, and its role in
preventing social breakdown.
Before we can argue fruitfully about what marriage is not, we have to
have a good understanding of what it is, why it is valuable, and why it
must be defended as an essential bulwark of this great Nation of ours.
The stronger the marriages we have between a man and woman in this
country, bonded together for life, the stronger the country is going to
be.
Marriage has been central to the understanding of family in Western
culture from the beginning, and central to our historical concept of
marriage has been the rearing of and orientation toward children. It is
in this setting that children have the most likelihood of coming out
successfully. This traditional understanding is a far cry from a
postmodern deconstruction of marriage by a large number of sociologists
and academics today, many of whom hold that the unique character of
marriage is simply ``public approval and recognition.'' In other words,
marriage is whatever controlling public authority says it is, whatever
current public opinion is.
Our civilization's historical understanding of marriage and the
consequent recognition by the State of the unique nature of this one
relationship reflect the fact that the public recognition of the
institution of marriage is not primarily about the granting of rights
and liberties but about the imposition of burdens.
Under the law, marriage limits rather than increases individual
freedom. As family scholar Allan Carlson points out, marriage laws
commonly mandate the sharing of earnings and debts, compelling
obligations of mutual support, and limit rights to terminate the
relationship. These are all limitations on the two people involved.
Why is it that governments leave all other relationship between
individuals free but continue to register and in a sense burden these
heterosexual unions? The answer--and I will go through this in a number
of charts and statistics--is children, beings at once highly vulnerable
and essential for the future of every community. Strong and stable
marriages receive public approbation because it is a source of citizens
able to practice ordered liberty. So children are the key to the puzzle
about the unique treatment of heterosexual unions and traditional
marriage.
As author Maggie Gallagher has written:
Marriage is the place where having children is not only
tolerated but welcomed and encouraged, because it gives
children mothers and fathers.
That should seem very basic. This is not to say that marriage is not
important to society for a host of other reasons as well. Traditional
marriage is a boon to society in a variety of ways, and Government has
a vital interest in encouraging and providing the conditions to
maintain as many traditional marriages as possible.
Marriage has economic benefits, not only for the spouses but for the
economy at large. Even in advanced industrial societies such as ours,
economists tell us that the uncounted but real value of home
activities, such as childcare, home carpentry, and food preparation, is
still at least as large as that of the official economy. Not least of
the reasons marriage is a positive social good is the fact that in the
married state, adults of both sexes are vastly healthier, happier,
safer, wealthier, and live longer.
Here is an instance where social science, viewed honestly, confirms
what common wisdom has always told us: Traditional marriage between a
man and a woman is a good thing. It is not only good for the spouses,
it is absolutely vital for the children.
Now again, we know from study after study that the children of intact
traditional marriages are also much healthier in body, spirit, and
mind, more successful in school and life, and much less likely to use
illegal drugs, abuse alcohol, or engage in crime. That is not to say
people cannot raise healthy children in other settings. They can and
they do, and they struggle mightily to get it done. This is the best
setting.
As a result, though, one can always confidently conclude that
traditional marriage is also a social good because it dramatically
reduces the social costs associated with dysfunctional behavior.
Supporting and strengthening marriage significantly diminishes public
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expenditures on welfare, raises Government revenues, and produces a
more engaged responsible citizenry.
On the other hand, as seen today, most dramatically in modern
societies such as ours, where the institution of marriage has been
threatened and under attack for decades, with high rates of divorce and
cohabitation, combined with low birthrates, there is a real question
about the vibrancy of future societies that do not uphold traditional
marriage. It is ironic, then, that the very governments that benefit
from intact traditional unions have in recent years seemed determined
to follow policies that have the effect of weakening marriage.
There is a clear consensus about the benefits of stable marriages to
children, and that consensus is growing. Child Trends, a mainstream
child welfare organization, has noted that:
Research clearly demonstrates that family structure matters
for children, and the family structure that helps the most is
a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict
marriage. Children in single-parent families, children born
to unmarried mothers, and children in stepfamilies or
cohabiting relationships face higher risks of poor outcomes.
. . .
Not that they do not have in many cases very good outcomes, but they
face higher risk of poor outcomes.
There is thus value for children in promoting strong,
stable marriages between biological parents.
It is not just any relationship between any two adults that provides
children with the stability and nurture they need to thrive; it is a
strong, stable marriage between biological parents. Again, social
science seems to confirm what our common sense tells us: Children need
a mom and a dad.
We cannot lose sight of the importance of fathers in this discussion
of marriage. While it has become fashionable to champion a wide variety
of alternative family forums, it is abundantly clear that children are
much less likely to thrive in the absence of their biological father.
Children who grow up without their fathers are two to three times more
likely to fail at school and two to three times more likely to suffer
from an emotional or behavioral problem. They are five times more
likely to be poor. Nearly 80 percent of all children suffering long-
term poverty come from broken or never-married families.
This is the first chart I wanted to show about developmental problems
are less common in two-parent families, the red chart being single-
parent families and the second one being two-parent families. Virtually
half the level, the lower half of class academically, developmental
delay, emotional or behavioral problems--all of those problems are
nearly cut in half in a two-parent family.
I want to show next, on the child poverty issue, nearly 80 percent of
all children suffering long-term poverty come from broken or never-
married families. This is the number of children, total population,
that are in the situation of poverty. Twenty-two percent are children
of intact married couples, and the rest in the various other areas are
children born in marriage subsequently divorced; children born out of
wedlock, mother subsequently marries; children of never-married
mothers. Virtually 80 percent are those involved in poverty.
The crisis of child poverty in this country is, in large degree, a
crisis of marriage. That is why in the welfare reform bill there has
been so much push on the issue of marriage, because with marriage comes
a much better chance that this child is not going to be in a situation
of poverty. It is not saying that is going to be in all circumstances;
it is not. But the odds get much improved. The percentage of children
of intact families living in poverty is very small compared to those in
families where the father is not present.
Marriage has the effect of lifting families and children out of
poverty. After the birth of a child out of wedlock, only 17 percent of
poor mothers and children remain poor if the mother marries the child's
father. More than half of those mothers and children remain poor if the
mother remains single.
I am saying this, and some people may be uneasy about what the facts
say, but this is what the situation is. We have had this vast social
experiment of fathers being removed from families or leaving families
in an increasing amount over the past number of decades and we have the
data now. It is important for governments that we have a two-
biological-parents traditional family.
This chart indicates the impact of marriage on poverty based on the
nonmarried father's actual earnings, percentage of mothers and children
who are poor. If the mother remains single, it is 55 percent; if the
mother marries the child's father, it is 17 percent. Divorce, on the
other hand, impoverishes families and children. It has been estimated
the average income of families with children declines by 42 percent
after divorce. Divorce has hit my family. It has hit many families--
most families across this country. I know the impact of it, in siblings
in my family.
Children who grow up fatherless are also at a much increased risk of
serious child abuse. A child whose mother cohabits with a man who is
not the child's father is 33 times more likely to suffer abuse than a
child living with both biological parents in an intact marriage. What a
tough situation for that child.
Married mothers are also half as likely to be victims of domestic
violence than mothers who have never been married. As teenagers,
fatherless children are more likely to commit crime, engage in early
and promiscuous sexual activity, and to commit suicides.
It is clear both children and societies as a whole pay an enormous
price for fatherless homes. The American people realize this. There is
a Gallup poll from several years ago that showed almost 80 percent of
the public agrees with the proposition that ``the most significant
family or social problem facing America is the physical absence of the
father from the home.''
It is a problem that requires urgent attention in our country. Nearly
25 million children today reside in a home where the father is absent--
25 million children. Half of these children have never stepped foot in
their father's home--12.5 million have never stepped foot in their
father's home.
Less than half of all teenagers currently live with their married
biological mothers and fathers. On this chart, that is the point I just
made: Less than half of all teenagers live with their married
biological mothers and fathers.
This year, approximately 1 million children will endure the divorce
of their parents and an additional 1.2 million will be born out of
wedlock. Altogether the proportion of children entering broken families
has more than quadrupled since 1950.
This is a crisis for both our children and our country, the fact that
so many children are growing up without dads. It has been exacerbated
by the decline of the institution of marriage.
In the year 2000, the proportion of never-married women between the
ages of 25 to 29 reached 39 percent; in 1965 it was less than 10
percent. Among men, the proportion who have never married from that age
group went from 18 percent to 44 percent in the same time period.
According to the Census Bureau, the number of cohabiting couples has
increased from half a million to almost 5 million in the last 30 years.
The number of households with neither marriage nor children present has
gone from about 7 million in 1960 to just under 41 million in 2000.
While married-couple families were 76 percent of all households in
1960, they constitute barely 50 percent today. Divorce rates have
doubled every decade between 1960 and 1990, and while now they appear
to have leveled off, they are still at historically high levels.
This is the percentage of adults in the population that is married
compared to the percentage of the population that is divorced. You can
see what it was in 1970: married 72 percent, divorced 3 percent; in
2002, 59 percent married, 10 percent divorced.
Public policy must focus on reinforcing the institution of marriage
if we are to make progress in addressing many of the most difficult
problems we face as a society. While welfare reform, for instance, has
been an undeniable success in cutting half the caseloads, it is clear
the next step must include addressing what is the core issue, the
decline of marriage and the absence of fathers from families. We
certainly cannot mandate the involvement of biological fathers with
their families, but we can do everything possible to support the most
proven and effective
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pathway to responsible parental engagement, and that is marriage. We
must continue to work to change the policies that in effect punish the
decision to marry, such as welfare rules that make it more difficult
for married couples with children to qualify in comparison to single-
parent families.
We must work to address the decline of traditional marriage. Unless
we provide, as a society, cultural reinforcement for the often
difficult path of loyal, committed, monogamous, heterosexual unions, we
should not expect to see the institution of marriage thrive.
If society says the family structure does not matter, what is the
incentive to get or to stay married when the road gets rough, which it
often does? As one marriage expert has said, ``If marriage is just a
way of publicly celebrating private love, then there is no need to
encourage couples to stick it out for the sake of children. If family
structure does not matter, why have marriage laws at all? Do adults or
do they not have a basic obligation to control their desires so that
children can have mothers and fathers?''
That, my colleagues, is the real question in the marriage debate.
That is why we have a vital interest in defending the institution of
traditional marriage from attempts to define it out of existence.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the period for
morning business be extended by 10 minutes on each side.
Mr. REID. Madam President, reserving the right to object, the
Democratic leader wanted to speak. He yielded to the Senator from
Kansas. If the Senator from Texas will withhold for a minute, he should
be coming here.
Mr. CORNYN. I am sorry, Madam President, is there objection?
Mr. REID. Yes, there is, until the Democratic leader gets here.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard. The Senator from Texas has
the floor.
Mr. REID. How much time is remaining on----
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are 7 minutes, 15 seconds that remain.
Mr. REID. I would say, Madam President, we have no objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Texas yield?
Mr. CORNYN. For a question? May I ask how much time we have
remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There are 7 minutes remaining.
Mr. CORNYN. There was an objection to the request for extension on
each side for morning business?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes, that objection was heard.
Mr. CORNYN. There was objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes.
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