Send to a Friend <% dim printurl printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Version

May 3, 2002, 8:30 a.m. Marriage Matters Even if conservatives don’t realize it. By Maggie Gallagher

he proposal to use an infinitesimal fraction of surplus welfare dollars for new programs to strengthen marriage and reduce unmarried childbearing and divorce is running into surprising opposition from conservatives. Sure, NOW hates the idea, but so does CATO — who is sending spokesmen around the country to denounce the plan. Even Kate O'Beirne in National Review sounds a deeply skeptical (if not hostile) note: "How exactly does the government expect $300 million to counteract the anti-marriage effects of the $150 billion it spends on means-tested programs? No one knows.... If single mothers bore the social stigma of smokers, children would be far better off."

Stigma is the favorite, all-purpose conservative answer to the problem of family fragmentation. But how does censoring marriage from government policy serve the cause of advancing stigma?

The stakes in this debate are truly high, which is why the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector has been beating the Bushes (no pun intended) for this proposal, which faces a tough but winnable fight in the Senate. Here is what conservatives need to remember, however: Saving marriage is not just a personal moral preference, and it is not even just one of many taxpayer costs conservatives would like to avoid. Strengthening marriage is the key to the ultimate victory of the conservative notion of limited government.

When marriages fail or fail to take place, women and children become vulnerable and dependent. Those women, along with their friends and relatives, are inexorably drawn toward the Party of Government. And research shows it is not only women of childbearing age that are made more dependent on government, but aging men and women in general. To expect a nation of fragmented families to turn away from an expanding welfare state is to expect a miracle. The original social democrats of Europe saw this quite clearly, which is why (especially in Sweden) they crafted social-welfare proposals with an eye to deinstitutionalizing marriage, making mothers less dependent on fathers but more dependent on government.

We are at a key crossroads now. Half or more of all children will grow up outside of intact marriages. Yet through arduous effort and public debate we have managed to slow the rate of divorce and halt the growth in unmarried childbearing. Government policy is not everything. But effective changes in welfare policy could help.

How? Here are three eminently practical suggestions, supported by research, taken from a recent Institute for American Values policy brief (see www.americanvalues.org).

1) Expand marriage education for low-income couples. Right now, the government suggests to mothers and fathers that the height of responsible fathering is signing paternity papers. Why not ask couples who apply for welfare if they are interested in marriage? If they say no, they say no. But even asking the question serves as an important signal to marriage-impoverished communities: Americans believe marriage matters.

2) Add a marriage message to teen-pregnancy programs. Most conservatives are not even aware that existing teen-pregnancy programs do not generally promote waiting for marriage. Instead they urge teens to wait until they are older before having children. Studies suggest teens are listening: Teen pregnancies are down, but unwed births to women in their early 20s are not. One simple, effective idea? Create a new funding stream for programs enthusiastically dedicated to teaching teens what adults believe and social science confirms: It is better to wait until you are grown, educated, and married before having kids.

3) Add reducing divorce to the goals of existing divorce-education programs. Half of all U.S. counties now have court-connected divorce-education programs, many of them mandatory. But these programs have goals that are limited to reducing acrimony and litigation. Why not fund pilot programs to find out which programs are also more successful at reducing unnecessary divorce? Polls in various states suggest 40-60 percent of divorced people wish they had worked harder to save their marriages.

Every divorce plunges government deeper into the lives of families, directly and indirectly. It does so directly by deciding who gets to see the kids and when, and indirectly through the large network of state and federal social programs regulating problems caused in part by family fragmentation: foster care, domestic violence, poverty, mental and physical illness, infant mortality, teen-pregnancy prevention, high-school dropout prevention, and crime control, to name just a handful.

The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples, educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage, and nurture faith-based and community marriage mentoring and education. I do not expect government alone to turn this problem around. But even small reductions in divorce and unmarried childbearing carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children, not to mention their effect on sustaining the vision of limited government.

Government now talks to poor mothers about contraceptives, work, childcare, mental health, nutrition, and domestic violence. In this environment, the looming absence of marriage is not government neutrality. The costs of family fragmentation — to children, to taxpayers, and (incidentally) to the larger conservative project — are so high that it is foolish and shortsighted for conservatives to sabotage it in defense of the status quo.

It's not as if killing this initiative will save the taxpayers money. If it is not spent on marriage it will be sucked into the regular catalogue of social-welfare programs for single moms. In fact, the latest word is that marriage foes want to add crippling language to the bill, requiring marriage programs to offer job training, which research shows does not work. More money for a failed status quo anyone?