Altared States

THE experience of decades makes clear that welfare and non-marriage go together like a horse and carriage. Forty percent of children with single mothers are poor—five times the rate of children with married parents—so President Bush proposes that the federal government get into the business of promoting marriage in order to reduce welfare dependency. In the next round of reform, the president declares, “stable families should be the central goal of American welfare policy.”

Predictably, the initiative has been condemned by the government-friendly Left: The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner has derided its goal as “shotgun welfare betrothals.” Also not surprisingly, a recent Pew Research Center poll found that marriage-friendly conservatives object to government meddling in this private relationship: Almost 80 percent of Americans—and 60 percent of “highly committed” white evangelicals—object to the government’s encouraging people to marry. This latest example of Bush’s activist conservative agenda is meeting the same fate as its predecessor, the plan to increase the role of faith-based charities by federally funding their good works: Liberals are objecting to the goal, and conservatives have reservations about the means.

About the Author

Kate O'Beirne

THE experience of decades makes clear that welfare and non-marriage go together like a horse and carriage. Forty percent of children with single mothers are poor—five times the rate of children with married parents—so President Bush proposes that the federal government get into the business of promoting marriage in order to reduce welfare dependency. In the next round of reform, the president declares, “stable families should be the central goal of American welfare policy.”

Predictably, the initiative has been condemned by the government-friendly Left: The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner has derided its goal as “shotgun welfare betrothals.” Also not surprisingly, a recent Pew Research Center poll found that marriage-friendly conservatives object to government meddling in this private relationship: Almost 80 percent of Americans—and 60 percent of “highly committed” white evangelicals—object to the government’s encouraging people to marry. This latest example of Bush’s activist conservative agenda is meeting the same fate as its predecessor, the plan to increase the role of faith-based charities by federally funding their good works: Liberals are objecting to the goal, and conservatives have reservations about the means.