Yesterday at CNN.com there is an an article, here, about a Georgia State University study on the federal costs to taxpayers of “divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing,”—an arguable $112 billion a year. The study more or less concludes–with approval by its sponsors–that the federal government ought to be spending more on marriage programs in order to reduce welfare spending.
But wait, remind me again, how does marriage guarantee two responsible parents with reliable incomes? Marriage by itself does not work like that. Maybe for some guilt-ridden folks living in Puritantown a marriage document helps keep them in check just long enough to raise a few kids together. But beyond those few (who, incidentally, are the same folks supporting said governmental “marriage programs”), marriage doesn’t mean squat if the people making the commitment aren’t educated and don’t have reliable job prospects, if they aren’t socially mature enough to have respect and love enough for each other, if they don’t have enough sense to figure out if their values and goals for family and lifestyle interlock enough to enable long-term stability, if babies are born without mom and dad really having grown up first, or while drug and alcohol abuse is occuring.
There are a lot of social implications there and none of them have to do with marriage per say. How are marriage programs going to fix all of the underlying problems that make successful marriages almost impossible in the U.S. right now?
Well, thank God there are people with a little bit of sense on this too, arguing that more jobs for parents and better education are more effective tools for keeping people off of welfare than attempts at getting them to tie the not, and for good.
40 percent of kids in the U.S. are born “out of wedlock”–wow! But isn’t that a harsh term for marriage (”wedlock”?) Can we get rid of that term, please
Becca
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