Guest Commentary: Marrying (Uncle) Sam?

October 7, 2003

by Wendy Pollack, Senior Attorney, National Center on Poverty Law

The Bush administration is engaged in a full court press in its effort to promote marriage among low-income women and men, diverting hundreds of millions of dollars each year from programs and services intended to help low-income people move out of poverty, such as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, the welfare program for poor children and their families, and the child support enforcement program.

The marriage promotion agenda is an inappropriate use of government funds, and an ineffective antipoverty strategy. An individual's decision to marry is very personal, often complex, and indeed private. To force the poor—poor mothers—to consider this personal decision in the context of their need for public benefits is yet another example of government trampling individual privacy rights and avoiding the real issue of how to effectively address poverty.

In a recent report, Wade Horn, the assistant secretary of the administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the administration's marriage guru, also acknowledged that the push for marriage might be at odds with welfare reform efforts to make poor mothers self-sufficient. He noted that self-sufficiency might enable unmarried women to rear children without the presence of the father, decreasing the probability of marriage.

As a veteran advocate for the poor, I can report that we should stick with (and improve) efforts toward self-sufficiency.

Research suggests, and many women and men inherently believe, that a two-parent family is good for children. But assuming the administration's vision is fulfilled—men and women lining up to get married—would it be pleased with the choices people might make? In a recent study of poor families in three cities virtually all of the cohabiting and married relationships that were formed during a 16-month period involved a mother and a man who was not the biological father of the child. Would the administration endorse this marriage?

And what about lesbians, gay men, and others for whom marriage is not an option? We surely know the administration's position on this one.

And what about women being encouraged to marry or stay married to abusive men?

When it comes to poverty and its trappings of substandard housing, food insecurity, lack of transportation, limited access to quality child care, health care and education and low-wage and unstable employment, there is very little that more money in the pockets of the poor cannot cure. This includes an individual's decision to marry or not.

A welfare experiment in Minnesota tested the notion of increasing families' incomes, access to education and training, and work supports. It had no overt marriage promotion components. But lo and behold, the experiment set in motion a positive chain of effects, including an increased rate of marriage and marriage stability for those already married, a reduction in domestic violence, and improvements in children's well-being. This is a positive approach to fighting poverty and promoting marriage. In short, you can promote marriage by first addressing poverty.

Wendy Pollack is a senior attorney with the National Center on Poverty Law in Chicago, Ill.