The National Review
August 09, 2005
Wedded to Marriage
Invest now or pay later?

By Wade F. Horn

The recently released report from the National Marriage Project at Rutgers
University — "The State of Our Unions, 2005" — is the latest in a series of
such reports to document our cultural retreat from marriage. Although
divorce rates have declined from all-time highs in the early 1980s, more men
and women are cohabiting — many of them with children — rather than
marrying.

This is not good news; at least not for children. That's because research
consistently finds that cohabiting relationships are far more unstable than
marriage. Wherever one finds family instability, an increased risk of
problems for children follows with all the associated impacts on social
institutions and the demand for more (and more expensive) governmental
interventions.

In contrast, healthy and stable marriages support children and limit the
need for government programs. Whether the problem is abuse, neglect, or
poverty, research clearly shows the best chance a child has of avoiding
these problems is to grow up with their mom and dad in a stable, healthy
marriage.

In the face of these trends, some counsel resignation. High divorce rates
and increasing cohabitation rates are simply a reflection of modernity, they
say, and besides, there is not much anyone can do about it.

We disagree. Armed with compelling research that shows that children do best
when reared in healthy, stable, two-parent households, three years ago
President Bush launched his Healthy Marriage Initiative. The initiative's
goal is to help couples who choose marriage for themselves gain greater
access, on a voluntary basis, to services where they can develop the skills
and knowledge necessary to form and sustain a healthy marriage. The
initiative is based on solid research indicating that what separates stable
and healthy marriages from unstable and unhealthy ones is not the frequency
of conflict, but how couples manage conflict. The good news is that through
marriage education, healthy conflict-resolution skills can be taught.

The president's Healthy Marriage Initiative is a centerpiece of
welfare-reform reauthorization bills currently before both houses of
Congress. The reason why the president's Healthy Marriage Initiative mainly
targets low-income couples is not because we believe marriage is
particularly problematic in low-income communities, but because unlike more
affluent couples, low-income couples either do not have the resources to
purchase marriage-education services or those services are not currently
available in their community. The aim, then, of the president's Healthy
Marriage Initiative is to give low-income couples greater access to
marriage-education services and thereby improve their chances of forming
healthy, stable marriages.

But, some libertarians and fiscal conservatives worry, is this initiative
really consistent with a conservative's view of limited government? Good
question. Here's our answer: First, the president's Healthy Marriage
Initiative does not add a penny to the federal budget. Rather, our plan
simply redirects money from two existing incentive funds under the Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, incentive funds which most
impartial observers agree have not been particularly effective.

Second, rather than an expansion of government, the president's Healthy
Marriage Initiative is an exercise in limited government. Here's how: I run
the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services. My agency spends $46 billion per year operating
65 different social programs. If one goes down the list of these programs —
from child welfare, to child-support enforcement, to anti-poverty assistance
to runaway-youth initiatives — the need for each is either created or
exacerbated by the breakup of families and marriages. It doesn't take a
Ph.D. to understand that controlling the growth of these programs depends on
preventing problems from happening in the first place. One way to accomplish
that — not the only way, of course, but one way — is to help couples form
and sustain healthy marriages.

Indeed, government is most intrusive into family life when marriages fail.
If you don't believe it, try getting married, having kids and then getting a
divorce. If you are a non-custodial parent, government will tell you when
you can see your children; whether you can pick them up after school or not,
and if so, on what days; whether you can authorize medical care for your
children; and how much money you must spend on your kids. By preventing
marital breakup in the first place — not by making divorce harder to get,
but by increasing the odds of a stable marriage by increasing marital health
and happiness — one obviates the need for such intrusive government.

The good news is that welfare reform has been a tremendous success. A
pernicious culture of dependency was transformed into one that is now
focused on helping those on welfare obtain and maintain employment. As a
result, welfare rolls have decreased by 60 percent since 1960; earnings by
single-parent-headed households are at all-time high; and child poverty has
declined significantly, particularly for African-American and Hispanic
children.

The job, however, is not done. One of the main goals of welfare reform is to
increase the proportion of children growing up in two-parent married
households. The president's Healthy Marriage Initiative, by offering
voluntary marriage-education services to those who can't afford them, will
strengthen marriage and prevent expensive, painful and oftentimes
intractable social problems for children. It's a common-sense ounce of
prevention that will help temper the demand for a pound of costly social
interventions later.

— Wade F. Horn is the assistant secretary for children and families at the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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