One Marriage Under God: The Campaign to Promote Marriage in America

4. Teaching Marriage to Single Mothers and Inmates

| 93 4 Teaching Marriage to Single Mothers and Inmates Marriage is a fragile institution. Unless you enforce it by social mechanisms including shame for not being married, stigma for having a child out of wedlock, then we will see marriage continue to suffer. —James Q. Wilson, interview on Frontline1 Marriage per se is too simplistic a solution to the complex problems of the poor. Marrying a low-income, unmarried mother to her child’s father will not magically raise the family out of poverty when the parents often have no skills, no jobs, and terrible housing, and may be struggling with depression, substance abuse, or domestic violence. —Theodora Ooms, “Marriage Plus”2 Some high-profile marriage advocates aim to restore a time when there was greater stigma for divorce or unwed childbearing. The political scientist James Q. Wilson differentiates stigma from prejudice, where prejudice is about mistakenly imputing group traits on individuals and stigma is blaming an individual for immoral or dishonorable behavior such as lying, cheating, or extramarital sex. Prejudice causes discrimination and stigma causes shame: “Shame once inhibited women from having children without marrying and men from abandoning wives for trophy alternatives.”3 Wilson laments that society has “stigmatized stigma” so much that it no longer blames people for “immoral behavior.” Those who view the marriage problem in this way assert that resurrecting marriage will take policies and actions that “privilege married , childrearing couples rather than [are] neutral to them.”4 They recognize that some will take offense by what might be deemed discrimination against single mothers and gay men and lesbians who cannot legally marry. But they believe a more uncompromising stance is necessary because the biological 94 | Teaching Marriage to Single Mothers and Inmates two-parent family is the “source of much of our moral nature and the foundation of social organization.”5 All marriage advocates do not share these views. On the more liberal end of marriage promotion are those involved in poverty research, such as researchers at the Brookings Institution and the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). These advocates tend to recognize that marriage promotion by itself cannot solve the problem of poverty. They emphasize that changing behavior and culture will have an effect but they also consider the structural barriers to marriage—lack of education and job training, a high prevalence of domestic violence, mental health and substance abuse, transportation , and access to affordable, high-quality child care.6 Advocates and scholars have used the term “fragile families” to indicate that “unmarried couples and their children are, in fact, families,” and that, while low-income, unmarried parents are at greater risk of poverty, economic insecurity, and family dissolution, marriage is not a panacea to these problems.7 The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal survey of low-income, unmarried parents and their children, has shown that many unwed parents are in committed relationships, but they face numerous barriers to marriage , including low education, income below the poverty line, and health issues.8 Although low-income women value marriage and see it as part of “making it” or fulfilling the American dream, they strongly desire children and often don’t marry the fathers of their children due to the men’s financial instability.9 Many avoid marriage out of fear of divorce, which can leave a mother more destitute than before marrying.10 Marriage advocates also recognize a lack of “marriageable men” as another reason many poor women, and especially poor African American women, do not marry.11 The economist Robert Lerman assesses the problem: “One reason for the low rate of married-couple minority families is that the unstable employment and inadequate wages of many low-income minority males reduce their marriageability . With few marriageable men available, minority women have less incentive to delay childbearing or marry the father of their child.”12 While viewing marriage as a possible solution, this faction offers a number of solutions that include education and job training. The “marriage-plus” strategy, put forward by Theodora Ooms, “acknowledges that married and unmarried parents, mothers and fathers, may need both economic resources and noneconomic supports to increase the likelihood of stable, healthy marriages and better co-parenting relationships.”13 In this regard, services have targeted not only poor single mothers, but also men in prison.14 Teaching Marriage to Single Mothers and Inmates | 95 In this chapter, I examine efforts to promote marriage...