A modest proposal from WSJ contributor Abby W. Schachter to Michelle Obama:
…W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Institute for American Values, notes that “the Obamas have gone the distance in their marriage, and they could encourage more of their fellow citizens to follow in their footsteps for the sake of kids across this great country of ours. The president could also support efforts to make federal welfare and tax policy more marriage-friendly.”
In 2008, President Obama sounded a similar note during a speech on Father’s Day, advocating for changing the tax code to support married couples.
Remember the composite female voter named Julia? She starred in “The Life of Julia,” an online storytelling tool that seemed to be one of the 2012 Obama campaign’s more effective weapons. As we learned by following the tale, Julia was helped along throughout her life by an array of government programs and handouts. Julia did have a child, but what Julia didn’t have was a husband.
And see our newly-released State of Our Unions in which a team of family scholars proposed a president’s marriage agenda for the forgotten sixty percent.
Categories: Marriage
The Obama’s do promote Civil Marriage, just not the kind that …W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project approves of.
So, providing a role model of a strong, loving, responsible family is unimportant?
President Obama’s parents were married. Some good that did.
Abby W. Schachter hates Obama and doesn’t think anything he does is praiseworthy. The article is walled but I’m not sure why some right wing concern troll needs to be taken seriously. First Lady’s have thus far picked their issue and supported it as they chose. Until Michelle Obama there has been no criticism. No one suggested Jackie Kennedy should have picked something more challenging and relevant than refurbishing the White House or that Laura Bush was wrong to have picked poverty not education.
The Julia thing is pretty clear evidence of this too. The point of cartoon was to highlight federal government programs that helped women, married or single. Nothing in the cartoon indicated Julia’s marital status. Women were meant to see themselves in Julia, married or single.
Is it the position of Family Scholars that Barack and Michelle Obama advocate postponing marriage until after completing advanced education and reaching one’s late-twenties/early thirties? Is it also the position of Family Scholars reject patriarchal norms of marriage and instead affirm egalitarian marriage? Because that is the example that the Obama have set.
I think you have to fix marriage, before you can really sell it. It would be hard to sell a car or a computer that had a failure rate of 40%. I think you have to start by discouraging/preventing/prohibiting divorce. Then you can sell marriage.
The President is firmly on record supporting marriage, including same-sex marriage. Wilcox et al. are not following his example, though more and more citizens are. But if Schachter and many other conservative fail to respect the President in his evolution toward marriage equality, why do they think Michelle Obama, who if anything evolved long before her husband, should take up the cause of marriage?
I wish, in fact, that the President and First Lady would take every opportunity to support marriage, including same-sex marriage. But I have a suspicion if they did, Schachter et al. would be even more critical of the President (if that is possible).
“Women were meant to see themselves in Julia, married or single.” Well, THAT didn’t work.
Mont D Law – “Nothing in the cartoon indicated Julia’s marital status. Women were meant to see themselves in Julia, married or single.”
Exactly. The programs were mostly things any woman might use.
However, I would be thrilled if the White House took on marriage as a cause. The trick is how to do it in a way that is not blaming and criticizing people, but promoting parenthood and lasting marriages.
I weakly agree with Diane, in that I think, “Yeah, sure, this would be nice.”
But I also think everyone else is right to point out that the Obamas have done a very good job modelling healthy marriage and a healthy family.
Further, I can’t recall any other president doing a great job talking about the importance of healthy families in a way that wasn’t preachy or obnoxious; so it does look a little odd to single out the Obamas, since they’re doing as good as or better than any other presidential family on this front.
But as long as we’re making wish lists, then, sure, it would be nice if the president talked about this more.
{Well, THAT didn’t work.}
Sure it did. It was meant to get him elected and it did. Romney got a bare majority of married women’s votes, about 53%. So 47% of married women saw themselves in Julia. And surprisingly only Republicans claim Julia doesn’t have a husband and is married to the government. Like only Republicans claim broadband access subsidies are payback for black people, that 47% of the of the population are irredeemable moochers and that if it`s legitimate rape women don`t get pregnant and if they do it`s an act of God.
Again, why should the views of a conservative concern troll be taken seriously?
Be careful what you wish for. As soon as Obama and/or the Democrats and/or “the liberals” come out in support of something, the Republicans and/or conservatives reflexively oppose it.
If Obama starts talking about marriage, it will be construed by the right as a way to create more government dependency. Or it will contribute to the debt. Or will make the UN more powerful. Or will hurt familes. Or will deny them religious freedom to not get married. Or whatever.
It’s gotten to the point where you have to apply reverse psychology: get Obama to condemn marriage, in order to get the rightwingnuts on board.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/337706/lets-marry-kathryn-jean-lopez#
@Kevin –
. I can almost hear the radio talk shows now.
Seriously, I have no doubt that the proposals Democrats would put forth to support marriage and the family would be different from the ones Republicans would put forth.
I was glad to see that the proposals put forth here included things like getting rid of disincentives to marriage in assistance programs. I’d probably go even further, but it’s a good thing everyone should be able to get behind.
When you look at the specific programs that people propose, they are often things people from both parties could support. It seems like what gets in the way is more about whether or not you should say that marriage is good and divorce can be bad for children.
Anyhow, I see Schroeder’s point – the Obamas are a great First Family.
I guess the only reason to call on them to promote “family” or two-committed-parentness is that right now we’re in a situation where more children are being born outside of marriage than in the past.
Reducing or eliminating marriage penalities in aid programs is not enough. Most working poor single mothers already earn too much money to qualify for most of those programs (like food stamps or child care assistance)—just not enough to be able to make ends meet without having to seek out private charity to get by (food pantries, soup kitchens, winter coat giveaways, etc.). The primary barrier to women without a college education getting married is that the pool of men they have available to them for possible marriage tends to have less education and work experience than they do, and tends to have on-again off-again employment as a permanent condition. Meanwhile, the women themselves do not have “breadwinner” wages and benefits that would allow them to consider supporting a marginally employed husband over the long term, nor has the culture they lived in changed to affirm the choice of men becoming househusbands. Many men resent their unemployed status and do not find becoming financially vulnerable as a househusband an appealing solution.
Translation: wages and benefits for the non-college-educated need a significant increase. One strategy that would be helpful is an increase in the minimum wage great enough to be an actual living wage. Another strategy that would be helpful is supporting strong labor unions which have heretofore been the only countervailing force against the rapacious race-to-the-bottom of predatory capitalism (example: support card-check for collective bargaining rights). Another strategy that would be helpful is changing corporate law to require corporations to take all stakeholders into account, not just stockholders—this would greatly reduce the current corporate strategy of socializing liabilities while privatizing profits. Another strategy that would be helpful is a massive Public Works program to increase employment and improve the infrastructure. Another strategy that would be helpful is vastly increasing the amount of college aid available to working families and/or totally subsidizing college tuition (eliminating cost as a barrier to higher education). Another strategy that would be helpful is encouraging (a la public investment in) worker-owned, democratically run cooperatives (like those in Mondragon).
The primary barrier to marriage is economic. Improve the economy and people will get married. Marriage makes college-educated couples wealthier, but it makes non-college-educated couples more financially vulnerable.
The Obamas success in marriage is in large part due to the fact they followed the “Blue State” marriage pattern. The Blue State marriage pattern isn’t open to all—not everyone has the ability and opportunity to go to college, and if they did the economic benefit of college would disappear. Postponing marriage until later in life doesn’t work for the non-college-educated because the jobs they hold are mostly low-wage, dead-end jobs….unlike college students, they can’t look forward to earning more money ten years later.
Preaching about marriage while the economic conditions remain what they are is just annoying. It doesn’t increase the marriage pool. Good jobs and a strong economy increase the marriage pool.
@LaLubu – “Preaching about marriage while the economic conditions remain what they are is just annoying. It doesn’t increase the marriage pool. Good jobs and a strong economy increase the marriage pool.”
What you’re saying makes a lot of sense to me, but I think fixing the economy is easier said than done. I think it would take more than raising wages or stronger unions, or even an economic stimulus.