It is a mixed group, this premarital class at the Phoenix First Assembly of God. Some are members of the church, but most are not. Some have their weddings planned, while others are just beginning to explore the idea of marriage. Most are middle class, but some are eligible for a subsidy through the state welfare program, which has budgeted $1 million for initiatives to promote marriage -- much as President Bush proposes to do, to the tune of $1.5 billion, in the welfare re-authorization bill. Many such programs already exist, without government backing. Over the last decade, marriage education has mushroomed, in churches, community centers, colleges and even high schools. There are dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- of curricula, written by therapists, lawyers, psychologists and pastors, covering everything from communications skills and finances to sexuality and divorce law. What there is not is solid evidence that such efforts can bring down the nation's divorce rate, which has plateaued at about 4 divorced people per 1,000 -- down from the high of 5.3 in 1979 and 1981, but still higher than the 2 per 1,000 of the 1940's and 1950's. For several years, states have experimented with ways to use money from the Federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program to promote marriage. West Virginia pays a $100 monthly bonus to married welfare recipients. Oklahoma, like Arizona, has appropriated money for marriage education, and has even hired a pair of marriage experts to hold "relationship rallies" around the state. Several states offer cheaper marriage licenses to those who have had marriage education; in Florida, couples who have not taken such a course have to wait several days for a license. The Bush administration's plan to use federal money to foster healthy marriages among low-income families, first announced two years ago, has drawn considerable fire. While there is consensus among family experts, conservative and liberal, that two-parent households give children the strongest start, there is sharp disagreement about government involvement in promoting marriage.

"We don't really know that telling kids not to smoke lowers the cancer rate, but we all think they should have information about the risks," said Diane Sollee, director of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education. "It's the same with marriage: If I had 11th graders I would want them to know what to expect of marriage, what are the benefits of marriage, and which behaviors increase your chances of success." Most Americans, she said, need to learn the skills that help a marriage succeed. "People don't know that the first year has the highest divorce rate, because there's so much to disagree about in creating a new civilization," said Ms. Sollee, whose annual "Smart Marriage" conference attracted nearly 2,000 participants last summer. "They don't know that the birth of the first baby is the event that precipitates the most separations and divorces, not because she's getting fat, and there's poopy diapers, but because there's so much more to disagree about." While Ms. Sollee is heartened by the Bush administration's proposal to spend $1.5 billion -- $200 million a year for five years from the government, plus $100 million a year in state matching funds -- on marriage skills, she said that the marriage movement would grow with or without government help.

Regardless of what you think of Bush's motives for proposing this spending, the plan has several potential problems. First, while there is evidence that two-parent households benefit children, there is little empirical data on what sort of programs work to either promote marriage in the first place or to hold marriages together during troubled times. Beside the lack of proven efficacy and economic efficiency, there is also the dilemma of government being involved, even in a tangential way, in such a personal decision as marriage. There are so many considerations that go into a decision such as this one. For the Bush administration to issue a blanket encouragement of marriage is troublesome both in the fact that government should not be making "moral" decisions for people and in the fact that marriage may not be the best decision for all couples. Women's groups especially have been quick to point to the danger that such programs will push women into marriages that are abusive. The final problem with Bush's plan to promote marriage is that it does not consider all the possible options to reach its goals. If Bush's goal truly is to make more stable, loving homes for children, he would not exclude gay couples from this drive for marriage. Bush is pushing the sanctity of family, mostly as a boon for children, yet is also advocating denying a sizeable portion of the population the right to become a family. While promoting functional marriages and families is an admirable idea, the Bush plan for doing this is both ineffective and outside the realm of appropriate government action.

It's bad enough that President George W. Bush - and the conservatives pulling his strings - plan to roll out an extensive, expensive, obviously not pensive initiative to spend $1.5 billion to promote marriage - but only among the people they feel should be married. It's bad enough that he and his conservative cronies are implying that single-parent households can't be successful. But it's worse, much worse, when the president picks on low-income Americans as if getting or staying married is a problem only for the poor - and rich, conservative marriages don't fail. The training program, which is supposed to help couples develop interpersonal skills that "sustain healthy marriages," is an insult to couples who do make it work without governmental interference and to single mothers who are too busy working and taking care of their children to stop and find a husband to please the president. Bush wants to raise marriage rates in poor neighborhoods. But why is he targeting low-income couples? Why discriminate against prominent conservative leaders who seem to need the training just as much? Would Newt Gingrich be eligible? He left his first wife, Jackie, his high school math teacher, to marry Marianne, whom he left in May 1999 after it was disclosed that he had been having an affair for six years with aide Callista Bisek. He married Callista, 21 years his junior, in August. Would Bob Dole be eligible? His wife, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., is his second. Would Rudy Guiliani be eligible? The former New York mayor escaped worse criticism of his public adultery and split from wife Donna Hanover because of his expert handling of the Sept. 11 crisis. But could he use some training to sustain his current marriage? I'm not trying to pick on these men. I'm just butting into something that's none of my business, just like the president is doing. Wade F. Horn, the assistant secretary of health and human services for children and families, said in news reports that: `Marriage programs do work." Yes, they might. But marriages also work when parents have jobs and health insurance and a sense that our country won't be going to war every year. Marriages work when couples honor their vows to love and support each another. Money can buy textbooks, but it can't buy fidelity or loyalty or anniversaries. And this is something the president must learn.

And, ironically enough, the very day the White House was hyping the initiative, I was listening to a wedding caterer lay out just how much my impending nuptials could cost. The line items - appetizers, bartenders, coffee, deejay - scrolled forth like a federal appropriations bill. The damage: somewhat less than $1.5 billion, but rather more than I expected. A nice little federal subsidy sure would help ... The marriage-promotion dollars are supposed to fund classes that teach "relationship skills." But any psychologist will tell you that the No. 1 cause of marital discord is money. Couples fight over how to save it, how to spend it and what to do when its absence limits their choices. The White House could have proposed $1.5 billion to increase unemployment insurance, subsidize health coverage, or otherwise ease a family's money crunch. But, in an election year, it decided to deliver it all via adult education. I say cut out the middleman and hand over the cold, hard cash. Come to think of it, paying for hors d'oeuvres at the reception is only the beginning. In 2 ½ years of courtship, we've spent untold amounts on flowers, dinners, amorous baubles and the like. Unfortunately, we haven't kept receipts, but why not just settle on the conservative figure of $15,000 and call it even? At that rate, the government could ease 100,000 couples into a life of marital bliss. To hear President Bush's people tell it, that's pennies on the dollar. I'm getting married on June 19. The caterer needs to be paid shortly thereafter. Send me the check. You won't regret it.

... on Jan. 14, Mr. Bush had let it be known that he wants to provide $1.5 billion for training to help couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain "healthy marriages." An adviser who thinks Mr. Bush's standing among conservatives may be shaky said: "This is a way for the president to address the concerns of conservatives and to solidify his conservative base." It may not solidify his base among other groups. The Pew Research Center said that in 2002, 74 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Democrats surveyed voiced opposition to government programs aimed at promoting marriage. That's probably because they don't know what the money will be used for. They soon will. Wade Horn, assistant secretary of health and human services for children and families, said the administration is spending about $7 million a year on pilot programs to promote marriage. It wants to expand those programs using the $1.5 billion. Mathematica Policy Research in Princeton, N.J. has a $19.8 million federal contract to measure the effectiveness of premarital education programs that focus on high school students, young adults interested in marriage, engaged couples and unmarried couples at the moment of a child's birth. Fiscal conservatives can only hope that by the time the money is appropriated the studies will be completed and we'll know if the money will be well spent or wasted.

Lifting individuals out of poverty requires more than marriage. It also takes a good education, job training, and decent housing. Just the same, a married couple can often provide the best environment for children. Some states already have programs to promote stable marriages, and are getting results. If more welfare children are raised with two parents, they might avoid the trap of becoming welfare dependents themselves. With safeguards to avoid any inherent coercion, Bush's plan deserves a test. Single parents on welfare may have never considered getting advice on making a marriage work. A free course, freely chosen, might help reduce poverty or, at the least, give more welfare kids a stable two-parent home. And the program could end up paying for itself in savings on welfare.

The Bush marriage proposal actually passed both the House and the Senate Finance Committee last year in the White House's welfare reauthorization bill. Now the president is redoubling his efforts to get it through the Senate, too, just in time to snatch another liberal concern -- fighting poverty -- away from the Democrats and, he hopes, placate demands from the Religious Right for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage ... But, Bush is no political dummy. Or, at least, his political adviser Karl Rove isn't. They probably have noticed how gays and lesbians don't seem to be all that scary to Middle America anymore, while the success of gay characters on programs like "Will & Grace," "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and "The L Word" scares the daylights out of the Religious Right. One can easily imagine Rove advising Bush, in pursuit of crucial moderate swing voters, to stay cool, "stay positive" on the gay marriage thing: Downplay the gay-bashing amendment and play up the "pro-marriage" initiative.

After all, single parenthood is as much an effect of poverty as it is a cause of it -- and, since poverty is the absence of money, the best cure for poverty is not just a healthy marriage but also a healthy income. With that in mind, if the administration wants to encourage marriage, it should get back to ending the "marriage penalty" that conservatives correctly criticize as an irrational penalty on working couples who file joint tax returns ... No, marriage alone will not solve all of the problems caused by unwed parenting. Married or single, parenting is a tough challenge. Parents don't always get the help they need, but they need all of the help they can get.

"Healthy Marriages" stands out because it incorporates several political goals:

* Solidify the president's relationships with the ground troops on the religious right -- also known as the "armies of compassion" -- that Team Bush, headed up by Karl Rove, hopes will come out in droves for the president come Election Day.

* Bring the term "compassionate conservatism" out of mothballs and into the election year media spotlight.

* Take the heat off the president for stalling on an endorsement of a constitutional amendment currently kicking around in the House of Representatives that would put the kibosh on same-sex marriage.

* Dole out money to faith-based organizations to implement the initiative, providing a booster shot for the president's legislatively dormant faith-based initiative. Introduced nearly three years ago, Bush's faith-based initiative has been stalled in Congress ever since. However, despite failing to gain the stamp of approval from Congress, faith-based projects are moving along inside several government agencies.

The concept of fatherhood isn't always an easy thing to quantify or explain, but a group of seminars -- aimed primarily at young minorities -- has a goal of changing that. The first of three sessions in a program titled ``Faithful Fathers'' was held Sunday evening at the Lawton Community Center in Akron. Five panelists were asked questions based on the premise of ``A Commitment to Fatherhood,'' and the answers all seemed to revolve around three common themes: leadership, support and discipline.

Suzi Leather, chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), said the law should be changed to remove the clause requiring doctors who assess infertile women to take account of the "need of the child for a father" before offering treatment. It would give the green light to single women and lesbians to seek treatment on equal terms with heterosexual couples. But the downgrading of the father's role in child rearing is likely to be portrayed as an attack on the traditional family. In an interview with The Independent, Ms Leather described the clause that mentions fathers as "anachronistic" and "a bit of a nonsense".

There's no doubt that single-parent poverty is a major problem. But lack of marriage isn't the main culprit. The reason mothers are poor has to do with their lack of education and the lousy jobs they have to settle for. Jobs at the bottom of the income ladder don't pay enough to support a working woman and her children. They don't pay enough to support a working man and his family either. So even if the mother is living and sharing expenses with a working man who's also at the bottom of the income ladder, they're still likely to be poor. If she's married to him and he doesn't have a job, they're often worse off financially than if the mother is living alone. The best way to stabilize the American family and improve the odds that children won't be impoverished is to help women -- and men -- get better-paying jobs.

Kylie Thompson remembers leaving hospital as a 17-year-old mother with her newborn daughter, Taylah, and feeling overwhelmed by her situation.

Now 19, Ms Thompson knows how much easier raising Taylah has been because of the support of her mother, with whom they live. "She has been fantastic," she says. "I'm very, very lucky."

Ms Thompson's experience is, according to new Melbourne research, far from typical. A Royal Women's Hospital study of 124 young mothers, with an average age of 16, found they received far less support with their babies than they expected during pregnancy, making them more vulnerable to depression.

The same group also found that 73 percent of teenage mothers became pregnant deliberately.

"Families of Two" author Laura Carroll said in her research she never found any hard proof that people who have children are more fulfilled in their lives than those who don't.
She said people who are childless or child-free tend to seek out other relationships and build strong network of people around them and they don't necessarily want a child to change their status quo.

"There's no guarantee that your children will be like you or like you," said Carroll. "Couples who don't want children tell me that they were concerned about what would happen to their relationship with their spouse. It it's good, they didn't want to mess with it. If it was shaky, they didn't think a child would make it better. It's just a choice."

Three decades ago reformers' attention was focused on the "higher-education gap" -- the fact that not as many girls went on to college, graduate school, and professional school as boys. Advocates of equality between the sexes fought hard to create gender-specific education programs, fair admissions policies, and professional societies for women. Their efforts were rewarded: from 1970 to 2000 the number of women attending college rose by 136 percent, graduate school by 168 percent, and professional school by 853 percent.

Yet soon the higher-education gap opened again -- but this time girls were on the other side of it. In the late 1970s more girls than boys began to enroll in college, and the disparity has since increased. Today women make up approximately 56 percent of all undergraduates, outnumbering men by about 1.7 million. In addition, about 300,000 more women than men enter graduate school each year. (The gap does not particularly affect professional school; almost as many women as men attend.) In short, equal opportunity brought an unequal result.

The advance of girls relative to boys might well have been predicted from patterns in K-12 schooling, where girls have long been outperforming boys on several measures.

Whom is Team Bush kidding? Social conservatives worry that the judiciary is going to legalize gay marriage, absent a constitutional amendment barring the practice. And they are increasingly concerned that the president hasn't endorsed the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment. This is a very big deal to these people, and the notion that a new government program to teach poor folks how to be happily married is going to buy the social and religious right off is absurd.

And it's an absurdity we can't afford in a time of ballooning deficit spending. Once the network of social workers and counselors is put in place, it will be difficult to get rid of them. They will become yet another group of government employees dependent on the taxpayer for support.

It must be said, though, that society has an interest in marriages succeeding. Sociological research overwhelmingly establishes the connection between fatherlessness and a range of social problems, including juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, poverty and educational failure. The harmful effects of single parenthood and divorce hit poor children the hardest, so it's understandable that Bush would want to focus marriage-promotion efforts on low-income families.

But we don't believe that government-funded marriage counseling is a sensible way to advocate this worthy goal, even apart from cost concerns. This proposal looks like election-year pandering by a president eager to appease social conservatives.

Half the federal money will go to state agencies. The other half, or $100 million each year, will be up for grabs by religious groups and nonprofits. Grant applicants have considerable leeway in both the form and content of their projects, and the programs may target high school students, single mothers, engaged couples, unmarried couples with children or married couples on the rocks. The only criterion is that the participants be heterosexual.

The timing and nature of the announcement are clearly driven by politics. Offered up to the religious right as the Bush reelection campaign starts in earnest, the proposal shores up the president's conservative credentials after a year in which Texas and Massachusetts courts handed down significant rulings in favor of gay rights. Outraged religious conservatives want presidential support for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, but Bush has waffled on giving it. This vanilla endorsement of "healthy marriage" could spare his having to venture into those waters while mollifying a key constituency.

Danny worked all the way through high school to help support his family financially. He was devastated when his parents split up during his sophomore year, and college didn't even appear on Danny's radar screen until he was a senior.

After all these years, and three kids, she'd still like to know what, exactly, a healthy marriage is supposed to look like. "It just took me too long to grow up," she says. "If you were raised by a single mother, as I was, it's hard to have your own family."

Scandanavia has long had generous parental leave. In Sweden, a couple can take up to 13 months off work between them, with the state paying up to 80% of lost wages up to a ceiling... It is notionally divided 50-50 but, except for two months, it can be transferred between the parents...

Yet many Swedish fathers are reluctant to use their "papa months." Mothers take as much as 85% of all parental leave. This frustrates feminists, who believe that shared responsibility for child care is a key to equality in the labour market....

The government sympathizes. It is impressed by evidence that fathers who take more responsibility for small children are more likely to stay in contact should the family break up. A commission is looking into ways to increase father's take-up of parental leave. Some... want to scrap the transfer of leave between partners. They say only such a drastic measure can force men to take their responsibilities.

Yet this suggestion is unpopular not just with fathers, but with many mothers. It has aroused cries of social engineering and interference with families' right to decide how to bring up their own children.

It's hard to argue against the benefits of strong marriage, and we admire Mr. Bush's effort to encourage enduring match-ups. Indeed, research findings support the mission. It is also hard to ignore the politics behind the promotion. Mr. Bush's staunchest conservative supporters are vexed by court rulings supporting gay marriage. They want Mr. Bush to come out squarely against such unions, possibly by endorsing a constitutional amendment declaring marriage as between a man and woman. The president's measure encourages marriage without penalizing others -- and doesn't bring government into the bedroom of others.

...the appalling statistics regarding black female-headed households, poverty, fatherless children and the skyrocketing HIV infection rates among black women lead me to believe the negative effects of this lifestyle have diminished the quality of life for a lot of black women.

Healthy Marriage Initiative: (1) The conservative counter to the increasing legitimacy of gay rights; (2) A totally unobtrusive new initiative by the people who fight for less government; (3) Poverty prevention, according to HHS assistant secretary Horn and the Heritage foundation.

I subscribe to CAP's Daily Progress Report. I'm a steadfast Democrat, a member of 2020 Democrats, and I'm glad to see the emergence of a progressive think tank like CAP.

However, I was upset to find that today's Progress Report contains a major error. In its coverage of the Healthy Marriage Initiative, your report states, "The plan was proposed because the President was 'facing pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage.'" That is just not true. The plan was proposed long before the debate over same-sex marriage heated up.

Moreover, many liberals (myself included) support a healthy marriage initiative (even if we think it should be set up differently). It seems that whoever wrote up that blurb knew nothing about the issue except for what was in the NY Times piece. The Brookings Institution, CLASP, the Urban Institute, and the Progressive Policy Institute all have published research that would support a healthy marriage initiative. This isn't about "marrying off the poor," it's about trying to improve the lives and prospects for the poor, especially poor children. The Bush Administration may be hyping this plan as a sop to social conservatives, but trying to ensure that more kids grow up with married parents better not be a conservative idea. If progressives truly care about combating poverty, we have to address on family formation issues.

I hope you put out a correction. More importantly, though, I hope the Center for American Progress actually looks more seriously at the marriage issue. Please don't cede it to conservatives. Please do more than oppose whatever Bush does. There's already more than enough spin out there.

Sincerely,

Tom Sylvester

Affiliate Scholar
Institute for American Values

The [administration] officials said they believed that the measure was especially timely because they were facing pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage, after a decision by the highest court in Massachusetts. "This is a way for the president to address the concerns of conservatives and to solidify his conservative base," a presidential adviser said.

The federal government's promotion of marriage - or support, or counseling, or whatever term ultimately proves appropriate - represents the culmination of an effort that began 40 years ago, when researchers first began examining the social value of marriage. Since then an overwhelming body of statistical evidence has led to a conclusion that now sits at the bedrock of popular wisdom: two parents are better than one.

In the last few years, some liberals have also expressed interest in marriage-education programs. They say a growing body of statistical evidence suggests that children fare best, financially and emotionally, in married two-parent families.

Luckily for Team Bush, none of this talk about results or shaky pilot projects really matters. This latest push for marriage-promotion isn't so much about helping folks live happily ever after as it is about getting Bush elected to a second term.

Issues like gay marriage and shifting sexual mores are tricky terrain for a self-described uniter like Bush. By contrast, cheap-ass, feel-good initiatives aimed at promoting strong marriages--all in the name of happier, healthier children, of course--are something only the most amoral neo-Marxist feminazi could object to. Who cares if the programs actually work? Nearly all of us can agree that they should work--that it would, on the whole, be a positive thing if somehow they could work. And, in an election year, that kind of broad consensus is as good as gold.