Sheila Weber is the executive director of National Marriage Week USA and writes in FoxNews:
In spite of other disagreements, there is one aspect about marriage that both the left and the right can find to agree on. Marriage is a valuable anti-poverty program.
The Brookings Institution says that if we had the marriage rate today that we had in 1970, there would be a 25 percent drop in poverty. The Heritage Foundation says that marriage drops the probability of a child living in poverty by 82 percent.
This week we focus on Valentine’s Day; and while a celebration of romance is great, we should also celebrate marriage as a valuable culmination of romance, because it’s not just about love, but ultimately about providing a better life for the children of America.
... Let’s start a movement where more and more Americans seek out relationship education and marriage enrichment classes as often as we seek out other forms of self improvement such as home renovation, book clubs, grooming, fashion, décor, or cooking.
If we can change the public’s thinking and habits on recycling, smoking, exercise and healthy eating, how much more does America need a campaign to improve the public’s thinking and actions about the benefits to our country of encouraging healthy marriage?
5 Comments
I agree, statistically speaking, marriage is America's most effective anti-poverty program. But, is it a 'program'? (i know it's just a catchy form of speech, like 'get with the program!').
And, if it is a program, how to get people to care about their own children, more than of themselves?
Obviously, the statistics indicate marriage is positive. But the statistics do not indicate why so many people engender children without marrying. In other words:
The statistics do not indicate why the statistics are so. And the reason, may i propose, has to do with the loss of what in Christianity is called the sanctity of life, and reflected in the number of abortions each day, nationally, supported by the US Supreme Court of all bodies of authority. Related to the sanctity of life is the increase in illegal drug addiction. Not only do a lot of people not care about their potential to engendered children, but they don't even care about their own life. Immediate gratification is the preference, even if it mean being poor and having to go on welfare. But wait! Government then provides not only welfare, but also 'affordable housing'.
Talk about an ingrained love of poverty. . . it's a way of life.
Question: How does this benefit of marriage support your conclusion that certain people shouldn't be allowed to marry?
Pat:
Who's the question for?
Certain people are not allowed to marry - true - like a father and his adult daughter. Would you believe a particular father (and i don't mean a priest) got arrested for changing his adult daughter's name and then marrying her? I wonder how they found out.
What conclusion? Marriage is just defined rationally for certain types of partnerships. And if people don't like it, then there won't be any civil marriage at all. But, ...then, there would be even more people un-allowed to marry. That would make things WORSE, rather than BETTER.
Anyway, maybe you meant the question for someone else, and here I am, butting in. if you are a man, I hope you don't get any ideas.
Oh ho, I'm beaten by a superior argument!
Pshaw, right.
Let's see... a thing is defined by what it is--a "certain type of partnership", sure let's go with that. You say something about a father marrying his own daughter, but that's something entirely different.
I'm talking about banning certain people from doing the same thing you take for granted.
Your argument doesn't even APPLY to what I'm saying.
And I have no idea what you're talking about with no civil marriage at all or how that would prevent people from marrying.
The question is for anybody who can answer it. But that rather limits it to nobody at all, doesn't it?
Okay, the question is for all of those who can't answer it--the point is to THINK about why you can't.
Oh ho, I'm beaten by a superior argument!
Pshaw, right.
You write:
"I'm talking about banning certain people from doing the same thing you take for granted."
and, like you say:
"...but that's something entirely different."
Okay, my answer is for those who cannot understand it.
(We did THINK, and that's why we disagree with you.)