Marriage Movement.org

Marriage Leaders Announce Next Steps to Strengthen Marriage

For Release on December 16, 2004, 6:00 a.m. EDT

Contact: Sara Butler
(212) 246-3942
[email protected] The trend of family breakdown in the U.S., which many thought was inevitable, has largely stopped in its tracks, and the work of the grassroots marriage movement over the past decade is responsible for at least part of this good news, according to a report released today by over 140 leaders of the grassroots marriage movement.

While the country’s attention has been focused on the debate over same-sex marriage, members of a grassroots marriage movement on both sides of the issue have been working to strengthen marriage, lower the rates of divorce and unwed childbearing, and ensure that as many children as possible have the benefit of growing up with their own married mother and father. Their efforts are having a real impact, the leaders of the marriage movement say in their report, entitled What Next for the Marriage Movement?

“It seems clear that much of the recent good news on marriage stems from the work of the marriage movement,” says David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values and a signatory to the statement. “We’ve been arguing for the importance of marriage in the public debate for more than a decade, and community marriage education programs have mushroomed in recent years. Research shows some of them are dramatically cutting the rates of divorce and unwed childbearing. On a lot of different levels, there have been increased efforts in lots of communities to strengthen marriage. There are more pastors doing pre-marriage education, more articles in local papers about the importance of marriage, more pro-marriage curricula in the public schools.”

Encouraged by the successful results of their efforts, the marriage movement leaders have declared their intention to renew America’s marriage culture. Their statement, What Next for the Marriage Movement?, calls for expanding marriage education programs, reforming state divorce laws, and building a stronger grassroots marriage movement to help lead “a marriage renaissance in the United States.” The statement also announced the creation of a legislative Task Force on Marriage to develop model legislation and ensure that the movement’s legislative agenda is enacted. The members of the Task Force are Katherine Shaw Spaht of the LSU Law Center, Jeff Kemp of Families Northwest, Linda Malone-Colon of Hampton University, Kay Reed of the Dibble Fund for Marriage Education, John Crouch of Americans for Divorce Reform, William J. Doherty of the University of Minnesota and David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values.

The goals of the marriage movement include expanding access to marriage education so that more couples have a chance to learn skills to improve their marriage. For instance, the leaders advocate increasing federal funding for marriage education programs in low-income communities, as a part of the reauthorization of the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. The statement also calls for new state laws offering reduced marriage license fees, shorter waiting periods for marriage licenses, and tax credits for couples who choose to participate in pre-marriage education. The leaders also want to see high-quality marriage and relationship education added to the public school curriculum.

Also included among their goals is a call to reform divorce laws to reduce unnecessary divorce. Proposals to do so include combining longer waiting periods for divorce, except in cases of abuse, with stronger provisions for courts to refer couples to marriage education.

Divorce rates are modestly declining, according to the statement. Rates of unwed childbearing, after increasing sharply year after year for decades, have leveled off since 1995. Teen pregnancy rates have declined dramatically. The most encouraging statistic is that from 1995 to 2000, the proportion of African American children living in married-couple homes rose by four percent, a significant increase in just five years. Among all U.S. children, the proportion living in married-couple homes has stabilized and may be slightly increasing.

As evidence of how community marriage education programs are having a real impact, the leaders cite a recent evaluation of clergy-led Community Marriage Policies. The study found that, while divorce rates in control counties without CMPs declined by an average of 9.4 percent over the course of seven years, divorce rates in counties with CMPs declined by an average of about 17.5 percent over the same period of time - or almost twice as much.

Signatories to the statement include William Doherty of the University of Minnesota; Dr. Robert Franklin of Emory University; Ron Haskins, co-director of the Brookings Institution’s Welfare Reform and Beyond Initiative; Linda Waite of the University of Chicago; David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values; Katherine Shaw Spaht of Louisiana State University Law Center; Roland Warren, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative; Patricia Dixon, founder of the National African American Relationships Institute; Scott Stanley, co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver; and John Crouch of Americans for Divorce Reform.

The marriage movement was created to reverse the trend of family breakdown in the U.S. One-third of all children born in the U.S. are born to single women. The U.S. also has one of the highest divorce rates in the world - 40 percent of all first marriages. When combined, these facts mean that more than half of all children in the U.S. will spend at least part of their childhoods living in single-parent, usually father-absent, homes.

A 2002 report, Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-one Conclusions from the Social Sciences, by 13 leading family scholars from across the political spectrum, shows that children from single parent homes are at a significantly higher risk for poverty, criminal activity, school failure, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and child abuse. According to research cited in the report:

• Between one-fifth and one-third of divorcing women end up in poverty following divorce.

• Boys raised in single-parent homes are twice as likely to commit crimes as boys raised in two-parent homes regardless of race or income. Boys in step families are three times as likely to commit crimes as boys raised by their own two parents.

• Girls raised in single parent homes are three times more likely to end up as young, unwed mothers than are children whose parents married and stayed married.

• Children of divorced or unwed parents have lower grades, are more likely to be held back, and are more likely to drop out of high school.

• In the last 50 years, suicide rates among teens and young adults have tripled. Two-thirds of this increase can by explained by divorce, according to one study.