Administration Urged to Focus on Poverty, not Marriage
March 6, 2009
The Obama administration should focus on reducing family poverty in federal programs such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), not on promoting marriage and fatherhood, say researchers and advocates from universities and national organizations who have jointly published a position paper, Reduce Poverty Using Proven Methods: Eliminate Federal Funding of “Marriage Promotion” and Staff HHS with Appointees Who Value All Families , http://www.unmarried.org/images.
The authors report that from 2006 to 2010, TANF was permitted to
award $750 million in grants to support projects promoting healthy
marriage and responsible fatherhood. But they point out that no
research supports the idea that marriage and fatherhood help alleviate
poverty.
The focus on family structure endorsed by the Bush administration and
its appointees is misplaced. Family structure has become less important
in economic status since the 1980s. Although many factors that affect
family structure–single parenting, divorce, cohabitation, LGBT
parenting–have increased in the last fifty years, the welfare of
children has actually improved.
The focus should be directly on poverty, say the authors. This means
that administrators of programs like TANF should be committed to
serving the needs of children in all family structures. Alleviating
poverty should prioritize proven methods, such as increasing cash
benefits; providing childcare and job skills training; improving
educational opportunities; raising the federal minimum wage; empowering
unions; attacking discrimination of all kinds; and creating decent jobs.
They call for an immediate stop to allocating federal funds for the
promotion of marriage and fatherhood and for the removal of all
references to and allocations for it in future legislation. No more
federal money should be diverted from the real needs of children and of
families, no matter how they are constituted.
