"Why Marriage Won't Solve Poverty"

[applegrove]

Why Marriage Won't Solve Poverty

by Michelle Goldberg at the Nation

http://www.thenation.com/blog/177941/why-marriage-wont-solve-poverty

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“Trying to shoehorn women whose expectations of equal treatment have been rising into marriages with men whose economic prospects have been falling is no solution to contemporary work and family dilemmas,” writes Coontz. “Women are far less likely than in the past to put up with the kind of behavior that so often accompanies economic loss and chronic employment stress—such as drug or alcohol abuse and domestic violence—and we should not encourage or incentivize them to do so.” Women know that no marriage is better than a bad marriage. According to the report’s poll, only 19 percent of divorced low-income women wish they’d stayed married, compared to 53 percent of divorced low-income men.

This doesn’t mean we should write off men who make poor marriage prospects. Perhaps the most fascinating section of the report is about inner-city fathers who have children by multiple women—a largely reviled group. It’s written by Kathryn Edin, a public policy professor at Harvard and the co-author of the celebrated book Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage. For a long time, Edin writes, she assumed that the men in her subjects’ lives were simply uncaring and irresponsible. Then she started interviewing them.

She found that poor fathers, like poor mothers, see their children as a source of meaning and hope in a world otherwise devoid of both. The problem is that it’s hard for them to stay involved with their children when they have little to offer financially. “Love and affection are all fine and good, but who’s going to pay the light bill? What about keeping the heat on?” writes Edin. “If a child’s father can’t provide money, the attitude goes that he’s more trouble than he’s worth.”

And so while she urges young men to wait until they have a strong relationship and solid finances before they have children, she also has a message for the rest of America:“You’ve got to give these men hope, which would mean a real shot at a stable future. Stop locking them up for nonviolent offenses…. Increase the supply of decent jobs and, for those who can’t find work, provide jobs of last resort.” Besides being the right thing to do, it’s the only marriage program that has a chance of working.




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