HR 3200 and Marriage and Family

It seems page 838 of HR 3200 is a popular Google search--where young children and families expecting children are discussed. The alarm is spreading through conservative sites. Yes, it stinks to the high heaven of government heavy nosed snooping. However, this isn’t new to the Obama people. Follow the money back through the previous 3 administrations. It started to smell 2 decades ago, maybe before.

The federal government has been aware since the Clinton administration research publicized it that unmarried families are far more likely to be dysfunctional and living in poverty, so that does make marriage a legitimate concern. A woman who has not finished her schooling, who has her children before age 21, and doesn’t marry the father of her children, has a very good chance of becoming the responsibility of the taxpayer (and yes, that includes the Palin family), and Uncle Sam is not a generous, kind step-father. Yes, there are exceptions--usually when the grandparents take over as in our current president's case. The Bush administration carelessly threw money into the marriage consulting and advice business with very little oversite--whether it went to ACORN or Lutherans or Agnostics, made little difference, millions of tax dollars went to workshops, research and publications that probably amounted to little except paying the salaries of quasi-government workers in academe, churches, non-profits and state children‘s agencies.

That said, co-habitation before marriage (a k a "living together," "shacking-up") is not just a one way street to poverty, it is dangerous for women and children, and doesn’t result in strong marriages, according to the Rutgers’ National Marriage Project (I haven't checked their funding, but I'm guessing it came from us taxpayers, so you might as well take a look.)

"It is important to note that the great majority of children in unmarried-couple households were born not in the present union but in a previous union of one of the adult partners, usually the mother. This means that they are living with an unmarried “stepfather” or mother’s boyfriend, with whom the economic and social relationships are often tenuous. For example, unlike children in stepfamilies, these children have few legal claims to child support or other sources of family income should the couple separate.

Child abuse has become a major national problem and has increased dramatically in recent years, by more than 10% a year according to one estimate. In the opinion of most researchers, this increase is related strongly to changing family forms. Surprisingly, the available American data do not enable us to distinguish the abuse that takes place in married-couple households from that in cohabiting couple households. We do have abuse-prevalence studies that look at stepparent families (both married and unmarried) and mother’s boyfriends (both cohabiting and dating). Both show far higher levels of child abuse than is found in intact families.

In general, the evidence suggests that the most unsafe of all family environments for children is that in which the mother is living with someone other than the child’s biological father. This is the environment for the majority of children in cohabiting couple households."

The best thing President Obama can do for women, children and the institution of marriage is remain true to his wife, children and marriage vows and set a good example, particular for black men, whose communities are filled with female headed households and absent men. The Obamas are a beautiful family with a lot of pressure. It’s not easy to live in a fish bowl, and although Michelle comes from a middle-class, intact family, he doesn’t, which increases the risk greatly.