Promoting Marriage Is Good Social Policy
Brookings Institution scholar Richard Reeves released a report last week, “Where’s the Glue? Policies to Close the Family Gap,” providing analysis and recommendations for improving family stability and outcomes for children. There’s much to laud in the paper as it relates to building the economic and social capacity of families. And there is one big blind-spot.
Reeves lays out a persuasive case for a variety of policies that might help individuals to avoid negative outcomes, like unplanned births, while investing in strategies that show evidence of boosting earning power (skills training, expanding the EITC) and social capital (parenting education and programs that help poor families move to better neighborhoods). In one remarkable paragraph, however, he disavows the idea that the federal government should be spending money on helping low-income couples establish and maintain healthy marriages. The message seems to be we can do just about anything to help struggling families but please don’t talk about marriage.
Reeves grounds his argument thusly: As a researcher of “liberal sensibility” he doesn’t want the government “lecturing” adults “on how to conduct their lives.” My response to this concern is two-fold. First, if, as Reeves does, we’re willing to advocate for the use of long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) and the dispatch of nurses and social workers into the homes of single moms for parenting education, offering voluntary marriage and relationship education to low-income adults seems relatively innocuous by comparison. Second, healthy marriage programs (I’ve written about my own background with these programs here) are not lectures on the virtues of marriage, but workshops that help couples learn how to avoid destructive conflict and build happier, more satisfying partnerships. Many reading this will have had the benefit of parents and other adults who taught us these skills in our families and communities. Offering basic education to couples who may not have received the benefit of such modeling is a reasonable and compassionate response.
Whether federally-funded healthy marriage programs work is still very much up for debate. As Reeves notes, the 2014 Building Strong Families initiative evaluation found no impact. The more recent Parents and Children Together (PACT) evaluation published last June found otherwise. (Since Reeves’ essay was first published in July as part of a volume edited by my AEI colleague Brad Wilcox, there may not have been time to update ahead of publication.) Compared to the control group, PACT participants had measurably lower rates of divorce and domestic violence and higher levels of relationship and parenting quality. To be clear, the PACT results were statistically significant but not overwhelmingly so. This is not unusual in rigorous evaluations of federal social programs which, more often than not, conclude that a given intervention didn’t work or, in some cases, made the situation worse. Anytime evaluators find measureable, positive results, it is worth paying attention and remaining open to additional evidence that confirms or contradicts that data.
Ultimately, this disagreement (if there is one) comes down whether one believes that some policies are morally neutral while others are morally laden. In my view, it matters whether government endorses, equivocates, or repudiates on a policy issue. As middle- and upper-income Americans know, healthy marriages and families matter, and are hugely influential on long-term outcomes for kids. In other words, marriage, by definition, is a public good that deserves public endorsement and support. Federal healthy marriage programs are just one facet of what Charles Murray calls “preaching what we practice,” thereby extending blessings drawn from our own lives, and validated in social science data, to others.
Brent Orrell is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he conducts research on workforce development, criminal justice reform, and social theory.
