Welfare-reform program led moms to wed, study finds

[Rose Siding]

A Wisconsin welfare-reform program already lauded for improving the lives of welfare mothers also has been found to increase the likelihood that participants will marry.

Five years after never-married low-income mothers entered the New Hope Project in Milwaukee, 21 percent were married, compared with 12 percent of similar women in a control group, said study authors Hirokazu Yoshikawa and Anna Gassman-Pines, who presented their paper yesterday at the Society for Research in Child Development conference in Atlanta.

What made the difference in increasing marriage rates was that New Hope supplemented the incomes of the working mothers, said Mr. Yoshikawa, a psychology professor at New York University.

In other words, he said, it wasn't enough for the women to have a stable job, they "needed to have more income."
Unfortunately, he said, Congress is proposing welfare-related marriage-promotion policies that focus on relationship skills or marriage education, but "explicitly exclude poverty reduction as a route to increasing marriage."

"Our study suggests that you should not ignore poverty reduction ... as a route to increasing marriage rates among single mothers," he said.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050409-112207-1558r.htm

[The Flaming Red Head]

1. Why do they push marriage on women? I like being single.

If I was married I am sure I wouldn't own my own home, or car, or anything. The geniuses I've met along the way consider beer and entertainment money more important than bill or milk money. I am a single mother because I want to be. My house is paid for and so is my car and my bills get paid every month (even if we have to do without). I am glad I don't have to have a MAN to cling to, I like my life the way it is.

[Liberal Veteran]

3. Didn't you get the memo? No woman is complete without a man.

At least that's how repubs see it.

[shanti]

6. i'm with you, sister!

i'm happier, MORE prosperous - not less, and doing much better on my own. i tried marriage twice and guess i'm just not cut out for it. the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. i don't even get lonely anymore....raising a 15 yr old athlete son keeps me very very busy. he's my prime focus and should be. having a man is like adding another kid to the mix.

marriage isn't for everyone and they shouldn't push it as such, but we all know american society is set up this way. i don't go to church either, which puts me on the outside again. oh well....

peace.

[Horse with no Name]

7. Sounds like the Mormon doctrine

If a man felt his wife was not behaving properly, he could always find a more compliant one. Because all women must be married to go to heaven, the pressure to conform to the expectations of men was incredible.

http://cc.msnscache.com/cache.aspx?q=1653577958314&lang=en-US&FORM=CVRE8

[alarimer]

11. I don't understand it either

How many of these women are forced into marriage with someone abusive or just inapproriate for them??

[Kimber Scott]

12. There are a lot of women who want to marry, but haven't been able to

find a "suitable" partner while living in destitute circumstances. Destitution is not real attractive. I doubt you'd find anybody in this program who was forced to marry against her will.

[mbperrin]

2. Marriage for everyone! I hear Rusty Yates is dating

again.........and I guess Robert Blake is back on the market, too!

[MrPrax]

4. No Brainer...

"needed to have more income." !!

More income gives you a lot more options in a consumer-based society...

[haele]

5. Well, looking at it logically -

People are more likely to have the same stability in relationships as they are in economics.
When you give a woman hope and self-confidence, if she chooses to have a partner, she's going to start looking for or attracting partners in terms of a long-time relationship, be it marriage or just friendship.

Someone who has no stability, no permanency in their lives will be looking more for companionship/pleasure at the moment, without thought of the person they're looking to have that companionship is like as a person. Likewise, no one who has any sense of stability and self confidence who is looking for a long-time companion is going to be looking at someone who is bouncing around on the street with no visible means of support or no apparent interest in his or her future - no matter how much pity they may have for that person or how "good" that person looks.
You might want to try and help that person - but you wouldn't want to date them for any length of time until after they "get their act together"- unless you like desperate gratitude, dependency, and eventual resentment in a companion.

Haele

[MichiganVote]

8. Real life, as opposed to this study, says they'll be divorced in 2-5 years

[RobinA]

13. Exactly

More women in the program got married. So what. I work with this population. Marriage or not, doesn't mean a damn thing.

[MichiganVote]

15. As do I and I know exactly the score.

Politicians like to say that nothing works or everything they do works and rely on studies just like this to formulate policy and funding. God forbid they should ask anyone who works with this population.

[Lindacooks]

9. And I wonder what domestic abuse stats are going to be like

in Wisconsin in the months and years to come.

[HockeyMom]

10. Welfare to Work

program in NY where they took unmarried welfare mothers and sent them to school to learn a trade: electrician, plumber, mechanic, etc. Local paper interviewed some of these welfare moms a few years later. One woman was a licensed plumber for 3 years making $45/hour, had bought her own home, and was engaged to married a fellow plumber. In the interview she talked about Bush's Promote Marriage Law and called it a joke. She said the father of her young son was an uneducated "loser" who didn't even have a high school diploma and couldn't hold a minimum wage job for more than a few months. The other women in the interview echoed the same. As she said, this program gave her the skills to make an independent living, achieve home ownership on her own, and meet a financially secure and stable man who was willing to adopt her son and would provide a stable home life for him. As she said, none of this would have happened if she had just married the father of her son.

Just getting MARRIED to ANYBODY isn't the solution. As these women said, jobs skills, and getting out of the welfare environment of the "hood", and meeting responsible people was.

[jamesinca]

14. I read an article on sojourners.com

It looked at the rate of abortion and how it has gone up since Bush took office. In the states that track reasons for abortion, financial security seemed to be the common thread. Without a good health plan, or a stable good income, women got abortions. Without a stable relationship they found this happened too. The interesting thing about the stable relationship reason is this: Men tend to not get married if they don't have a stable job according to the research. Men become non-committal and undependable in relationships if they don't have a decent job.

In short, if people are paid living wages, with a health care plan that is reasonable and don't fear for their job they are more likely to get married, stay married and have babies.