On May 13, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space examined the impacts of marriage and divorce on children. The Senate Finance Subcommittee on Social Security and Family Policy and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee on Children and Families held hearings on this issue earlier this year (see The Source, 5/7/04 and 4/30/04). Chair Sam Brownback (R-KS) was the only subcommittee member to attend the hearing.
Dr. Steven Nock, a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Virginia, summarized demographic trends in marriage, cohabitation, and divorce. Explaining that young people in the United States are delaying marriage, he stated, “In 1950, half of men’s first marriages had already occurred by the time they turned 23 (22.8.) Half of women’s marriages had occurred by the time they reached 20 (20.3.) Today, the corresponding ages are 27 (26.9) for men and 25 (25.3) for women.” He also noted that marriage rates are declining among African Americans, indicating that 90 percent of young white women are projected to marry at some point in the future, but only two-thirds of black women are projected to marry. Dr. Nock highlighted the benefits of marriage, then stressed the consequences of divorce: “Divorce harms women’s economic circumstances. Women’s economic well-being (income-to-needs) declines by a third (36%) following divorce,” he stated, adding, “Divorce affects a woman’s chance of becoming poor. About one in five (19%) previously non-poor mothers falls into poverty following marital separation. And unlike their ex-husbands, poor mothers are less likely to escape from poverty if their marriages are disrupted. Women’s economic problems after divorce are also related to the fact that only 60% of divorced mothers are awarded any child support, and only 44% actually receive any support form their ex-husband.”
Patrick Fagan of the Heritage Foundation explained that a marriage decline affects more than just the children and families involved. “Society also suffers with more gangs, more assaults, more violence against women and children, more sexual abuse of women and children, and much bigger bills for jails, increased need for health care, supplemental education, addiction programs, foster care, homelessness programs and on and on,” he stated. “The expansion of all these social program budgets is directly linked to the breakdown in marriage.”
The subcommittee also heard testimony from Gordon Berlin of MDRC, Inc., a nonpartisan social policy research and demonstration organization “dedicated to learning what works to improve the well-being of disadvantaged families.” Mr. Berlin concurred with evidence indicating that children do best when they grow up in a two-parent household, but warned that there are some exceptions. “Growing up with two parents is better for children, but only when both mother and father are the biological or intact (as opposed to remarried) parents,” he stated, “In fact, there is some evidence that second marriages can actually be harmful to adolescents. Moreover, marriage can help children only if the marriage is a healthy one.” Pointing out that the birthrates among teens and African Americans have fallen since 1960, Mr. Berlin suggested that the nonmarital birth ratio should not cause great concern. “The share of all children born out-of-wedlock has risen over the last thirty years, in large measure, because women were increasingly delaying marriage, creating an even larger pool of unmarried women of childbearing age, and because married women were having fewer children,” he said. Mr. Berlin warned the subcommittee to proceed cautiously in developing a marriage promotion initiative because “while the results from the marriage education programs are encouraging, they are not definitive. Most of the studies are small, several have serious flaws, and only a few have long-term follow-up data…Most importantly, all of the programs studied served mostly white, middle-class families, not the low-income and diverse populations that would be included in a wider government initiative.” Mr. Berlin encouraged Congress to adapt marriage promotion programs for low-income families: “This might involve changes in the type of agencies that deliver services, the training leaders would get, the content and examples used in the training, the duration and intensity of services, and the balance between strengthening internal communication and the forging of links to community programs that can provide support related to the contexts in which poor families live.”
Having researched the effects of family structure and transition on families, Margy Waller of the Brookings Institution offered a number of findings, including:
Arguing that the policy goal must be to encourage marriages that will last, Ms. Waller said that marriage promotion initiatives should “combine [marriage] counseling and education with barrier removal activities like education, training, and mental health services. She said that programs should be developed in coordination with domestic violence prevention advocates and should emphasize teen pregnancy prevention. With regard to the welfare reauthorization bill (H.R. 4), Ms. Waller encouraged Congress to focus on programs that increase household income and economic security; allow states to include education, training, and barrier removal activities as work participation; and increase funding for child care.
During the question and answer session, Sen. Brownback asked why marriage and fertility rates were “at an all-time high” during the 1950s. Witnesses explained that the economy was in an upswing after the Great Depression and the First and Second World Wars, and more people were getting married and having children. They also noted that women were more economically dependent on their husbands, and therefore remained in “less-than-ideal” marriages. It was suggested that women entering the workforce and being able to support themselves was one of the many reasons for the rise in divorce in the 1960s through 1980s.
