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Reducing Unwed Childbearing: The Missing Link in Efforts to Promote Marriage

Most social scientists acknowledge that, on balance, single parents, stepparents, or cohabiting couples are no substitute for childrearing by two married parents. Yet, new data from the federal government show that a record number of babies—nearly 1.5 million—were born to unmarried women in the United States in 2004. Empirical evidence of this sort has leveraged political support for the Bush administration’s “Healthy Marriage Initiative.” Congress recently approved major funding for this initiative as part of welfare reform reauthorization. Approximately $100 million per year will be available for research, demonstration, and technical assistance projects to promote healthy marriage through such activities as public advertising campaigns, relationship and marriage education in high schools, and relationship and marriage skills for both unmarried and married couples. In addition, about $50 million per year will be available to promote responsible fatherhood. Preliminary evaluations of marriage education programs have revealed some positive results for middle-class parents, but there is not yet scientific evidence on how these programs will work for more disadvantaged couples. Indeed, marriage promotion among the poor remains a contentious issue. Not only is the effectiveness of such strategies unproven, but some critics view these strategies as poorly designed for dealing with high rates of incarceration, unemployment, substance abuse, and domestic violence among low-income men and with high rates of early unwed childbearing among low-income women. This brief argues that for marriages to succeed among low-income families, it is also essential to address these underlying problems—most specifically, the problem of unwed childbearing.