While I'm all for providing low-cost/free counseling to low income families who are in danger of splitting up, I'm unsure about the long-term implications of such a program. Married parents have already made the choice to be together, so I think that an investment in keeping those families together would be worthwhile. But is encouraging unwed mothers to marry the father of their child the right way to go? It seems to me that there are probably real reasons the parents did not marry in the first place. And exactly how are they planning on going about "encouraging" marriage? I haven't seen any details on that, but in this editorial on CNN.com, an administration source is quoted as saying that the proposal "could allow mothers to get paid for getting married."
By most accounts, two-parent families are usually ideal. And of course, the parents made the initial choice to have sex and, knowingly or otherwise, conceive the child. But I don't think that shotgun marriages will be a panacea for poverty, and I don't think that this would make for a more stable family unit. In my experience, often one parent will choose not to marry the other because abuse was present in the relationship, and while that situation may have been acceptable for the two adults in the relationship (for some bizarre reason that could be discussed in another thread), it would not be for a relationship including a child. Throwing a bit of government money into the mix would likely prove to be an irresistible incentive for parents who would otherwise not marry. Additionally, two low-income parents who marry would still be low-income, only together. How is getting married going to improve their fortunes?
The whole idea smacks of moral finger-wagging to me. Telling poor people, "Well, okay, we'll give you this money, but you’ve got to live your life according to what we think is right" seems like too much of an intrusion on people's private lives. Even welfare recipients are entitled to the same freedom to make their own choices about such important things as marriage and childbearing, in my opinion.
), and even if, say two very lower-class people got married they might just use the small amount of money they get every month to go buy drugs as opposed to feeding their children, because the parents did not recieve a good education and because they did not get the oppurtunity to get a good job. The chain has to end somewhere and giving married people money is not the answer.