Archive for February, 2011

Good news on federal policy for families in poverty

Stop taking low-income fathers’ money away from their children; help fathers form better relationships with children and mothers; don’t make legal marriage more important than good parenting. Finally, the federal government’s approach to the role of family structure in the lives of low-income children is starting to look more reasonable and realistic.

In a conference call last week, two Special Assistants to the President revealed the administration’s new strategy for TANF grants. The $150 million annual allocation for Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood will be split evenly between the two program types ($75M for marriage and $75M for fatherhood) in next year’s budget as well as this year’s current funding. There will be a new competition for these funds, and previous grantees will have to demonstrate past success to be considered for future grants. Marriage programs can’t get fatherhood funds just to keep doing marriage stuff (or vice versa).

This amounts to a permanent 25% reduction in marriage promotion and 33% increase in fatherhood funding. On the call, Martha Coven, Special Assistant to the President for Mobility and Opportunity, described it as a welcome increase for fatherhood. She also said the administration had decided to follow this funding pattern because it was acceptable to Congress, rather than dig in to fight for the much bigger state-level competition for innovative marriage, fatherhood and family programming which it had proposed last year.

The call further revealed the administration’s much bigger focus on fatherhood, in the form of a package of improvements to the child support system worth $2.8 billion over 10 years (i.e., averaging $280 million annually). The world of low-income child support collection is maddening for everyone, not least because it was originally designed as a cost recovery plan for welfare agencies. This design concept causes friction between mothers and fathers, fathers and children, families and agencies, courts and jails, and even between the federal and state governments. Much of the proposed federal funding will be used to pay the states to modernize and humanize their systems. Not my area of expertise, but sounds like a really good idea!

Now here’s the less good news – the line between fatherhood programs and marriage promotion is not as bright as you might hope. Here’s how federal law describes fatherhood programming (italics added):

1) Activities to promote marriage or sustain marriage through activities such as counseling, mentoring, disseminating information about the benefits of marriage and 2-parent involvement for children, enhancing relationship skills, education regarding how to control aggressive behavior, disseminating information on the causes of domestic violence and child abuse, marriage preparation programs, premarital counseling, marital inventories, skills-based marriage education, financial planning seminars, including improving a family’s ability to effectively manage family business affairs by means such as education, counseling, or mentoring on matters related to family finances, including household management, budgeting, banking, and handling of financial transactions and home maintenance, and divorce education and reduction programs, including mediation and counseling.

2) Activities to promote responsible parenting through activities such as counseling, mentoring, and mediation, disseminating information about good parenting practices, skills-based parenting education, encouraging child support payments, and other methods.

3) Activities to foster economic stability by helping fathers improve their economic status by providing activities such as work first services, job search, job training, subsidized employment, job retention, job enhancement, and encouraging education, including career-advancing education, dissemination of employment materials, coordination with existing employment services such as welfare-to-work programs, referrals to local employment training initiatives, and other methods.

4) Activities to promote responsible fatherhood that are conducted through a contract with a nationally recognized, nonprofit fatherhood promotion organization, such as the development, promotion, and distribution of a media campaign to encourage the appropriate involvement of parents in the life of any child and specifically the issue of responsible fatherhood, and the development of a national clearinghouse to assist States and communities in efforts to promote and support marriage and responsible fatherhood.

So, we can enjoy a modest celebration but it’s not time to kick back and relax. We’re pursuing two goals in 2011: first, to influence the ongoing use of TANF funds so that programs are less rigidly focused on marriage and more helpful to people in diverse relationships; second, to influence the reauthorization of TANF so that marriage promotion will not be stated as its primary purpose for the next five years.

You can help! Take on a specific research or outreach task. Recruit a brilliant summer intern. Contribute towards a stipend so the intern can afford to take this job.

News roundup: stop, start and forever

Great news: the executive branch will stop defending the section of the Defense of Marriage Act that prevents the federal government from recognizing state-authorized marriages that are not configured as one man + one woman. Does this open the door to regulatory recognition of same- and different-sex domestic partnerships and civil unions, or only same-sex marriages? For example, does it obviate the need for legislative action to end taxation of DP benefits as income, or to give plus-one benefits to federal employees? Legal eagles, please advise!

Facebook will start letting users pick domestic partnership and civil union in its list of relationships.

Ever-single, 83-year old, non-violent intellectual Gene Sharp is credited with “inspir[ing] dissidents around the world, including in Burma, Bosnia, Estonia and Zimbabwe, and now Tunisia and Egypt.” I’m inspired, too!

Will Obama really fund failed marriage programs?

The President of the United States has proposed the federal budget – his wish list of revenues and expenses covering the period October 1, 2011 – September 30, 2012. Budgets, whether federal, nonprofit or family, are statements of priorities, goals and hopes. AtMP keeps an eye on certain federal budget lines that show whether the government promotes legal, different-sex marriage as being better than other relationships or family forms.

Unfortunately, while cutting things people really need, the President is proposing to fund two marriage-related programs that should be abandoned because they are insulting at best, and downright dangerous at worst:

the grant program called Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood is still carving out $150 million per year from welfare funds under the umbrella of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
to paraphrase our friends at SIECUS (the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States), the President is also continuing to put $50 million a year into Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, which have been widely discredited and proven by the federal government’s own study to be ineffective.

I’ll get to the second program another time. Today I’m wondering: Why are the TANF programs still funded?

Marriage programs are not a presidential priority. In his budget statement, Obama does not mention marriage at all. He does discuss fatherhood, mostly in the context of the very good idea of urging states to let fathers’ child support payments reach their children instead of getting absorbed into state treasuries. But it took quite a bit of digging to find any reference to this funding continuation (fellow wonks, see page 473).

The administration knows that marriage programs don’t work. An evaluation of an eight-site TANF-funded marriage program found no net effects on participants’ relationships.

The President’s team tried to replace marriage programs last year. Joshua Dubois – Special Assistant to the President and Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships – spearheaded a campaign to replace marriage programs with a potentially better, experimental package focused on the economic needs of low-income parents. (We commented on it extensively here.)

Congress moved money from marriage to fatherhood last year. When Congress extended budget lines instead of passing a whole budget last year, it assigned $75 million instead of $100 million to marriage programs. Fatherhood programs got a corresponding increase from $50 to 75 million.

In sum, I see a glimmer of hope. Although the title and size of the budget item is the same, maybe there’s a plan to develop a completely different kind of operating program using that money. AtMP and our allies will keep an eye on it, and we’ll weigh in with suggestions about how federal funds could be put to good use to reduce poverty and improve child outcomes.

Here are some basic components: financial assistance to cover food, shelter, health care etc; early childhood education; relationship skills and supports to help adults be great parents and partners. Want more ideas about how reducing poverty can improve a child’s prospects ? There’s a compelling article by Duncan and Magnuson article starting on page 25 of this magazine on poverty, inequality and social policy.

Valentine’s Day is about Love not Lovers

We’re pleased to host this guest post by Dr. Karen Gail Lewis. Dr. Lewis works primarily with single, straight-identified women, but you might find her tips useful regardless of your gender, orientation or relationship-status.

When you think about Valentine’s Day, do you feel pleasure? Grief? Anger? If you are single, Valentine’s Day, along with New Years, are the two most hated holidays. Too many single women say they “hide out” on February 14.

Valentine’s Day, though, is not about lovers; it’s about love. It has become commercialized for lovers, but it’s really a time to connect with people you care about. In the midst of the hearts and flowers that have become associated with this day, the origin of the holiday is lost.

In fact, there is no agreed upon origin. There are numerous stories about the man Valentine and the holiday of love. They range from Roman days to honor the god Lupercus, to Emperor Claudius forbidding marriage, to Pope Gelasium turning a pagan game of romance into a game about saints.

You can choose which version of the origin of the holiday you prefer, in the same way you can choose how to relate to Valentine’s Day. It can be a day of shame because you do not love and are not loved by a special man, or you can honor this day by acknowledging those people who make your life better. Valentine’s Day is not about lovers, it’s about love.

Here are some tips for how to make this a special day.

1. Send cards to everyone you love, male and female, young and old. Not only will the recipients feel cherished, you will be reminded how blessed you are to have so many special people in your life. For a fun flashback to your school days, buy a pack of the colorful cards you used to pass out to classmates, or make them yourself.

2. Honor the service people who make your life better. Give cards to people in your everyday life, showing how much you appreciate them. It might be the person who cuts your hair or cleans your home. It might be the bank teller who helps when your checkbook gets out of balance. You don’t have to wait for Christmas to let your mailperson know you appreciate the effort made to bring you 30 mail order catalogues a day. Think about the people who make your life easier; this is the day to remind yourself (and them) that you don’t take them for granted.

3. Spend it with friends. Specifically choose February 14 to spend with people you appreciate but don’t tell often enough. Take a favorite co-worker or office assistant to lunch. Or have a Valentine’s dinner party for good friends.

4. Send flowers to yourself. Rather than mope or feel sorry for yourself that there is no man in your life to send you flowers, send them to yourself. Flowers are the love letters from Mother Nature.

5. Monitor your music. If you are likely to have a hard time on February 14, make sure for the few days leading up to the 14th you aren’t listening to love songs or songs about longing for love or about brokenhearted love.

6. Don’t hide. Don’t pretend it isn’t Valentine’s Day. Say Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone you see. Wear a pin with hearts or at least wear red and white.

7. If you are blue, don’t fight it. Give yourself permission to be sad there isn’t a loving man in your life. Give yourself an hour, even two, for your “Pity Party.” Then stop. Move on. Be careful you don’t drown your unhappiness in excessive alcohol, drugs, or food. There is no reason to be self-abusive just because you are alone and sad.

Here’s another idea. Buy yourself or your friends a ring. This is a way to say you are OK being single, to feel connected (like the circle of the ring) with singles all around the world, and to let singles know, that at least in this way, you have something in common. You can find special rings for singles at mysinglering.com, or myspace.com/Singelringen, or nationalmarriageboycott.com.

Special Note

Some married women say they get depressed on Valentine’s Day because their husbands don’t get them anything. Or, they give a last minute, perfunctory gift of flowers or a card that the secretary probably selected.

Knowing some married women aren’t happy won’t make you feel better about being single. It should, however, be a reality check that Valentine’s Day is what you choose to make of it.

Participating in the holiday tells the world you love yourself and you love others. You have no reason to be embarrassed about being single; you don’t need to hide.

You can mope or you can celebrate your life – the life you have at the moment. There is no telling what your life will be like later today, tomorrow, next week. So celebrate whatever you have. After all, right now is the only life you have.

Dr. Karen Gail Lewis is founder of Unique Retreats for Single Women, weekends bringing small groups of women together to shift their thinking about being single in a society prejudiced against single women. Visit her website for more information.

Responses to mixed-race and unmarried

Thanks so much to everyone who took the quiz! So far, your 39 responses paint this picture:

45% of you identify as multi-racial or multi-ethnic; among you multis, 24% of your parents were unmarried when you were born (compared to 15% of parents of the total group). Your ages range from 19 to 74, with 46% of you still under age 40. 90% of you are unmarried, and 47% of you have multiracial/ethnic children of your own.

Among the 28 of you who have committed romantic relationships, 74% are different-sex, 6% are same-sex, and 19% are poly. Of the 37 partners you described, 22% are themselves multiracial/ethnic, and 51% identify with just one race/ethnicity but that one is different from yours. So 73% of your relationships are interracial/ethnic.

Of course, this is not a scientific sample! But it is fascinating to see such big numbers. Your personal comments are also fascinating. Here are just a few:

Although my family of origin was marriage-based and white, there are lots of multiracial families among my extended family. We all feel just as much like family even though we all look different and have different last names, and we joke a lot about the benefits of “hybrid vitality.”

… our real difference are the economic/ parenting styles we experienced growing up.

I have a biracial child and am a single parent. My child attends a predominantly black school and has been having some identity issues due to her bi-racial status and we are working through them little by little each day

Board member Kevin Maillard has written extensively on the topic of unmarried mixed-race relationships. He sent this commentary:

The NY Times’ recent article on multiracial identity places great weight on intermarriage as the catalyst for the “biracial baby boom.” But is this true? It would suggest that the multiracial population did not take off until 1967, when the Supreme Court ruled antimiscegenation laws unconstitutional in Loving V. Virginia. This is an easy way to imagine the origins of mixed race in America, but it overlooks unmarried relationships that produced the bulk of the historical mixed race population.

Marriage is only one way of recognizing relationships, and it is also a convenient way to ignore them, too. By prohibiting marriage between people of different races, states did not have to recognize the legal legitimacy of multiracial children. Because the parents did not have a legally recognized relationship, the state could deny benefits and support. In all kinds of court cases, people used antimiscegenation laws to invalidate and prevent equal treatment of the law. For example, white men tried to evade divorce obligations from black women, landlords excluded Amer-asian families, and collateral heirs argued that wills were invalid. By saying that such relationships were illegitimate, people relied upon law to erase the legal existence of multiracial people. They were not counted in the census, and the children weren’t either.

But during this entire historical period, families continued to blend outside of marriage. States’ goals of keeping the races separate only worked for preventing official recognition. As people, we’ve always known that marriage isn’t the only way to make a family.

Big news from Michigan, Illinois, Penn

Professor Nancy Polikoff’s blog Beyond Straight and Gay Marriage is always worth reading (and you can always find it here, lower right side of your screen). This week she posted big news that I know you care about. You simply must check it out!

Mixed race and unmarried? Take our quiz!

As a mixed-race person myself, I couldn’t help falling for the huge coverage of multiracial identity in Sunday’s New York Times. And of course I couldn’t help noticing the Times’ matrimaniacal focus on interracial marriage, as if that’s where mixed-race babies come from. The article is good, and the charts are nifty, but I suspect the Times missed the real story. My unscientific hypothesis is that unmarried relationships are more likely to be multiracial than married ones. I’d even guess that mixed-race kids could be more likely to have unmarried parents than single-race kids.

I’m curious, and I hope you share my curiosity because we have the technology to find out more and share the results! Please take this quick quiz and invite your friends to do the same. It’s not scientific, of course. It asks for your name in case we have a chance to do some to follow-up research, but we won’t publicize any individual’s information; and, you can tell us up front if you want to be anonymous (or, by contrast, if you want to share your story with the media).

Thanks for helping us, and the world, reach a better understanding of unmarried people.

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Archive for February, 2011

Good news on federal policy for families in poverty

News roundup: stop, start and forever

Will Obama really fund failed marriage programs?

Valentine’s Day is about Love not Lovers

Responses to mixed-race and unmarried

Big news from Michigan, Illinois, Penn

Mixed race and unmarried? Take our quiz!

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