The government policy that promotes marriage among single mothers as a key part of the effort to fight poverty has missed the mark, according to one leading researcher.
The reason, said Kristi Williams, Ph.D., an associate professor of sociology at The Ohio State University, is that marriage fails to provide the same benefits to poor, single mothers as it does for others.
“If the goal of marriage promotion efforts was truly to lower poverty rates and improve the wellbeing of unmarried parents and their children, then it is time to take a different approach,” Williams said.
That could include preventing unwanted births and giving more child care support for single mothers, she said.
Williams wrote a briefing paper on the issue for The Council on Contemporary Families. Her report was one of two released to assess the state of the War on Poverty on its 50th anniversary.
It’s easy to see why marriage promotion is appealing, Williams said: About 46 percent of children in single-mother households were living in poverty in 2013, compared to 11 percent of children living with two married parents.
Marriage promotion became an official U.S. policy in 1996 when Congress passed welfare reform legislation that allowed states to spend welfare funds on a range of efforts to get single mothers to marry. It has continued, with some modifications, to this day.
“But the flaw in this approach is the assumption that all marriages are equally beneficial,” Williams said.
In fact, research shows that single mothers living in impoverished neighborhoods are likely to marry men who won’t help them get out of poverty.
These men are likely to have children from other partnerships, lack a high school diploma, and have been incarcerated or have substance abuse problems, Williams noted.
“Single mothers who marry and later divorce are worse off economically than single mothers who never marry,” she said.
Promoting marriage among single mothers may not help their children, either. Recent research by Williams and several colleagues found no physical or psychological advantages for the majority of teenagers born to a single mother who later married.
Rather than promoting marriage, the government should focus on preventing unintended births, Williams said. She found in one study that having a child outside of marriage is associated with negative mental health outcomes among African-American women only when the birth was unexpected.
查譯文
一位研究主管稱，政府制定了政策，想要通過促成未婚媽媽結婚來幫助她們脫貧。但是，這不能從根本上解決問題，結婚可能不會幫助未婚媽媽脫貧。
美國俄亥俄州立大學社會學副教授、克麗絲蒂•威廉姆斯（ Kristi Williams）博士說，和其他的結婚人群不同，貧困的未婚媽媽不會從結婚中受益。
威廉姆斯說：“如果政府在婚姻推廣政策上下功夫的真正目的是降低貧困率、為未婚單親家庭謀福祉，那么政府是時候去改變策略，換一種方法來解決問題了。”
她說，政府應該采取措施控制意外生育，給未婚媽媽提供更多的兒童保育援助。
威廉姆斯就這個問題給現代家庭委員會（The Council on Contemporary Families）寫了一份簡報。1964年，約翰遜•肯尼迪總統發起了“向貧困宣戰”（ War on Poverty）這一項目，今年是該項目的50周年紀念。有兩份發布的報告被用作“向貧困宣戰”這一項目實現程度的評價指標。威廉姆斯的報告是其中之一。
威廉姆斯說，2013年的統計數據表明，未婚媽媽家庭中有46%的兒童生活在貧困中，而正常的婚姻家庭中只有11%的兒童生活貧困。這樣看來，政府對婚姻促成（marriage promotion）政策熱衷的原因并不難理解。
1996年，國會通過福利改革法案，允許各州花費社會福利，以致力于推動未婚媽媽結婚。此后，婚姻促成政策正式成為美國的一項政策。該政策幾經修訂，延續至今。
威廉姆斯說：“但是，該政策的缺陷在于，它想當然地認為所有結婚的未婚媽媽都能脫貧。”
實際上，研究表明，居住在貧民區的未婚媽媽很可能嫁得不好，她們的丈夫幫不了她們脫貧。
威廉姆斯注意到，未婚媽媽們嫁的這些男人本身就問題多多，情況很可能是這樣的：他們有的與前女友或者前妻生育的有孩子，有的沒有高中畢業，有的進過監獄，還有的吸毒。
她說：“那些結過婚又離婚的未婚媽媽的經濟狀況比從未結婚的未婚媽媽的經濟狀況要糟得多。”
未婚媽媽的結婚推廣政策對孩子的成長而言也沒有多大幫助。威廉姆斯和幾位同事最近進行的研究表明，對于大多數出生在未婚媽媽家庭的青少年來說，母親后來結婚這件事，沒有對他們身心成長大有裨益。
威廉姆斯在一項研究中發現，非裔美國女性的心理健康程度與是否生育非婚生子女息息相關。只有當意外生育發生時，非裔美國女性才會產生心理健康問題。她表示，政府應該去關注如何控制意外生育，而不是關注如何促成未婚媽媽的婚姻。 |
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