| 摘要 | We met in the late 1990s. One of us was a Ford Foundation scholar working on issues concerning poor men and the other was the child support enforcement director for New York State. We didn’t agree on every issue then, and we don’t now. But in one area, we have always seen eye to eye: Children need their fathers.
Over the years, our paths have crossed many times. We worked on research projects together; we appeared together on contentious panel discussions; and most recently, we’ve both been members of the AEI-Brookings Working Group which has released a consensus plan for reducing poverty in America.
In this report, 15 leading experts from across the political spectrum agreed on a set of recommendations detailing what our nation should do to help low-income Americans move up the economic ladder. The proposals focus on increasing work and wages, improving education, and most important to us, helping families to raise their children.
Helping families to bring up children is worth emphasizing because, today, an increasing number are being raised in single-parent families. Since 2009, over 40 percent of American babies are born outside of marriage. Half of all children delivered by mothers who are 30 years old or less are born to unmarried women. This is a problem because data tell us that families with married parents have lower poverty rates, and that children raised in a stable family environment, which marriage best provides, have a better chance to flourish.
We agree that marriage matters. Marriage is more than just a mechanism through which households receive two incomes. In the United States, the institution of marriage is the most reliable way for children to get what they most need: two consistent and engaged parents. While we know it is difficult to find solutions to issues that so deeply involve personal choice, we believe that any serious agenda to help the poor must rest on strategies to strengthen families.
First, we believe leaders from all sectors have a responsibility to be clear and direct about how hard it is to raise a child without two committed parents; and that in the U.S., marriage is the easiest way to obtain such parenting. Just as we’ve seen reductions in smoking and teen pregnancy after public information campaigns, we propose an effort of similar scope to promote the value of committed co-parenting and marriage. America’s college graduates appear to have been influenced by a similar cultural expectation: The birth rate for unmarried college graduates is 9 percent compared to more than 50 percent for women with a high school degree or less. When it comes to marriage before childbearing, American elites should not be afraid to preach what they practice.
Second, we ought to enable responsible childbearing by making women and men aware of their options for planning pregnancies through birth control, and ensure access to effective contraceptives.
We also recognize that, in addition to increasing the share of stable two-parent families to make parenting easier, we must help to close the parenting gap between low-income families and better-off ones. Here, government can play a positive role by supporting programs that teach parents the practices and skills needed to achieve the high goals parents have for their children.
Evidence-based home visiting programs, such as the largely successful Nurse Family Partnership funded by the federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, provide critical education and guidance that help the mother and father better care for their children. We encourage continued funding of that program and increased efforts by states to tie their spending to evidence-based models. Government cannot effectively raise a child, but it can allocate its funding to efforts that have been proven to help close the parenting gap.
Finally, the economic struggles of men without a college degree have made marriage less attractive to women in low-income communities. Improving family life requires that disconnected men be helped to gain their footing in the labor market. Enhancing the Earned Income Tax Credit for childless adults and noncustodial parents, as President Barack Obama and Speaker Paul Ryan have proposed, could help encourage employment and increase earnings. Furthermore, states need to set reasonable child support orders for low-income men, and make it easier to reduce required payments when the father is unemployed or in prison. States should also develop quality work programs for men who owe child support and can’t find work. The welfare reforms of the 1990s helped many single mothers gain employment; today, we need a similar effort for low-income men.
Our report takes a stand against those on the left who minimize the importance of family structure, and those on the right who think it’s the only problem facing poor Americans. A concerted effort throughout both government and civil society can help low-income Americans strengthen their families, and in so doing, will help to ensure, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “a fair chance in the race of life.” |
