According to the Institute of American Values (2000), the practice of cohabiting and raising children in unmarried homes has “led not to greater equality for women, but to the feminization of both parenting and poverty” (p. 3). Therefore, the general marriage movement is concerned with improving marriage rates and decreasing divorce rates in order to address issues like poverty, and one of the methods used to achieve that goal is marriage education or marriage-promotion programs. However, Avishai, Heath, and Randles (2015, p. 311) claim that empirical research failed to support the effectiveness of marriage-promotion programs when it comes to affecting the rates of marriage, divorce, and single motherhood, or when it comes to reducing poverty rates in society. The marriage movement failed to decrease poverty because the creators of marriage-promotion programs assumed that the weakened family institution is the cause of social problems, whereas socioeconomic problems are the reason why people live in poverty and why marriage rates have been rapidly declining since the 1960s.
The explanation of poverty among unmarried mothers is more likely to be a consequence of gender inequality in business and economy rather than the fact that they are not married. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (2016, para. 1), even though the number of women in the workforce is similar to the number of men, women earned only 79% of the income men earned in 2015, so the current gender wage gap is estimated at 21%. Both low wages and the poverty of single mother is consistent with the fact that single or cohabiting mothers are more likely to have lower education levels compared to mothers that are married (Manning, 2014, p. 54).
The marriage movement does not decrease poverty because both poverty because the decline in marriage practices are probably dependent on social and economic developments. For example, it was found that “poor and low-income women highly value marriage but view it as a luxury they may never achieve, because they find it difficult to reach the high economic bar for marriage” (Avishai et al., 2015, p. 311). Therefore, claiming that the decline of marriage is responsible for poverty is a false assumption of the direction of causality in the relationship between marriage rates and socioeconomic status. Perhaps people would get married more often if society focused on repairing the economy and the job market rather than repairing the family institution.
Although there are multiple reasons that would explain the failure of the marriage movement in reducing poverty and strengthening the family institution, two reasons stand out. The first is the failure to address the cause of marital problems because the marriage movement focused on propagating the ideology of traditional families, in which the structure is maintained by specifically defined gender roles (Avishai et al., 2015, p. 310). Therefore, the marriage movement aimed to educate people about the importance of marriage but failed to fix economic problems that were actually responsible for their poor financial status and the decision to avoid getting married. The second reason is that the marriage movement was based on the assumption that marriage creates a stable environment for childbearing and child, but the marriage movement failed to consider how economic factors and interpersonal skills affect the quality. According to Avishai et al. (2015, pp. 312-313), learning to communicate better is what helps couples improve their relationships, but financial constraints are what continues to prevent people from “realizing their marital aspirations” (p. 313).
Claiming that the decline in marriage rates is responsible for poverty is based on false logic that confuses correlation and causality. The poverty of single mothers can be attributed to gender inequality in the job market rather than the fact that they are unable to earn money without husbands. Furthermore, the marriage movement believes that the family must be renewed in its traditional form with defined gender roles and responsibilities, but effective communication proved to be a more important determinant of building stable relationships than getting married. Evidence provided by Avishai et al. (2015, pp. 310-313) shows that people want to get married, but economic factors prevent them from realizing their desires. Low-income individuals are often performing multiple jobs to ensure that they have enough money, and they do not have the resources to get married. Therefore, strengthening marriage without address economic problems and problems in the job market that are preventing people from getting married is impossible, and that is why the marriage movement failed to decrease poverty, which is related to the economy rather than marriage rates.
References
Avishai, O., Heath, M., & Randles, J. (2015). The marriage movement. In: B. J. Risman & V. Rutter (Eds.), Families as they really are (2nd ed.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
Manning, W. D. (2014). Cohabitation and child wellbeing. The Future of children/Center for the Future of Children, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, 25(2), 51-661.
