Campus Chronicle

Issue date: 4/29/04 Section: Legal

Marriage for food? The Bush Administration seeks to "encourage" single mothers to marry, including withholding welfare payments to those who refuse.

Poor? Need welfare? Then get married, says the Bush administration.

A bill currently in the U.S. Senate would, if passed, authorize hundreds of millions of dollars to be diverted from current welfare programs to "promote" marriage among unmarried parents - namely, unmarried mothers. A similar bill has already made it through the House.

News of this welfare-for-marriage plan - or "Healthy Marriage Incentive" - first entered the news a couple of years ago, when Bush introduced it as a way of reducing poverty and welfare dependence. It immediately received criticism, even from conservatives who did not like the idea of the government interfering with the privacy rights surrounding (heterosexual) marriage.

Church/state separatists also attacked the policy, stating that it inevitably would result in faith-based organization funding, as counseling and motivational speakers would likely be from religious institutions.

But perhaps the most vocal of opponents to the welfare/marriage plan were - and still are - feminists, who see the plan as ultimately harmful to a vast majority (90 percent) of welfare recipients - women.

The plan harms women in at least four ways:

1) It violates women's privacy rights - Once women become pregnant, ideally this plan would kick in, "encouraging" the woman to marry in order to reduce her likelihood of needing welfare for her and her child in the future.

However, just who are these women to marry? How much control will the state have in dispersing and withholding benefits based on the woman's choice? Undoubtedly, it would have to be a heterosexual marriage. This is the Bush administration, after all.

But what if the woman wants to marry someone other than the man who impregnated her? What if the woman wants to marry someone else instead, perhaps someone more financially secure, or even someone that she loves?

This plan not only crosses a line by affecting whether women will marry at all (already a grievous enough violation of one's fundamental privacy rights surrounding marriage), but also could affect exactly who women must marry. Surely even the Bush administration doesn't intend to promote arranged marriages!

2) It coerces women to marry, and discriminates against those who choose not to marry - Most single mothers on welfare first become pregnant as teenagers. At a time when children are having children, should the government enter these women's lives and "encourage" them to commit - supposedly for life - to a man they may barely know?

In addition to coercive counseling sessions and other methods to seduce a young, impressionable woman into marriage, some states may outright discriminate against those who choose otherwise.

After all, this is what the plan ultimately purports to encourage states to do - dangle welfare money on a stick in front of unmarried women and only give them the funds they so desperately need to escape the cycle of poverty once they meet the government's demands.

In West Virginia, for example, choosing not to marry could result in losing more than 25 percent of one's monthly welfare check. In addition, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has suggested offering $2,000 bonuses to people who do marry, and reducing welfare payments to those who don't, according to NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (now called Legal Momentum).

Ultimately, these methods will affect women disproportionately. As raising children in two-parent families is supposedly the primary objective behind this welfare/marriage legislation, women who become pregnant will undoubtedly be affected. The men who impregnated these women, however, are more likely to escape sanctions for not marrying, as by not being the primary caregivers, they're less likely to report to the welfare office that they have a child.

Simply put, one cannot argue that withholding money needed for food, shelter, child care, education and health care is not going to at least indirectly coerce single mothers into marrying against their will.

3) It increases the likelihood that women will enter and remain in abusive situations - Between half and two thirds of women on welfare have suffered domestic abuse at some point in their adult lives, according to Senate testimony by NOW Legal Defense. While the government argues that it would only endorse "healthy marriages," it cannot know which relationships are in fact healthy. Women do not always report domestic abuse.

By encouraging marriage without at least first screening for domestic violence - which the proposed plan does not require states to do - states could in fact be trapping women in abusive situations, as well as legitimizing those relationships as acceptable under the law. Currently, many unmarried women on welfare cite a reluctance to marry because of a fear of domestic violence and power imbalance, according to NOW Legal Defense. By making women economically dependent on abusive husbands - coupled with the fact that married women are less likely to report abuse and leave their abusers - the government is essentially entrapping women in situations that could endanger their lives.

4) It makes women economically dependent on men - Current welfare initiatives focus on making single mothers self-sufficient. Child care, education, child support enforcement and job training all work to make women economically independent.

However, the welfare/marriage plan would take money away from these methods - which have been proven to work (if properly funded) - to instead make women dependent on men as the traditional breadwinners of the family.

One example of such a policy at play is in Allentown, PA, where NOW Legal Defense has filed a discrimination suit against a program that offers employment services to fathers, but not to mothers. "This reveals the true intent of so-called marriage promotion: help men find work, tell women to be dependent on them," NOW Legal Defense Vice President Jennifer K. Brown said in a press release.

Few would argue that a two-parent home is not preferable for most children, as well as the parents. However, the Bush administration is putting the cart before the horse. The answer to solving poverty is not coercing marriage - while statistically people who are married may be less likely to live in poverty, forcing marriage is not going to magically get people out of poverty.

In Minnesota, officials conducted a welfare experiment where they increased income and access to education for those on welfare, as well as job training and support. The result: an increased rate of marriage, increased marriage stability, a reduction in domestic violence and improvement in children's health and well-being. The plan had no direct marriage promotion component. It instead "encouraged" marriage by improving living standards for those in poverty, which in turn increased the ability of welfare recipients to build a happy life for themselves and their children, absent government coercion.

If the Bush administration is truly interested in helping women and children - not in using women's economic vulnerability to control them - it will reconsider its methods for controlling poverty.

Related Links:
Welfare and Poverty: Marriage Promotion - Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense)
Senate Republicans to Promote Marriage

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