Posted on 04/16/2004 11:50:03 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Are Australian churches too cowardly to suggest it is in the best interest of children to have married parents?
That's the impression I received two years ago when I questioned the wisdom of naming Pat Rafter as Australian of the Year - a tennis icon about to become an unmarried father. Midst the flood of responses, churchgoers wrote in large numbers about the stony silence of their churches on the subject.
One woman mentioned she had just been to Mass, where her priest had given a long sermon praising Rafter and never mentioned the marriage issue. "Are we now too scared to stand up and be counted?" she asked, condemning her church for its lack of moral courage.
"It is a very strong failure of nerve," admits the Right Reverend Robert Forsyth, the Anglican Bishop of South Sydney, acknowledging the current reluctance of most churches to openly promote marriage for fear of being howled down in a society protective of non-traditional families. Forsyth mentions that as a former rector of a large inner-city church, he used to post messages on a sign outside the church. The only one ever defaced proclaimed "Strong marriages prevent poverty".
But the writing is on the wall. There's clear evidence that strong marriages protect children not only from poverty but from a large range of poor social outcomes. In the United States this evidence is prompting churches to find new backbone to promote marriage.
And the results have been surprising. A study released early this month suggests church-based marriage saver programs have succeeded in bringing down the divorce rate. For the past five years clergy from a range of churches in 184 cities across America have supported a community marriage policy (CMP), in which trained mentor couples provide rigorous marriage preparation, ongoing enrichment of existing marriages and support for couples in crisis. While the divorce rate overall is dropping in the US, it fell by 17.5 per cent in counties with CMP, compared with 9.4 per cent in other counties.
So perhaps the cynics are wrong when they argue there's nothing that can be done to stem the drift away from marriage. Not only are these faith-based efforts apparently starting to bite but there's other good evidence that the annual $240 million the Bush Administration proposes to spend on "healthy" marriage initiatives may prove effective, says Dr Wade Horn, the assistant secretary for Children and Families in the US Health Department, who is visiting Australia.
Note the emphasis on "healthy" marriages. That's to counter the knee-jerk reaction that marriage initiatives could force women into marriages with violent men. Sensibly, the American initiatives aim not to coerce anyone into getting married but to "help couples who choose marriage for themselves" to access services to assist them to form and sustain these healthy marriages. Apparently the availability of new "technology" - such as the skills-based marriage education programs - has persuaded governments, churches and communities to back this effort.
Horn is convinced the cultural battle has been won. America now believes fathers matter to children. Ten to 15 years ago he suggests it was different. Fathers were then being seen as "optional extras" - like a sun-roof on a car. But the research evidence has swung the debate around to the realisation fathers are more like the fourth wheel of a car ... "without a fourth wheel, you can still move the car down the road, but the ride is far more difficult". Horn may be right in concluding the best hope of keeping that fourth wheel is to support married fatherhood. As past president of the National Fathers Initiative, he has long worked to support non-resident dads but he's pessimistic about most men's chances of remaining effective, involved fathers in those difficult circumstances. Fair enough, but the risk is that by shifting all the policy agenda to promoting married fatherhood, we give up on the battle to help divorced men achieve this goal.
Wade brings a new perspective to the discussion of men on low incomes. Research by Monash University recently found such men were missing out on partnering. The researchers suggested the answer lies in increasing job opportunities. Horn reports there's zero evidence that increasing economic opportunities for these men leads to more marriage but a more direct approach can work, as is being found in programs encouraging low-income men paying child support to consider marriage.
Both in the US and in Australia, more children grow up without fathers through being born out of wedlock - to single women or in cohabiting relationships - than through divorce. Horn suggests it is possible to change this pattern by a new cultural message. He makes a comparison with teenage pregnancy which in the US has fallen like a stone over the past decade as a result of a concerted societal message that it's a bad idea for teens to have children.
And how would we persuade people to avoid out-of-wedlock child-rearing? Target the men, suggests Wade. "We need to tell men the truth. That if you father a child out of wedlock, the odds are that by the time your child turns 16, you will not have a relationship with that child." But you'll still be paying child support, we might add. It makes sense. Out-of-wedlock births may well plummet if we could convince men that fathering in these circumstances is a hiding to nothing.
But where are the Australian politicians, the church leaders prepared to take this message and run with it?
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Prayers and comfort for the child you're helping.
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