Published:
02/23/2011 03:29pm
Billions in taxpayers’ dollars are being wasted on marriage education!
New documentation shows that billions of dollars spent on marriage education have shown no return on the investment, in fact, marriage continues a 40-year decline. The marriage education industry has maneuvered, lobbied and persuaded leaders of state and federal governments and the U.S. military to spend billions of taxpayer dollars attempting to disseminate its teachings to
the masses with the daunting agenda to increase the ever-declining marriage rate and decrease the number of divorces.
The US is the only Western nation that spends government money to support marriage. No other Western nation devotes as much cultural energy, public policy or religious attention to the institution of marriage. Meanwhile, Americans continue to have one of the highest marriage rates of any Western country and since the 1960s, one of the highest divorce rates in the world.
"The United States is evolving into a separate-and-unequal family regime, where the highly educated and the affluent enjoy strong and stable households and everyone else is consigned to increasingly unstable, unhappy, and unworkable ones." The 2010 National Marriage Project, University of Virginia, http://www.virginia.edu/marriageproject
Since the 1970s, a “cottage industry” has promulgated a myriad of programs funded by billions of state and federal taxpayer dollars. However well-intentioned, these efforts have produced little evidence of any significant benefit to the institution of marriage.
Nearly 50% of American marriages end in divorce, while many others (10-25%) remain in stable but unhappy relationships for various reasons (financial implications of divorce, personal and cultural expectations, no alternative partner). Gallup Poll
Does Marriage Education Work? According to Aly Parker (Can’t Buy Me Love: Funding Marriage Promotion Versus Listening to Real Needs in Breaking The Cycle of Poverty), government money is being wasted to condescendingly teach adults “marital skills” by untested mentorship and counseling programs.
Despite the efforts of such programs, the divorce rate is largely unchanged; and the marriage rate continues to decline. Given the dire prognosis for the future of marriage in America and the lack of any substantial return-on-investment of government-funded marriage education programs, it is
time to radically rethink how to fix what is wrong with marriage in America.
For starters, since the federal government and the majority of states are facing unprecedented budget shortfalls, they could save billions of dollars if they stop funding any marriage education initiative, unless it can demonstrate its return-on-investment based on sound academic research.
John Curtis, Ph.D. - jcurtis@iodinc.com - 1.407.493.7323
