UNCLE SAM SAYS, 'I DO' - 10/26/07

[Smartmarriages]

- UNCLE SAM SAYS, 'I DO'
By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 26, 2006

Julie Baumgardner is a busy woman: Her family-strengthening organization,
First Things First, is in the middle of a fundraising drive for its regular
$1 million budget, plus she is scrambling to prepare for the first $1
million installment of a $5 million federal marriage grant her group won
this month.

"We are rocking and rolling," she said last week from her office in
Chattanooga, Tenn.

Mrs. Baumgardner's plans are to produce advertisements and public-service
announcements about the benefits of marriage, which she eventually will make
available at no cost to other groups. "This benefits everybody," she said.

First Things First also will step up its relationship-skills classes for
teens, young adults, unwed couples, expectant parents, engaged couples,
married couples and struggling couples, and collaborate in various
family-strengthening programs with other groups.

"People are hungering for healthy relationships," she said. The message that
people can learn how to do this successfully should "spread like wildfire."

Marriage in America received an unprecedented boost this month when the
Health and Human Services Department's Administration for Children and
Families (ACF) announced $118 million in federal grants for 225 pro-marriage
and responsible-fatherhood programs.

The California Healthy Marriages Coalition in Cerritos, Calif., won the
biggest grant, $2.3 million. The coalition and other recipients will receive
grants every year for five years. When related administrative, research and
technical assistance expenditures are added, marriage and fatherhood funds
from this one funding stream eventually should reach $750 million.

This marks a quantum leap in spending: Before the grants were created in the
welfare-reform section of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, ACF agencies
had spent about $20 million a year on healthy marriage and about $4 million
a year on responsible fatherhood.

News of the grants is bolstering hopes among activists that the nation is
getting serious about tackling the problem of family breakdown.

"This is the first time Congress has actually authorized spending on
marriage," said Diane Sollee, director of the Coalition for Marriage, Family
and Couples Education and organizer of the annual "Smart Marriages"
conferences. "It was like, 'They finally get it that marriage is important
for the culture and for the well-being of society and men, women and
children,' " she said.

Heritage Foundation welfare analyst Robert Rector said the collapse of
marriage is a primary cause of social problems. The grants are "a very
belated, but welcome recognition" that the government can "actively begin to
do something to rebuild this institution."

Critics say the explosion in pro-marriage and responsible-fatherhood funding
just means less funding for programs that are important to most people.

There is no evidence that marriage and fatherhood programs have any effect
on reducing poverty, said Tim Casey, staff lawyer for Legal Momentum, a
women's rights group in New York. "In fact, it makes sense that since these
are dollars taken away from direct services that the public actually values,
like child care and employment services, in that sense, it could be
increasing poverty."

The new grants "will be used to propagandize a narrow set of beliefs about
family structure" and fuel "negative stigmas" about nontraditional family
forms, warned the Alternatives to Marriage Project. "As more than half of
all American households are now headed by unmarried people, this is an
inappropriate use of government funds," added the group, which is based in
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Wade F. Horn, HHS assistant secretary for children and families, said the
ACF grants should provide a wealth of information.

"One of the things we learned from early projects, particularly in healthy
marriage, is that three-year grants were not enough, given the newness of
government funding of these projects," he said. The five-year grants should
allow recipients to provide three to four years of services, which "will
give us enough sustained activity to determine what the actual impact of
these services are."

Grant recipients must provide evaluations of their programs and may be asked
to participate in a national evaluation.

Mr. Rector said significant results shouldn't be expected for a while. "It
took us at least 15 years of rather broad experimentation with
welfare-to-work programs before we found anything that actually was
successful," he said. "Rebuilding marriage is more difficult."

Mrs. Baumgardner, whose organization is celebrating its 10-year anniversary,
thinks a breakthrough is at hand. If grant recipients are "good stewards ...
and work like crazy, we have the real opportunity to educate people" about
how to have strong families and good relationships, she said. "What could
happen in five years could be absolutely amazing for our children, for all
of us."

"Healthy marriage" grants totaled $3.5 million a year for seven local [DC
area] organizations, including the Best Friends Foundation, which received
$500,000 a year, and Boat People SOS Inc. in Falls Church, which will get
$549,306 a year.

In the "responsible fatherhood" category, the District's Department of Human
Services won a $2-million-a-year grant, Baltimore's Department of Human
Resources won two grants worth $1.3 million a year, the National Fatherhood
Initiative in Gaithersburg won a nearly $1-million-a-year "capacity
building" grant and six other local organizations won a total of $1.9
million a year.

Another big bid was for the national Healthy Marriage Resource Center.
Public Strategies Inc. of Oklahoma City, Okla., run by Mary Myrick, a
veteran organizer in that state's marriage movement, won that
$2-million-a-year grant.


**************************
Send replies to this newslist to: diane at smartmarriages.com  Do not hit
"reply" - that goes to a filter.  This is a moderated list. Replies are read
by Diane Sollee, editor. Please indicate if your response is NOT to be
shared with the list.  PLEASE include your email address with your
signature. 

To SUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE, or Change your subscription address,
use the form at: http://www.smartmarriages.com. Click Newslist - in the
column under the puzzle piece.

This newslist shares information on marriage, divorce and educational
approaches.  Opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by members of the
Coalition.

To read ALL past posts to the newsletter, visit the Archive at:
http://archives.his.com/smartmarriages/

11th Annual Smart Marriages Conference, Denver Adam's Mark Hotel,
June 28-July 1, 2007
Pre-Conference Training Institutes June 26-28
Post-Conference Training Institutes July 2-3
Details: http://www.smartmarriages.com/conferencedetails.html
Subscribe to the FREE Smart Marriages e-newslist at
http://www.smartmarriages.com


List your program in the Directory of Classes at
http://www.smartmarriages.com
Order conference audio & video CD/DVD/MP3s: 800-241-7785 or
http://www.iPlaybackSmartMarriages.com

Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, LLC (CMFCE)
Diane Sollee, Director
5310 Belt Rd NW, Washington, DC 20015-1961
http://www.smartmarriages.com
202-362-3332
cmfce at smartmarriages.com

FAIR USE NOTICE: This e-newsletter/site contains copyrighted material the
use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. We make such material available in our efforts to advance
understanding of marriage, family, couples, divorce, legislation, family
breakdown, etc. We understand this constitutes a 'fair use' of such material
as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with
Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes. For more
information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you
wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own
that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright
owner.