Couples take Baby Steps to "I Do" - 11/25/07

[Smartmarriages]

- COUPLES TAKE BABY STEPS TO "I DO"

Couples take baby steps to 'I Do'
Young, unmarried families with children are armed with the tools to stay
together though a federally funded city program
Baltimore Sun 
By Kelly Brewington
November 25, 2007

Reading this one I must admit that while I was inspired and encouraged, I
also thought of the fisherman's prayer: "My boat is so small and your ocean
so large" but also thought of the Teddy Roosevelt quote: "Far and away the
best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."
You go, Joe Jones!  - diane

> Liberals have been reluctant to acknowledge the negative impact single-parent
> households can have on child development, said Haskins, now the co-director of
> the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families.
> 
> "But in the last few years, the opposition has become muted," he said. "Over
> time, you restore the value and the traditional belief that the best way to
> rear children is in married-couple families."


Delonte Mohamed was taken with Satrina McDuffie's intuitive nature. She was
unable to resist his "mushy side," hidden to most by a rough exterior.
Within a few months, they knew: It was love.

A year later, the couple are expecting a baby boy, adding to McDuffie's
brood of two toddlers. Money is tight, their families disapprove of the
relationship, and they bicker a lot.

Still, they hope to get married one day. They're just not sure how to get
there.

So every Tuesday, McDuffie, 22, and Mohamed, 21, attend a counseling program
at Baltimore's Center for Urban Families tailored to couples like them:
young, struggling and with a baby on the way.

It's part of a nationwide marriage movement aimed at combating poverty. Five
years ago, President Bush announced the strategy in his Healthy Marriage
Initiative. Last year, Congress approved $150 million annually for the next
five years for marriage and fatherhood programs, the Welfare Reauthorization
Act. An arm of the effort targets African-Americans, who have the lowest
marriage rates.

Nationwide, nearly 70 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers,
according to 2004 figures from National Center for Health Statistics. While
45 percent of black adults have never been married, that figure is 27
percent for whites, according to 2006 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

For years, parents, policy experts and even Bill Cosby have warned of the
troubles facing fractured black families.

Now, people are taking notice. From "Marry Your Baby Daddy Day" in New York,
to marriage ministries in Baltimore churches, private organizations and
social service agencies are encouraging African-Americans to wed.

The programs have critics across the political spectrum. Liberals say
slogans and small-scale counseling efforts are oversold as the fix to a
complex problem. Conservatives don't want the government involved in the
intimate contract of marriage. And nobody wants to urge couples into
nuptials before they're ready, a move that could ultimately lead to divorce.

But many policy experts see hope in Baltimore's model, which coaches couples
how to keep their fragile families intact, rather than pushing them to the
altar.

It's also a closely watched experiment. Launched last year, the Building
Strong Families program became one of seven sites nationwide taking part in
a federally funded research study examining how low-income minorities
respond to counseling.

"Public policy has to be grounded in reality," said Joseph T. Jones Jr.,
president of the Center for Urban Families, formerly know as the Center for
Fathers, Families and Workforce Development.

With the help of John and Julie Gottman, leaders in the field of
relationship counseling, Jones developed a curriculum to offer low-income
minorities counseling that is typically reserved for upper- and middle-class
couples.

The program lasts six months, exploring topics such as compromise and
communication, and participants receive free transportation, child care and
dinner at every session.

Recruiters comb Baltimore streets and maternity wards seeking couples who
are expecting or have just had a child.

Jones calls the time surrounding a child's birth the "magic moment" for a
couple. Studies show that without help, many split within the first year, he
said.

The $6.1 million program is funded by the Administration for Children and
the Annie E. Casey Foundation through 2010. Couples are randomly assigned,
so that only half actually receives counseling.

A Princeton-based firm, Mathmatica Policy Research, will follow couples for
five years and conclude with a report.

When the marriage movement took off, Jones was skeptical. He remembers
bristling at policy conferences on the challenges confronting black couples.
Too often, there were few African-Americans in the room.

"Some people were having conversations about people of color and were not
grounded in the reality of what people are really like," he said.

Jones became adamant that a successful program must be centered in urban
realities.

"It makes no sense to me to say to a family, 'If you take part in this and
you get married, you will be OK,'" he said. "When the gas bill comes in and
you're trying to find quality and affordable health care, what do you do?"

Grooming fathers is key, he said. Many of the men Jones had worked with
through his center struggled to find decent jobs because of criminal records
and had few role models. Many wanted to be good fathers but didn't know how,
he said.

Social policy has focused for too long exclusively on mother and child,
Jones said, leaving men to adopt what he calls the "John Wayne theory of
manhood."

"Our country was built on socializing men to be providers and protectors,"
Jones said. "He goes to war, he goes to work, if he falls behind in any way,
he must pull himself up by his bootstraps."

Ron Haskins, a former Bush adviser on welfare issues, called the Baltimore
project "an excellent experiment," part of what he thinks is a culture shift
on parenting.

Liberals have been reluctant to acknowledge the negative impact
single-parent households can have on child development, said Haskins, now
the co-director of the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and
Families.

"But in the last few years, the opposition has become muted," he said. "Over
time, you restore the value and the traditional belief that the best way to
rear children is in married-couple families."

Others say marriage has been oversold as a cure-all.

"I think marriage promotion is one component of a broader way to help poor
minority couples improve their standard of living," said Andrew J. Cherlin,
Griswold Professor of Public Policy in the sociology department at Johns
Hopkins University. "I don't think it can be the only component for the
program."

Still, Jones' study offers the best attempt to promote marriage among
low-income African-Americans, Cherlin said.

"The question is, can it be duplicated?" he said.

At Building Strong Families counseling sessions, marriage is rarely
discussed, although pictures proclaiming "Marriage Works" line the walls.

Of the 305 active participants, six have tied the knot. About 45 percent of
couples complete the majority of the program.

Afra Vance White, the program's interim director, calls that progress.

"I don't need this study to tell me anything, I see it working every day,"
she said. "Once it's over, the couples never want to leave."

At a recent session, McDuffie and Mohamed are the only couple. Two other
women are present, their bellies swollen, but their partners are
incarcerated. Still, the women attend regularly, said facilitators.

The session features a lively topic - raising children from other partners.
It's one of the biggest issues, along with finances and infidelity.

"I got street family," said Mohamed, who was raised by his grandmother, his
mother addicted to drugs, his father absent. "And that's about it."

McDuffie, meanwhile, grew up in foster care. When she met Mohamed, she was
living in a shelter with her sons, Daeshawn, 2, and Darius, 1.

"They are gonna need that male role model," Mohamed said. "And I'm going to
do that."

Their biggest challenge is communication, said McDuffie. Mohamed shuts down
when he's angry; she prefers to talk it out. She's becomes upset if he
doesn't call when promised. He grows frustrated when she calls him a liar.

But every week, they say they learn something new, from facilitators as well
as from other couples.

"There's always something that hits home," McDuffie said. "Hopefully this
will give us better skills to resolve conflict and issues I know we will go
through in the future."

Mohamed's goal: to create a family styled after the film Soul Food, where a
family's trials are overcome at the Sunday dinner table.

"I want to create my own generation, my own family," he said. "I just want
us to be together, until one of us dies. Forever."

Copyright © 2007 Baltimore Sun

For article and photos:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-te.md.marriage25no
v25,0,56707.story

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