Contact Name
Barbara Dietsch
562-799-5126
bdietsc@WestEd.org

Are we ready to do an about-turn, as Maggie Gallagher urges, and start talking to teens about marriage? And if so, what should we do?

This proposal is initially likely to be greeted with much skepticism. The public is motivated and prepared to rally around the cause of preventing teen pregnancy. It’s an issue they can understand. But people are much more uncertain and ambivalent about whether and how to address the "m" word (Ooms, 1998). If talking with teens about the purpose and benefits of marriage is seen as promoting "sexual abstinence until marriage" the idea will not get broad support.

But a focus on marriage does not have to be linked to the abstinence message. It could be used to provide a stronger motivation for sexually active teens to use contraceptives effectively through appealing to their idealism and helping them consider the best interests of the child as well as their own interests (Gallagher, 1999). Nor does it mean a return to the days of shotgun marriages, or policies that stigmatize unwed parents. No responsible voices are suggesting that we force a pregnant teen or adult woman to marry the father of her child, even if we knew how.

First, states and communities need to launch comprehensive public education and outreach efforts aimed at changing attitudes about having children outside of marriage. (This is already beginning to happen in response to the TANF out-of-wedlock bonuses). Teens and young adults need to know that it takes the income, time and resources of two loving parents (and their families) to raise a child well. (Yes, some single parents do a good job, but it’s much harder.) They also need to know that cohabiting relationships are generally less stable and secure than marriage, that welfare is time-limited, and that non-custodial fathers will be held accountable for financial support.

Second, we need to rethink our approach to unwed expectant couples and explore with them the option of marriage. In the past we dismissed teen marriages as prone to divorce, and stereotyped the relationship between young unmarried couples as fragile and fleeting. But we have never tried to inform them about the economic and other benefits of marriage, or helped support them if they chose to marry. Preliminary data from two new national studies find that the majority of young unmarried parents are living together, romantically involved at birth, and say they expect to marry (McLanahan, 1999), and 62% of all children under the age of 2 born outside of marriage have a father living with them or seeing them at least once a week (Mincy, Sorensen and Halpern, 1999). Yet within a few years most of these relationships have ended, and the fathers have drifted away.

These data suggest that the time before and just after the child’s birth is a "magic moment" for a large number of unwed couples when we could intervene to remove policy disincentives to marriage and offer information, support and other services to help them build a solid, cooperative relationship which will benefit their children and may lead to a lasting marriage.

In some cases the young father as well as the young mother may need education, training and job placement so they can jointly support their child. Some couples may want workshops in communication and problem solving, money management, or anger management. Others, who may never have known a marriage that worked, may benefit from being linked with older mentor couples who can help them survive the inevitable ups and downs of married life. Some of these educational services and supports are becoming more available in middle class communities as part of the growing marriage movement, but they are sadly lacking for low-income and minority couples, who are at much greater risk of teen pregnancy and out-of-wedlock childbearing.

Promoting marriage in these and other positive ways is a critical component of any strategy to reduce teen and adult out-of-wedlock childbearing, and should also be included in all teen pregnancy prevention initiatives. While it may be new and controversial now, I predict that it will become mainstream in the early years of the new millennium.