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Center for Law and Social Policy:
Is marriage an institution that helps its members achieve economic goals (e.g., owning a home or having a savings account) or an institution to be entered only after these goals are met?
This policy brief explores the attitudinal, experiential, economic, and social contexts in which disadvantaged parents have children and decide to marry or not marry.
In this view, the primary questions are about whether a potential partner has the economic, social, educational, and emotional skills necessary to be a good spouse.
Most people do not ask themselves what they believe the primary goal of marriage is when they meet a potential partner and have a sexual relationship with that person.
Nevertheless, the results of this debate permeate the culture in which people do make this decision.
Problems with drugs and alcohol are not unique to low-income men and women.
Study indicates that drug and alcohol problems are an identified barrier to marriage in a significant minority of disadvantaged couples (about 21 percent) with young children.22 Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas also identify this issue in their seminal work Promises I Can Keep.
The violence need not be with a current partner.
Data from the Fragile Families study suggests that as low-income men and women age, the chances that they will have non-marital children with more than one partner increase substantially.27 Some of this parenting may be the result of casual sex, some may occur in the context of a committed relationship that does not involve cohabitation, and some may occur in the context of cohabitation.
Posted on January 11, 2007 03:51 PM
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