Poor Women's Magical Outlook

[The Cushite]

I was watching Washington Journal on C-Span this morning (I 'm a nerd, I know) and they had on there two people, Robert Reich, former Secretary of labor for the Clinton Administration and Jennifer Marshall, the Director of domestic Policy Research for the Heritage foundation. They were discussing and op-ed piece in the Washington post by William Raspberry entitled "Poor Women's Magical Outlook", mainly about a book written by 2 sociologists who did a 5 year study on single mothers in Philly and Camden, NJ. Their study suggested that single parent-ness may be resulting from a conscience delay in marriage because women want to be more independent when they get married so when they do, they won't have to be so dependent on the abusive, controlling men that they see in their community. The article goes on to show how this notion of marriage sets these women, and their children, up to stay in poverty for long time because marriage is probably one of the best things that people can do to rise out of poverty.



Question, why is marriage declining? And Also, is advocating for people to get married good socio-economic policy, considering all of the non-scientific, non- quantifiable, non-logical:-) (the Apostle Paul called it a mystery, I believe) things that actually will make a marriage last (namely love of self and spouse, etc)?

I have included links to the bios for the people who were debating this issue and a link to the column by Raspberry. The Raspberry piece may ask you to resister with the site, I would, it's free and the Washington Post is one of the papers we all should read for info on political "goings on".





Raspberry Column:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...092600294.html

Reich Bio:

http://www.robertreich.org/reich/biography.asp

Marshall Bio:

http://www.heritage.org/About/Staff/...erMarshall.cfm