结婚可能无益于未婚妈妈脱贫

The government policy that promotes marriage among single mothers as a key part of the effort to fight poverty has missed the mark, according to one leading researcher.

The reason, said Kristi Williams, Ph.D., an associate professor of sociology at The Ohio State University, is that marriage fails to provide the same benefits to poor, single mothers as it does for others.

“If the goal of marriage promotion efforts was truly to lower poverty rates and improve the wellbeing of unmarried parents and their children, then it is time to take a different approach,” Williams said.

That could include preventing unwanted births and giving more child care support for single mothers, she said.

Williams wrote a briefing paper on the issue for The Council on Contemporary Families. Her report was one of two released to assess the state of the War on Poverty on its 50th anniversary.

It’s easy to see why marriage promotion is appealing, Williams said: About 46 percent of children in single-mother households were living in poverty in 2013, compared to 11 percent of children living with two married parents.

Marriage promotion became an official U.S. policy in 1996 when Congress passed welfare reform legislation that allowed states to spend welfare funds on a range of efforts to get single mothers to marry. It has continued, with some modifications, to this day.

“But the flaw in this approach is the assumption that all marriages are equally beneficial,” Williams said.

In fact, research shows that single mothers living in impoverished neighborhoods are likely to marry men who won’t help them get out of poverty.

These men are likely to have children from other partnerships, lack a high school diploma, and have been incarcerated or have substance abuse problems, Williams noted.

“Single mothers who marry and later divorce are worse off economically than single mothers who never marry,” she said.

Promoting marriage among single mothers may not help their children, either. Recent research by Williams and several colleagues found no physical or psychological advantages for the majority of teenagers born to a single mother who later married.

Rather than promoting marriage, the government should focus on preventing unintended births, Williams said. She found in one study that having a child outside of marriage is associated with negative mental health outcomes among African-American women only when the birth was unexpected.

一位研究主管称，政府制定了政策，想要通过促成未婚妈妈结婚来帮助她们脱贫。但是，这不能从根本上解决问题，结婚可能不会帮助未婚妈妈脱贫。

美国俄亥俄州立大学社会学副教授、克丽丝蒂•威廉姆斯（ Kristi Williams）博士说，和其他的结婚人群不同，贫困的未婚妈妈不会从结婚中受益。

威廉姆斯说：“如果政府在婚姻推广政策上下功夫的真正目的是降低贫困率、为未婚单亲家庭谋福祉，那么政府是时候去改变策略，换一种方法来解决问题了。”

她说，政府应该采取措施控制意外生育，给未婚妈妈提供更多的儿童保育援助。

威廉姆斯就这个问题给现代家庭委员会（The Council on Contemporary Families）写了一份简报。1964年，约翰逊•肯尼迪总统发起了“向贫困宣战”（ War on Poverty）这一项目，今年是该项目的50周年纪念。有两份发布的报告被用作“向贫困宣战”这一项目实现程度的评价指标。威廉姆斯的报告是其中之一。

威廉姆斯说，2013年的统计数据表明，未婚妈妈家庭中有46%的儿童生活在贫困中，而正常的婚姻家庭中只有11%的儿童生活贫困。这样看来，政府对婚姻促成（marriage promotion）政策热衷的原因并不难理解。

1996年，国会通过福利改革法案，允许各州花费社会福利，以致力于推动未婚妈妈结婚。此后，婚姻促成政策正式成为美国的一项政策。该政策几经修订，延续至今。

威廉姆斯说：“但是，该政策的缺陷在于，它想当然地认为所有结婚的未婚妈妈都能脱贫。”

实际上，研究表明，居住在贫民区的未婚妈妈很可能嫁得不好，她们的丈夫帮不了她们脱贫。

威廉姆斯注意到，未婚妈妈们嫁的这些男人本身就问题多多，情况很可能是这样的：他们有的与前女友或者前妻生育的有孩子，有的没有高中毕业，有的进过监狱，还有的吸毒。

她说：“那些结过婚又离婚的未婚妈妈的经济状况比从未结婚的未婚妈妈的经济状况要糟得多。”

未婚妈妈的结婚推广政策对孩子的成长而言也没有多大帮助。威廉姆斯和几位同事最近进行的研究表明，对于大多数出生在未婚妈妈家庭的青少年来说，母亲后来结婚这件事，没有对他们身心成长大有裨益。

威廉姆斯在一项研究中发现，非裔美国女性的心理健康程度与是否生育非婚生子女息息相关。只有当意外生育发生时，非裔美国女性才会产生心理健康问题。她表示，政府应该去关注如何控制意外生育，而不是关注如何促成未婚妈妈的婚姻。