By Marisa Trevi?o, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX – I think it's a safe assumption that the White House won't be asking Britney Spears to be the poster girl for its $1.5 billion "healthy marriage initiative." Though the pop star swears she believes in the sanctity of wedlock, apparently it wasn't enough to keep her from saying "I do." After only 55 hours, the 22-year-old was singing another tune and crying Sin City took her over when she agreed to the marriage "just for the hell of it."
We are told her marriage was nothing more than an impulsive act. And I believe it.
For anyone who remembers what it's like to be a teen and a young adult, impulsive acts are as much of this stage of development into full adulthood as forgetfulness is in the golden years. That's why it's disheartening to realize the Bush Administration's "healthy marriage initiative" includes targeting single parents to marry - most who are parents because of an impulsive act.
Couple that initiative with his State of the Union pledge to double federal funding for abstinence programs and Bush is pushing one vulnerable segment of the population into a corner - teenagers.
According to 2002 Census Bureau figures, 89 percent of all teenagers who gave birth were not married. With a history of discouraging, and in some cases, forbidding educators to teach about contraceptive options, this administration is offering only one alternative to those too inexperienced to disregard their most basic impulsive instincts - marriage.
Because of their impulsive act, the government will expect single parents to marry for the sake of their child. Their reasoning is that a two-parent household is less likely to live in poverty.
However, experts advise the opposite.
Sociologist Daniel Lichter found that even though women from disadvantaged families gained some economic benefits from marriage, those who later divorced had higher poverty rates than those who never married at all. Even financial guru Suze Orman advises women it's a bad idea to marry or stay in a bad marriage for the sake of the children because they fear being destitute.
Orman feels it hurts women on two fronts: sends the wrong message to children that money is more important than people and diminishes a woman's net worth for job prospects the older she gets. In other words, it's harder to be a 56-year-old divorcee looking for work.
Along with that knowledge is a 2003 Kaiser Family Foundation study that found 56 percent of marriages among 18 or 19-year-olds dissolve within 20 years.
Reports on the effectiveness of abstinence programs don't fare any better. Several found that abstinence programs, at the most, delay up to three months the time kids will have sex. And when they finally do, those same "just-say-no-to-sex" kids are less likely to use contraceptives to keep them safe from unwanted parenthood and sexually transmitted diseases.
It is unfortunate that in today's society sex does not necessarily equate love. If it did, then there would be no need for federal intervention and everybody could croon, "love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage."
Instead of, "Oops, I did it again."
Marisa Trevino is a writer from Rowlett.