National Marriage Media Campaign

USA Today ran an article yesterday about a federally funded ad campaign to up hold the value of marriage. The reporter talked about the research that was conducted by TRU with more than 3,000 18-30-year-olds which showed that there were five distinct segments:

14% express strong sentiments against marriage
22% aren't ready, but say they eventually plan to wed
23% have a practical view of marital unions and often live together first
19% are enmeshed in the magic of love
22% have a strong belief in the institution of marriage

The research indicates that the motivation for marriage is very high.

So the rub about all of this is whether or not the government should be funding an ad campaign about the value of marriage. What the article didn't address is why the government is doing this in the first place. This is the part that I believe is critical and cannot be left out of the equation.

A significant amount of research indicates that: the collapse of marriage is the principal cause of child poverty in the United States. Approximately 80 percent of long-term child poverty in our country occurs among children from broken or never-formed families.

The lack of marriage in our society clearly has major long-term consequences. How is this type of campaign different from the click it or ticket campaign or the stop smoking campaign?

Did you read the article? What are your thoughts about this?