Raising Children

Yesterday someone shared with me about an elementary age little girl who showed up late to school and she was crying. She wasn't crying because she was late to class. She was crying because she was hungry and she had missed breakfast at school because her bus was late. When her teacher inquired about who helped her get ready in the morning she said no one because her mother never gets out of bed before she leaves for school.

Did you know that a child born and raised outside of marriage will spend an average of 51 percent of his/her childhood living in poverty?

In contrast, a child born and raised by both parents in an intact marriage on average will spend only 7 percent of his/her childhood living in poverty. A child raised by a never married mother is more than 7 times more likely to be poor than a child raised in an intact marriage. (National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 - 2000)

Children who grow up without a father are more likely to drop out of school, become addicted to drugs, have a child out-of-wedlock or end up in prison.

There are many children, black, white and Hispanic, who are essentially raising themselves. When I think about my teenage daughter trying to raise herself - even though she thinks she could totally do it - I know the truth is she isn't ready.

My heart is heavy for our children. Sometimes tackling this issue feels overwhelming, but the reality is First Things First exists to do exactly that.

If we aren't loving and raising our children - who is????

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?