Plan C

Several times divorced herself, Constance R. Ahrons - UCLA professor of sociology, author of The Good Divorce, a 2000-2001 Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and a Senior Research Scholar at the Council on Contemporary Families (see Propositions letter one) - is eager to pass along to others her insights into marriage. Writing recently in the New York Times, Dr. Ahrons observes that those "who push legislative, religious, and economic agendas that are aimed at reducing divorce, cohabitation and single-parent households by increasing marriage rates are fighting a moral crusade while neglecting the needs of children."

Say hello to Plan C. If Plan A says pretend to be blind, and Plan B says torture logic and cook numbers to taste, Plan C wins the prize for brazenness. Just put on your lab coat and say whatever you want, with reckless disregard for the facts. Does marriage matter? No. Just that simple.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, a recent publication from the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Research on Poverty tells us: "In 1998, families headed by single women raising children had the highest poverty rate, close to 39 percent by our measure. The poverty rate for single individuals without children was around 15 percent. Married couples had the lowest rates, about 2.5 percent for those with no children and 6.5 percent for those with children…Because single-mother families are more than five times as likely to be poor as married-couple families, the change in family structure [since 1969] has increased poverty." Also, on the same planet, a study reported in the American Sociological Review finds that, among young adult males, one consequence of stable marriage is significantly more "desistence from crime."

That marriage trends directly influence trends in child and social well-being is one of the most well-established social science findings of the past 30 years. For Constance Ahrons and other practitioners of Plan C directly to state otherwise is, in terms of professional competence and integrity, no different from a tobacco company vice-president declaring that those who "push agendas" aimed at reducing cigarette smoking are fighting a "moral crusade" while ignoring "the health needs of people."

Sources: Constance R. Ahrons, New York Times, letter to the editor, May 28, 2001. Maria Cancian and Deborah Reed, "Changes in family structure: Implications for poverty and related policy," Focus 21, no. 2 (University of Wisconsin-Madison: Institute for Research on Poverty, Fall 2000): 21-26. John H. Laub, Daniel S. Nagin, and Robert J. Sampson, "Trajectories of Change in Criminal Offending: Good Marriages and the Desistance Process," American Sociological Review 63 (April 1998): 225-238.

First published Spring/Summer 2001.