“How can marriage campaigners better reach out to single parents?” asks Ashley Maguire in a blog on The Institute for Family Studies’ website [1]. She thinks the pro-marriage movement can learn from the pro-life movement, particularly from the latter’s successes in the United States, where 231 pro-life laws have been passed at the state level since 2014.
Maguire looks at an Atlantic article by David Frum [2] which analyses the development of the US anti-abortion movement since Roe VS Wade.
In his analysis of the success of the pro-life movement in influencing both opinions and behavior, Frum argues, “The cause originated as a profoundly socially conservative movement. Yet as it grew, it became less sectarian. Women came to the fore as leaders. It found a new language of concern and compassion, rather than condemnation and control.”
These are two tactics the pro-marriage movement can adopt. The movement must cultivate spokespeople from the demographic we seek to impact. Since nonmarital childbearing is most common among women in their twenties, it is women in their twenties we should be hearing from. Young women who can speak positively to having made a decisive choice to marry before having children, and young women who can speak firsthand to the challenges of having had a child without a husband will be the most effective advocates for marriage in today’s social landscape.
Frum may be caricaturing the early pro-life movement: but there’s no doubt that there’s a lot of wisdom in what both he and Maguire write. People are pro-marriage and being pro-life because they’re interested in human happiness and flourishing. If supporters of either position lose sight of this, we’re not doing our own values justice. And it’s always essential to hear from those most affected by a social phenomenon.
But it’s a little bit trickier than that. Maguire:
Investing in strategic voices for the movement will contribute to developing a mode of communication that is concerned and compassionate rather than condemning and controlling. Already, pro-marriage advocates have moved away from the moral censure that previously marked our side of the debate, and towards a strategy that is anchored by a wealth of statistics and that frames the issue in terms of concern for the poor, the vulnerable, and the marginalized. When “a dad” is among the top ten requests British children make to Santa LINK, there is plenty of material that enables us to lead with concern and follow with solid policy recommendations.
Maguire is right, of course. But part of the difficulty with all of this is that, at least in the Irish media, it’s becoming increasingly taboo to suggest that there’s any family structure that’s, (all else being equal) better for children than any other. I’ve been in several recent debates where I got a really odd response to my arguments about ideal family structures. It’s not that people were arguing I was wrong, that I had bad evidence or was mistaken about the conclusions I drew. Evidence doesn’t come into it: to talk of ‘ideals’ or ‘gold standards’ is seen as offensive in itself.
But facts are stubborn things, and you can’t just wilfully ignore them. Take the following studies from Sweden [3], which I keep coming back to: and remember that this compares two-parent families with single-parent ones after controlling for socioeconomic status and psychological history.
[4]
[5]
It’s perfectly possible to support people in a variety of family circumstances, and recognise the fantastic job that they so often do, while still acknowledging and supporting an ideal, and working to ensure that as many children as possible are raised by their natural parents in a low-conflict marriage.
But as a starting point, can we at least admit that the gold standard exists? We are entitlted to our own opinions, but not to our own facts. Offense doesn’t cancel out the truth.
Perhaps we’re particularly bad at this in Ireland. Have a guess who the following statement comes from:
“I think all the research indicates that children are better brought up by two people rather than one, and that in all circumstances being brought up by their own biological parents is preferable.”
That would be Ruth Hunt, head of British gay-rights advocacy group Stonewall, who made the comments on theBBC’s Moral Maze programme [6]. Hunt and I disagree about what should we should do about those facts when it comes to marriage. But neither of us are pretending that the facts don’t exist.
We’re both still members of the reality-based community.