Federal Aid Will Support Charities’ Marriage Programs

Many nonprofit groups that work with low-income people are teaching new parents how to build strong, workable marriages, and they are seeing signs of success, reports The New York Times.

Members of Congress and the Bush administration have been encouraging these types of classes and earmarking federal funds to pay for such courses, arguing that doing so will keep more people off welfare.

In September, the federal government will award $100-million to nonprofit groups that offer marriage programs and $50-million for efforts to teach child-rearing skills to fathers.

Some poverty experts had predicted that such efforts would fail and that it was wrong for the federal government to push marriage.

However, research studies conducted in recent years have united conservatives and liberals, who now all endorse the idea of teaching needy people to forge close and workable family bonds, the newspaper says.