that doesn’t make me want to tear my hair out. So i was reading/lurking on postbougie and they hat tipped TNC (another place where i lurk) and he was explaining why he decided not to marry the mother of his children and (i’m assuming) his girlfriend.
When I read what it was about, I was ready to tear it about. After all, I’m all about (healthy) marriage and it’s one of my two policies of choice for change in the Black community. The other is education if you must know.
While I don’t necessarily agree with his reasons not to marry, I can certainly understand and respect them. It’s not that I think that marriage is a magic pill. I understand that they take a lot of work and a lot of patience. A marriage is a commitment – not just to a wife, but to your children as well. And I guess some of the reasons TNC said he didn’t want to marry, this insurance, is what I thinkis the missing piece to child stability in single parent families. I think a relationship that TNC appears to have is rare outside of marriage and this is the type of relationship that intiatives like The Healthy Family Initiative are strivig to achieve. It’s not so much the contractual relationship as it is the loving partnership that policies, and society, are trying to achieve.
peace,
e.
I’m not sure if you read the rest of the conversation on our blog, but you never responded to any of the questions posed to you by other commenters.
Mainly, controlling for a bunch of other factors, how do we know that it’s *marriage* that makes families stable, and not a bunch of other factors?
also,
re: the Healthy Families Initiative, I think you should read Katherine Boo’s amazing New Yorker piece, “The Marriage Cure.”
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2003/the_marriage_cure
I hadn’t checked back. I’ll get some links to respond to the requests.
Also thanks, I’ll check the new yorker article out.