Admitting mistakes

This post isn't an endorsement of government-funded relationship programmes. What interests (and frustrates) me is the contrast between NZ and US willingness to acknowledge the effect of welfare on the family structure;

From 2005 through 2010, the Baltimore Building Strong Families (BSF) program will be gathering information from 650 couples to see whether it provides the right combination of words, images, services and counseling sessions to help the couples commit to each other and their children for the long haul.

The trick will be doing this in neighborhoods where trust is low, talk is cheap, sex is plentiful and weddings are rare.

For more than 60 years, the nation offered public assistance to single mothers -- with an emphasis on the word "single." Generations of welfare mothers warned each other about letting a man stay too long -- "a man in the house" meant forfeiture of a mother's public housing, cash benefits, Medicaid and other government benefits.

Not surprisingly, marriage all but disappeared in poor communities. Welfare mothers had boyfriends, not husbands; their children had visiting "daddies" who showed up with Pampers, not fathers who came home from work every day, played with them and protected them.