Congress has begun to work on the 2002 reauthorization of TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), the nation's primary welfare program. Among the issues emerging as key to the debate is the one known either as Family Formation or as The Fatherhood Initiative.

A panoply of proposals come under this umbrella, including the following:

1. President Bush's proposal would: Spend $315 million over five years through faith-based or community organizations to "promote marriage." Job training and mentoring would be provided to fathers.
   Increase spending by $200 million this year to help states keep children with their birth families where appropriate, support adoption programs, and mentor the children of prisoners.
2. Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Rep. Julia Carson (D-IN) have introduced S.653/HR 1300, which would create a block grant to states for fatherhood and marriage programs, a media campaign, and a best-practices clearinghouse. A domestic violence prevention component is required in all programs. Being married and leaving welfare are primary purposes.
3. Sen. Bayh and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) have cosponsored S.685, which incorporates Bayh's S.653 and adds some encouraging child support provisions. It would require states to collect and pay child support to parents who have left welfare and let states give child support back payments to the families rather than keeping the funds.
4. Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-CT) and Rep. Ben Cardin (D-MD) are cosponsors of HR 1471, which would spend $140 million for programs to promote marriage, parenting, and departure from welfare. Priority in funding would go to projects that work with child support agencies to cancel support arrearage debts against fathers who take their families off welfare. The bill makes several other beneficial changes in the current child support system.

The controversy swirling around these proposals relates to the issues of why people are poor and what can or should be done to alleviate their poverty. Certain facts are established:

• One child in five in the US is officially poor;
  
• Twenty-eight percent of all U.S. children live in a home without a father;
  
• More than 33% live apart from their biological fathers;
  
• Children who live apart from their fathers do worse in school than those in intact families, have lower earnings as adults, and are more likely to get into trouble with the law and have children outside of marriage.

The Fatherhood Initiative is firmly grounded in the belief that the poverty and difficulty of these children's lives would be solved or greatly relieved by reuniting children with their fathers and promoting marriage, preferably before the birth of children. Legislation to achieve these goals puts its primary emphasis on encouraging and rewarding marriage, and providing counseling in areas such as parenting and anger management. Job training gets less attention.

Those who question this approach contend that stabilizing families economically -- whether it is done through the father, the mother, or both -- is more likely to lead to family formation. They feel that putting so much focus on the role of men in families devalues the contribution of women and degrades fathers by treating them more as meal tickets than as partners.

Wendell Primus of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, while accepting that a stable two-parent household is the preferable environment for child rearing, doubts that government has any right to promote marriage, which is a personal decision. Rather, he says, it should improve the odds for couples by helping them reduce the economic stress that plagues poor families.

The NOW Legal Defense Fund, in recent testimony before a Senate Finance Subcommittee, contended that: "Supportive services should be made available to all families, regardless of their marital status or family composition, including services to help improve employment opportunities, budget finances, promote nonviolent behavior, improve relationships, and provide financial support to children."

None of the proposals now before Congress deals adequately with the fact that marriage is not a viable solution to poverty for many people. This is especially true of the 15 to 25 percent of the welfare caseload for whom domestic violence is a serious problem. The women in these families are nearly always in physical and emotional danger and often their children are as well. Most women on welfare have suffered from violence at some point in their lives and more than half of those victimized by a spouse or partner are prevented from working at least occasionally by threats or injuries. To pressure these women to stay in a violent marriage is to condemn them and their children to a life of continuing poverty, danger and despair.

Marriage is also not an option for families composed of children being raised by grandparents, aunts and uncles, gay or lesbian couples, or widowed or divorced parents who do not wish to remarry. Such people would receive no benefit from the legislative proposals.

Yet another source of concern is the fact that very little new money is being proposed to pay for fatherhood initiatives. Many states are now diverting funds from the TANF program to provide services for non-custodial fathers who are not on welfare, in the hope that they will become self-supporting, marry the mothers of their children, and take their families off the welfare rolls. As the economy weakens, however, the use of TANF funds for fatherhood programs could well end up taking resources away from the very families who are intended to be the primary beneficiaries of TANF.

General Assembly

In 1997, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) passed a resolution on welfare and poverty that sets principles to guide advocacy relating to government programs that address poverty and its causes. The resolution speaks to TANF and its 2002 reauthorization. The Assembly stated in part: "The nutritional and health-care needs of children, youth, mothers, and the elderly require particular attention. Government nutrition and health programs for children are an investment in the health of the next generation and should have national standards for eligibility and benefit levels… Government assistance programs should strengthen family life, with benefits provided equitably to both one- and two-parent families… Commitment to maintain funding of the TANF block grant to the states at the same or higher levels in the years beyond 2002, and the excess funds be used for the creation of jobs at a living wage."