Better ways to promote marriage

By: Richard Riehl - Commentary | Sunday, January 25, 2004 9:53 PM PST ∞

Shortly after Britney Spears broke the record for wedlock brevity, President Bush announced his initiative to promote marriage. I don't know if the superstar's behavior influenced him, but a review of Census Bureau statistics on marriages over the past 10 years shows that the president has reason to be concerned, not only for the nation's domestic tranquility, but with his own political legacy. Here's what the numbers show.

The marriage rate in 1994 was 18.1 people for every 1,000 Americans. By the time Bush took office in 2000 it had declined to 17. By 2002, after his first two years in office, it had declined sharply to 15.6. If the trend continues, it will drop to 14.2 at the end of his first term. If he's re-elected and serves until 2008, it will stand at 11.4 when he leaves office. If it continues to fall at the same rate, by 2024 there will be no married couples at all in this country. This might make it easier to find people available to explore Mars, as he's envisioned, but it will certainly change the fabric of society here on Earth.

The president's announcement included few details about the program, other than its price tag of $1.5 billion. He has become a believer in his effectiveness as a promoter from his extraordinary success in raising funds for his re-election campaign ---- more than $130 million in the bank and he wants to raise another $40 million by summer. So he may not need my advice. But as a patriotic American, I felt obliged to provide him with some suggestions, which are based mostly on promotional methods he is already using for some other initiatives.

Picking up on his fondness for developing rallying themes for the war in Iraq, maybe "Operation Try Marriage" would bring us together in this effort.

Taking a lesson from the dairy industry, how about launching a "Got Spouse?" advertising campaign to remind cohabitating couples of their patriotic duty.

We'll need an easily understood barometer of how the marriage campaign is going. How about a national monthly color-code similar to the one for terrorist threats? Green would signify an increase in the monthly marriage rate, red an increased divorce rate, and amber an alert for missing husbands.

Recognizing that most single-parent families are headed by mothers, Bush could propose to Congress a No Husband Left Behind Act, similar to the one he signed two years ago for children. The No Husband legislation would provide for mandatory personality profiles to be administered on Saturdays at golf courses, Home Depot, Radio Shack and other places where potential husbands tend to gather. The completed profiles would be submitted to a national Office of Matrimonial Security, which would use the data to alert single mothers of the locations of potentially compatible husbands in their neighborhoods.

I'm confident that if the president implements all of these recommendations, he will be able to turn around his dismal record for preserving marriage in America.

Richard Riehl lives in Carlsbad.