'Fragile families,' Bush proposal are topics

Kids do better when their father is in the home. There's plenty of research to prove it, and Princeton sociology professor Sara McLanahan has done some of that research herself.

But while she can prove that growing up with both parents is good for kids, she still has some questions about President Bush's plans to encourage unmarried parents to get married. The budget for Bush's healthy marriage program is $1.5 billion to be spent over the next five years. And, McLanahan wonders, will it work? Will unmarried parents participate in the new program? And will they marry and stay married and have good marriages?

Recently, along with two other researchers, McLanahan studied what she calls "fragile families." When she comes to Salt Lake City next week, McLanahan will talk about this research and the president's proposals.

Here's a preview: From 1998 to 2000, McLanahan and her cohorts studied the families of nearly 5,000 newborns, including 3,700 born to unmarried parents and 1,200 born to married parents. Her researchers re-interviewed each family on the child's first birthday — and they plan to do more interviews as the child grows.

McLanahan learned that some couples do get married in the year following their baby's birth. Others do not. In trying to figure out what makes the difference, McLanahan asked questions about attitudes toward marriage, about how much each parent trusted the opposite sex, about whether their own parents were married and about church attendance. She asked about violence, alcohol and drug abuse. She also measured education levels and income levels of both parents.

McLanahan found that parents who were living together had more stable relationships than those who were living apart at the time their baby was born. A year later, three-fourths of the couples who had been living together were still living together, and 15 percent of them had married.

McLanahan also learned: Fathers who are employed are more likely to get married than those who aren't. Mothers are about equally likely to get married whether or not they are working. It doesn't seem to make any difference if the father drops out or finishes high school, but if he has a college education, he's more likely to marry. The more education the mother has, the more likely she'll marry.

Parents who go to church are more likely to marry. Not surprisingly, a father's violence or substance abuse is a big deterrent to marriage. Parents who have two children together are more likely to marry than parents who only have one. McLanahan was surprised to learn that women who already have an older child by another man are not less likely to marry than women who have only the new baby.

On Saturday, the Department of Family and Consumer Studies at the University of Utah will host a daylong conference on fragile families. The conference is free and open to the public; for details call 581-6521.

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If you go

What: Princeton professor and director of the Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child WellbeingSara McLanahan will be the keynote speaker at the 7th annual Rocco C. and Marion S. Siciliano Forum, titled "Considerations on the Status of the American Society."

Where: Dumke Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah

When: Monday at noon, with panel discussion at 1:15 p.m.

Cost: Free

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E-MAIL: susan@desnews.com