Last February, President Obama announced a new initiative “designed to determine what works to help young people stay on track to reach their full potential.”

The initiative is called “My Brother’s Keeper.” Its stated goal is to create and expand opportunities for young minorities. The president’s memo, talking-points, and official report on the program all identify poverty, poor education, and other issues as problems that need to be addressed.

President Obama wrote,

“Specifically, the Task Force [for My Brother’s Keeper] shall focus on the following issues, among others: access to early childhood supports; grade school literacy; pathways to college and a career, including issues arising from school disciplinary action; access to mentoring services and support networks; and interactions with the criminal justice system and violent crime.”

Despite My Brother’s Keeper being an effort to rebuild communities and strengthen families, we could not find one instance of the word “marriage” being used anywhere in the White House’s documents on the program. The reports talk about parents, children, mothers, and fathers, but not about marriage.

Here is why that is so significant:

  1. Marriage, according to research compiled and analyzed by the Heritage Foundation, is as effective against poverty as adding five or six years to a parent’s education. In other words, a stable marriage is just as effective for a family’s finances as a college degree.
  2. Statistically, children with married parents–especially children with a father who is heavily involved in their lives–perform better academically, have fewer behavioral problems, are less likely to be incarcerated, often live healthier lives, and are more likely to be productive members of society as adults.

My Brother’s Keeper acknowledges that out-of-wedlock births and absent-fathers are problems more prevalent among many minority groups, but the program seems to in no way geared toward encouraging parents to get married or helping them stay married.

The White House writes,

“It is important that all children have caring adults who are engaged in their lives.  But too many young people lack this support.  For example, roughly two-thirds of Black and one-third of Hispanic children live with only one parent.   Moreover, research suggests that a father’s absence increases the risk of his child dropping out of school among Blacks and Hispanics by 75 percent and 96 percent respectively.”

Is a “caring adult” the same as a loving parent? Are fathers, mothers, coaches, teachers, and mentors all equally interchangeable? If they are, why do fathers have such a powerful impact on the likelihood of children dropping out of school?

My Brother’s Keeper is a government program bent on solving many problems that parents and healthy marriages seem to solve or prevent naturally.

As long as My Brother’s Keeper is using public and private funds for education, why don’t they put a few dollars toward teaching people the importance of good marriages?

If they’re going to teach kids to resolve conflict without violence, why don’t they try to teach couples to resolve conflict without divorce? I know many people may think this whole program is a waste of tax dollars, but if this is something the federal government is determined to do, marriage is something that cannot be overlooked.

Conclusion

The Obama Administration wants to fight poverty, improve children’s education, open up mentorship opportunities, and make sure kids are college and career ready when they graduate from high school. Those are all noble goals, but if they really want to accomplish what they are setting out to do, they cannot afford to ignore marriage. And for all of the program’s talk about problem-solving, not one bullet point on any report seems devoted to shoring up marriages. It’s as if marriage and child outcomes are somehow unrelated or irrelevant to each other.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

More Information

Click here to read President Obama’s memo establishing My Brother’s Keeper.

Click here to read the My Brother’s Keeper Task Force Report to the President.

Click here to read the fact sheet for My Brother’s Keeper.

Click here to visit the WhiteHouse.gov website for My Brother’s Keeper.