Marriage Incentives

When reading chapter 6 I came across an interesting section about marriage incentives. The idea here is that children do better in a two parent family and that if we promote marriage and "reward" people who are married, more people will get married and stay married. What a quick fix to all the problems in our nation! Some states went so far as to pay married couples $100 a month to get married and stay married. This made me think about two things we have talked about this semester. First of all the structure vs. function debate. We have been told a thousand times that it is not what the family looks like single, two-parent, etc. it is how that family works. Structure does influence function, but it is not a determining factor. So the idea that children fair better with two parents is not necessarily true. Think about the children of parents who are still married but fight all the time. A second thing, what kind of people will be encouraged to get married for $100. Sorry for me personally that would not be enough. Second of all if your only reason to get married is to get that money chances are your marriage is not going to be that great...problems in marriage will still exist.
In my opinion the only way we can fix all these "problems" with married couples and single families is with education. We should spend more time and money teaching people how to deal with conflict, better choose mates, and raise a family and less money trying to get a quick fix which ultimately can lead to new problems.