Investing in marriages:
No panacea for poverty, but still a valuable strategy

		Eye on the  Capitol  Kathy Markeland

In 1996 Congress and the President replaced the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC) with a new program called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

This year Congress is reviewing TANF and considering changes before it reauthorizes the program.

The original TANF program enabled states to expand services to non-custodial parents as well as develop policies that would eliminate disincentives for marriage and promote services to two-parent households.

As TANF undergoes revision, a good deal of attention is focused on a plan to spend more money on "marriage promotion" or "family formation" programs.

Marriage promotion

Some of those who advocate on behalf of families living in poverty are skeptical of the motivations of these expenditures. They argue that investing in relationship education drains resources from services that could better benefit women and children in poverty.

They fear that "marriage promotion" will, in fact, become coercive and that these efforts reflect an ill-founded belief that the poor can merely "marry" their way out of poverty.

While these concerns have some merit, few would disagree those aspects of the old AFDC program created barriers to family formation and disincentives to marriage. Moreover, the experience of several states shows that marriage promotion need not be coercive.

A model program in Minnesota allows couples with children to qualify for the same programs and services as single parents. Oklahoma has used TANF dollars to promote relationship education in high schools and colleges.

Wisconsin's BadgerCare program, while not funded with TANF dollars, offers another example how government can enhance the services available to low-income families without creating disincentives to marriage.

Encouraging healthy relationships

Sociologists are now affirming that indeed marriage is good. Two-parent households are healthier, more economically stable, and promote overall child well-being.

Since human beings are social by nature, the formation of intimate relationships is inevitable. Such relationships can either strengthen or erode an individual's ability to function as a healthy, contributing member of society.

It can be argued that good relationship skills are just as critical as work skills, quality childcare, and access to health care. Each adds stability to the lives of those TANF is designed to serve.

All of society could benefit from relationship education and efforts to promote strong families. Ideally, we should strive for public policies that promote healthy relationships across the board. Targeting resources for the benefit of low-income families should not ostracize these families as somehow uniquely flawed, but should be viewed as recognition of the disparate impact of past policies.

Clearly some relationships and marriages are unhealthy. We should not erect barriers to those who need to remove themselves and their children from dangerous and demoralizing situations.

At the same time, we should not fear structures designed to preserve and elevate the value of marriage as a building block of our communities and to provide people with the skills to grow and deepen their commitments to one another.

Policies affect values

Public policy will never be able to force us to form healthy relationships. But wise policies can help rather than hinder our efforts to do so. Neither can policies force us to hold strong values. But they can affirm or undermine the values we choose.

Marriage may not be sought a panacea for the ills afflicting needy families, but, as sociologists are affirming, it is an important part of the solution to those ills; we would be foolish to ignore the fact that supporting marriages and healthy relationships is a wise strategy.

Kathy Markeland is associate director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference.

Miracles of Mayo Brothers:
Caring attitudes, simple truths

		Grand Mom  Audrey  Mettel Fixmer

This summer I experienced the great Mayo Brothers Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Not as a patient, but as a companion to one of my daughters, who was reaching for a miracle.

She later told me that she almost expected the famed clinic to resemble Lourdes, France, where she had been two years earlier.

She thought she might see cripples hobbling on crutches, carried in stretchers, or pushed in wheelchairs in a long procession, prepared to worship at the shrine of the great Mayo Brothers, all praying for the miracle of restored health. What she found was not the dramatic miracles of Lourdes, but a series of smaller, quieter miracles.

Waiting for cancellation

When her local doctor made the referral, we learned that due to the long waiting list, we might have a three- or six-month delay. To speed up the process, we were advised to go in, register, be assigned to a department, then sit in the waiting room and wait for a cancellation to provide an opening. This was what we chose to do.

We waited a full two weeks in our department, from 8:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. each day. It was a waiting room that seated nearly 100 people, and at all times seemed to be one-half to three-quarters full. We were encouraged to see that the sign on the wall listed 73 doctors in our department alone. Surely one of them would get a cancellation!

In the waiting room we met people from all walks of life, listened to their stories and found ourselves beseeching God for their cure, as well as a cancellation in our department.

A unique community

Rochester is a unique community, and one that is geared to the sick and the lame as well as the healthy. Every hotel either has a tunnel connection to the clinic or runs a free shuttle back and forth every hour.

Our shuttle drivers often impressed us with names of the rich and famous who came to Mayo Brothers: Rosemary Clooney, the Crown Prince of Jordan, and every president since Roosevelt who himself or a family member was treated there.

Good restaurants in walking distance from the clinic abound. We didn't mind the four-hour drive home each weekend.

The clinic buildings themselves are awesome examples of modern architecture, constructed of marble from throughout the world. It is, perhaps, one of the most highly endowed clinics in the world.

Soothing the sick

In the final analysis, however, it is not the beauty of the surroundings that soothes and heals the sick who visit there.

It is the loving, caring attitude of the personnel, who have miraculously managed to make every patient and every companion feel as if they are the most important person in the world. Despite the fact that they are only one in a thousand!

We were always made to feel that the women behind the desk were just as eager to get us in to see the doctor as we were ourselves.

When, at last, an opening came up for my daughter, the nurses broke into joyous applause. The appointment was swiftly followed with a proliferation of tests, amazingly smooth and painless, the same tests that she had suffered through in other places.

Jigsaw puzzle truth

One of the clinic's thoughtful additions to the waiting rooms is the jigsaw puzzle. Several tables in each waiting room are set up with jigsaw puzzles, which they change each week. People come and go, adding to the puzzle in progress until they are called.

It seemed to me that folks who might otherwise get antsy, become absorbed in "the big picture" and relaxed in a miraculous way.

I ran across something recently on the Internet about jigsaw puzzles that made me suddenly understand the wisdom behind this practice. It's called "Jigsaw Puzzle Truth." Here is a brief excerpt:

Don't force a fit. If something is meant to be it will come together naturally.

When things aren't going so well, take a break. Everything will look different when you return . . . Be sure you look at the big picture. Getting hung up on the little pieces only leads to frustration . . . Establish the border first. Boundaries give a sense of security and order . . . Take time often to celebrate your successes (even little ones) . . . Anything worth doing takes time and effort. A great puzzle can't be rushed.

Although my daughter did not find the miraculous cure for which we had prayed, she found a more powerful resource than surgery. The mind and spirit, along with self-knowledge, may hold the key to healing the body. Combine that with meditation and prayer, and you've got a winner.

"Grandmom" likes hearing from other senior citizens who enjoy aging at P.O. Box 216, Fort Atkinson, WI 53538.