Item from the Smart Marriages Archive, reproduced in the Divorce Statistics Collection

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THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONAL
Sunday, November 21, 1999

POLITICAL BRIEFING

By B. DRUMMOND AYRES JR.

Turning Marriage into a Political Issue

State Rep. Mark Anderson of Arizona, a conservative Republican, hears a
different legislative drum. Ever since he was elected to the Arizona
House
in 1994 from Mesa, a city just east of Phoenix, he has made marriage
issues
a big priority, his pitch being that a state whose couples are happily
married is a happy state and, more important, a strong state. His
proposals
have not enjoyed a lot of success -- Arizona still has its share of
divorces
and broken homes -- but he keeps pushing.

First, he tried to get the state Legislature to finance a $2 million
program
to teach single women on welfare the advantages of getting a husband. His
bill would have enabled women "interested in pursuing a career track in
home
management" to learn "positive thinking and attitude adjustment
techniques"
and would have helped them understand the "economic and personal benefits
of
marriage."

Next, when a constituent, a divorced single parent, asked him to push the
Legislature to provide child care for single parents who are in college,
he
suggested that her best course of action would be to "revisit the issue of
your
marriage failure, perhaps take some classes in parenting" and then find a
new husband.

Now he has a new proposal. He wants the state to put up $17 million to
finance an array of public school and adult education classes that promote
the idea of getting married and staying married. Some of the money would
be
used to develop a "healthy marriage" handbook and courses in marriage and
communication skills, some would be used to underwrite attendance at such
courses by poor people and to provide tax breaks for employers who offer
marriage courses, and some would be used to underwrite a "marriage is a
healthy lifestyle" advertising campaign.

Anderson's goal: to reduce Arizona's divorce rate, now ranked 10th-worst
in
the nation, by 5 percent by 2002. State educators do not like the
proposal.
They say they already have trouble enough finding money and time to teach
the three R's, let alone taking on a how-to marriage course.

But Anderson, who has never been divorced, refuses to back off. He argues
that relationship skills that work in a marriage will also work in just
about any other setting, including the workplace. "I'd rather have people
graduating from school that can communicate and be a good marriage partner
and be a good parent than somebody who can add," he declared last week.
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