Under the president's proposal, federal money could be used for specific activities like advertising campaigns to publicize the value of marriage, instruction in marriage skills and mentoring programs that use married couples as role models.
"There's so much money spent in what I call the wipe-up," said Abbie Vianes, executive director of the Governor's Commission on Marriage in Utah, which holds marriage skills conferences.
While Ms. Sollee is heartened by the Bush administration's proposal to spend $1.5 billion -- $200 million a year for five years from the government, plus $100 million a year in state matching funds -- on marriage skills, she said that the marriage movement would grow with or without government help.
In 1998, Florida became the first state to require a class on relationships and marriage for high school students, part of a larger plan to encourage marriage skills by discounting marriage licenses for couples that take a premarital skills course.
Robert Rector, a welfare guru at the conservative Heritage Foundation, calculates that, if the mothers tie the knot, only 17% of them remain poor; if they remain single, 55% of them will.Do you need marriage-skills training?All the same, isn't there something a little Orwellian about a bureaucrat offering "marriage-skills training"?
These programmes include teaching "relationship skills" to unmarried couples who are expecting a baby, and providing "marriage-skills training" to married people who want to get on better.Mr Horn's case for promoting marriage rests on an undeniable fact: the erosion of marriage is creating social problems.
Rugby is a shotgun marriage between skill and brutality.
From being the seventh quarterback drafted in his class to being in a class by himself, Brady has had a professional career that has been the ideal marriage of skill and circumstance.
It is no easy marriage of skills and the BBC is well served by a uniquely talented team.
Rather, he said, the money will be aimed at programs to assist couples already contemplating marriage to learn skills that will help them stay together, or provide counseling and education for married couples who are having trouble sorting through conflicts.
