Sunday, February 09, 2014

When The Facts Contradict Your Expectations...

...believe the facts:
Close to a billion dollars have been spent to provide relationship counseling to low-income parents writes Tom Bartlett in The Great Mom & Dad Experiment in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The hope is that ”better partners make better parents"...

However, it doesn’t work, according to a three-year study of eight programs in different states.

Family Expectations, which grew out of welfare reform, enjoys broad bipartisan support, writes Bartlett. “Plus it just feels right. Spend time with these couples—the teenage mother with a newborn on her shoulder, the middle-aged dad dangling his keys just beyond his infant’s reach—and you can’t help but root for them and for relationship education.”

Family instability is terrible for kids. But this doesn’t seem to work.
Kinda like Head Start.

1 comment:

momof4 said...

Most regrettably, those who support and promote such programs tend to operate on feelings, as opposed to factual evidence and/or stand to benefit from them (employment, political support etc). Evidence just doesn't matter to them; hence the continued existence of multiple government or government-supported programs.