Ar excellent article in today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution, by Senator Sam Brownback and Hampton University Psychology Professor Linda Malone-Colon.
A war over the family divided liberals and conservatives in the last several decades. Now is the time to end that war and come together for a nationally urgent and common cause. With 40 percent of children born to unwed mothers today, and a growing marriage gap between wealthy and poor, we can’t afford to go on pretending that strengthening marriage is a conservative or liberal cause….
One of the most important actions we can take to ensure greater equality of opportunity is to strengthen marriage. While it’s a tall order, we can do it. If marriage stabilized among one segment of the population — the college-educated — it can happen in other segments as well.Any turnaround, however, will require a national, bipartisan movement built around the principles of cultural competence — mobilizing together as a nation to reverse the decline of an institution so central to our welfare. What might that movement look like?
● National, bipartisan, racially diverse partnerships. We need creative partnerships that transcend the traditional barriers of political party, race, class and religion. A September 2009 conference provides a good model. The National Summit on Marriages, Parenting and Families at Hampton University, a premier historically black institution of higher education in Virginia, was a serious effort by a bipartisan and broadly diverse group of scholars and leaders to give attention to the state of marriage and family in our country and to identify ways to strengthen them.
I’m proud to say that Ruth Institute Executive Director, Jamie Gruber was on the Youth Panel at this conference at Hampton University. I am also pleased to say that Professor Linda Malone-Colon, Chairwoman of the Psychology Department at Hampton, will be one of the presenters at our It Takes a Family conference this summer in San Diego. Tell your college student friends to apply!