Shoring up ‘fragile families’

BALTIMORE

Jerrece Caesar and Corey Roscoe may not have had a fancy wedding by bridal-magazine standards, but their marriage could set an example for couples across the country.

The couple had thought about marriage last year when she became pregnant, but “we were having serious problems, communication problems,” said Mr. Roscoe, 36.

Then they learned about a federally funded relationship-skills class aimed at helping low-income “fragile families” to stabilize and improve their relationships.

After attending several weeks of classes, Jerrece called her pastor, the Rev. Russell E. Groves, to set a wedding date.

“Yes, definitely” the classes influenced the couple to make the commitment, Mrs. Roscoe said after the ceremony at Canaan Baptist Church in Baltimore, where she was surrounded by friends and family, including the couple’s 2-week-old son.

The Roscoes are part of a seven-state experiment to determine whether relationship-skills classes can help foster stable relationships — and, preferably, marriages.

But reviving marriage in cities such as Baltimore, where 65 percent of births are out of wedlock, will be no small feat.

From 2005 through 2010, the Baltimore Building Strong Families (BSF) program will be gathering information from 650 couples to see whether it provides the right combination of words, images, services and counseling sessions to help the couples commit to each other and their children for the long haul.

The trick will be doing this in neighborhoods where trust is low, talk is cheap, sex is plentiful and weddings are rare.

Welfare’s legacy

For more than 60 years, the nation offered public assistance to single mothers — with an emphasis on the word “single.” Generations of welfare mothers warned each other about letting a man stay too long — “a man in the house” meant forfeiture of a mother’s public housing, cash benefits, Medicaid and other government benefits.

Not surprisingly, marriage all but disappeared in poor communities. Welfare mothers had boyfriends, not husbands; their children had visiting “daddies” who showed up with Pampers, not fathers who came home from work every day, played with them and protected them.

In 1996, Congress reformed the welfare system by adopting the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Single mothers who seek assistance receive help finding a job. And they receive temporary benefits, with an emphasis on the word “temporary.”

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