Sheila Weber Discusses National Marriage Week USA for 2013

From February 7th to 14th every year-- is a collaborative effort to encourage many diverse groups to strengthen individual marriages, reduce the divorce rate, and build a stronger marriage culture, which in turn helps curtail poverty and benefits children. Together we can make more impact than working alone. Please join with others to host special events, launch a marriage class or home group, or place local advertising or news stories during National Marriage Week USA.

Learn more at http://www.nationalmarriageweekusa.org

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National Marriage Week USA, February 7 to the 14th, works to promote the benefits of marriage and let people know where they can get help for their own marriages or how to help others. It's part of an international movement in more than 20 countries during the week leading up to Valentine's Day.

Did you know that marriage really does pay? Research shows that married adults have far greater wealth and financial stability than their single or cohabiting counterparts. Married adults lead longer lives, have greater personal happiness and better health. And marriage is really the unsung anti-poverty program because single motherhood is the greatest source of impoverishment for both women and children.

Research also shows that children raised by both their mother and father perform vastly better in school, have far less trouble with the law, less teen pregnancy and fewer addictions.

But you know, we can do better. Taxpayers spend at least $112 billion a year on divorce and unwed childbearing. 40% of all U.S. babies today are born outside of marriage, contrasted to less than 5% back in 1960. The head of the National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting says we are in a national emergency because 72% of all African American babies today are born outside of marriage. Listen, we all have regrets, and we sometimes have to do the best we can with the circumstances we're given. And we value every human life. But almost everyone really does want life-long lasting love. For the sake of raising the next generation, we think that marriage deserves just as much of a positive campaign as does recycling, anti-smoking, or healthy eating!

Marriage is good for America. Yet we all have to be concerned. A recent Brookings Institution analysis said that if we had the marriage rate today that we had in 1970, we'd have 25 percent less poverty. In 1970, nearly 80 % of all adults in America were married. Today that number has shockingly dropped down only 52% of adults who are married. The decline of marriage is particularly difficult for the poor and middle class. When young people complete at least a high school education, work full time and wait until age 21 to get married and have a child, there is only a two percent chance of being in poverty. Yet, when those three things don't happen, the chance of being in poverty rises to 77 percent.

At National Marriage Week USA dot org, we have hundreds of events, classes and conferences posted on our online national marriage calendar—the only online site where lots of different kinds of group can show what they're doing for marriage. Click on National Calendar at NationalMarriageWeekUSA dot org and plug in your state to find an event near you—either to help your own marriage or to reach out and help someone else.

We encourage you to find easy-to-use resources at our website to launch an event in your community. And we have a free Tool Kit so you can build a marriage week campaign in your church or in your town. And please, plug in your date and event info for everything you do on our National Calendar. It's free...and it will help others see there is something really BIG happening across the country.

I'm Sheila Weber, director of this growing campaign. Please become a part of this hopeful and helpful national initiative to create stronger marriages, to reduce divorce, and to promote marriage prior to childbearing where possible, which reduces poverty. Marriage is truly valuable for private benefit and for the public good. Let's work together...let's strengthen marriage!

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