by Dorian Solot

Earlier this year, I attended a conference where a speaker was talking about government-funded programs to promote marriage and stable families. One of the goals she discussed for these programs was to increase the "marriageability" of poor, disadvantaged unmarried people.

My gut response was to laugh. The government is going to fund programs designed to increase marriageability? Would the Department of Health and Human Services hire dating consultants and pay for matchmaking services?

But as I listened to this policy expert describe marriageability programs, I stopped laughing.

The kinds of things she was calling "marriageability" programs were good old social service programs. Helping substance abusers get clean makes them more likely to get married. Men who are employed are more marriageable, too, since women generally don't rush to marry guys who can't earn a living. Research shows that people with more education are more likely to get married and stay married.

Call me crazy, but maybe we've uncovered an unexpected diamond, however rough, among the crackerjack box jewelry of marriage-promoting rhetoric. I think substance abuse programs have value quite apart from whether they can help someone get married, but if "marriageability" is the buzzword that puts smiles on grant reviewers' faces in this era of marriage-fanaticism, we'd be fools not to start using it.

Since poor people are less likely to marry, living wage activists can argue that paying the working class living wages is fundamentally a marriageability program. Domestic violence shelters might be a long-term marriageability strategy, since they can help women leave a violent relationship and someday find a better prospect for marriage. When it comes down to it, nearly any social program that improves people's lives also boosts their marriageability, because people who are hungry, cold, sick, jobless, or poor are usually too busy trying to survive to worry about planning a wedding.

I'm not a marriage-promoter by any stretch of the imagination. But do I support using "marriageability" if that's what it takes to get funding and support for programs to help people? I don't use these words often, but -- I do.