Positioning Marriage as the Greatest Solution to Child Poverty: A Discourse Analysis

• In Event: 212 - Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 09. Policy and Politics I

Abstract

In this paper, I will examine the arguments made in a report titled Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon against Child Poverty. More specifically, I will engage in a discourse analysis to examine the author’s arguments about the supposed relationship between non-marriage and child poverty and his subsequent advocacy for government policy in support of marriage. First, I will share contextual information on the organization which sponsored the report, situating the organization in a context of research focusing on family structure and economic status, and in a context of government funding for marriage education programs as an anti-poverty policy. Second, I will introduce the discursive concepts I argue are useful for understanding and critiquing the author’s arguments about the relationship between non-marriage, child poverty, and the need for government intervention to address the current state of marriage and child poverty. Third, I will provide a brief summary of the author’s report, sharing his abstract verbatim. Fourth, I will apply the concepts of indexicality, epistemic stance, and chronotope to specific arguments the author makes throughout his report. Fifth, I will argue for the importance of examining the author’s arguments as only one view on the relationship between family structure and economic status and a view that needs to be complemented by other, potentially opposing views on the same subject.

Author

• Rafiqah Mustafaa, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign