Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum:

The number one reason people are below the poverty line is what a group in St. Louis labels "marriage absence," and so has created a new organization called the Center for Marriage Policy to make Missouri a model to deal with this problem. At a conference this October to launch its proposals, its founder David Usher said, "Marriage absence is driving America's greatest problems, including out-of-control spending, much of the home-loan foreclosure crisis, poverty, children who fail in school, lack of health care coverage, and personal bankruptcy."

... Government's definition of marriage is society's way of establishing the clear responsibility of the father as well as the mother for caring for those little bundles of helpless infants who appear when men and women do what comes naturally. That purpose was ignored by Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.

Beginning with LBJ's War on Poverty and its vast expansion of welfare, the system channeled all welfare money through mothers, making the husband and father irrelevant to the family's economic well-being. It should come as no surprise that this encouraged marriage absence and illegitimacy because, as Ronald Reagan said, if you subsidize something you get more of it.