One-off baby payment an idea whose time may have arrived

We spend millions urging people to give up smoking, to drive without drinking and to lose weight. We spend billions supporting single-parent families and the social consequences of family breakdown.

But we do far too little to promote marriage and discourage divorce. Sex education in schools has taken on a new intensity in the context of AIDS. Yet we do not provide instruction about marriage, conception (as opposed to contraception) or divorce.

* No-fault divorce is here to stay (for good or ill), but should we not consider instituting more extensive preparation for marriage and a different, less unilateral, approach to divorce when small children are involved?

Or should not couples have the right, as they are able to do in some parts of the United States, to contract to a higher standard of marital commitment so that they voluntarily agree to make divorce harder?

* Unemployment and underemployment of breadwinners is, of course, devastating for families.

There is a substantial body of evidence that our over-regulated workplace actively works against the interests of low-income families because, by raising the bar to employment, they make it harder for the less skilled to get a job at all.