Sunday, March 13, 2005 Posted by H Donofrio
‘Marriage Works’ campaign tells truths to and about teens
by Susan Reimer
Originally published Mar 13, 2005
For almost 20 years, Baltimore’s Campaign for Our Children has been using its symbiotic relationship with one of city’s top marketing agencies, Carton Donofrio Partners, to produce hip and eye-catching ad campaigns designed to catch the public’s fleeting attention and turn it toward the troubling issue of teen pregnancy.
From graffiti on buses (“Virgin. Teach your kids it’s not a dirty word”) to posters of chickens in tennis shoes (“What Do You Call A Guy Who Makes A Baby, Then Flies The Coop?”) to the scolding mother (“You think you can be a father? You can’t even keep your room clean”) to the heart-rending pleas of real teens (“Mom. Dad. Talk to me. I need you now”), CFOC has been able to tiptoe through the political and religious minefield of sex education and sell the results to jurisdictions as diverse as the District of Columbia and Georgia.
CFOC has hijacked the conversation again, this time with a series of posters and radio and television ads that promote - of all things - marriage.
“If any object to this union, speak now or forever hold your peace,” a minister intones over a wedding montage in the television ads.
“But before you speak up, consider that by marrying, this man and woman will be healthier, they will live longer, and be more financially secure. Their kids will have stability, do better in school and be less likely to break the law.
“Any objections? Good!”
As the commercial ends, these words appear on the screen: “Marriage works.”
CFOC is, again, walking a fine line.
The idea is not that 15-year-olds should get married. And the campaign is not saying young people should wait until marriage to have sex.
The idea is that young people should wait until marriage to have children. That hardly needed saying a generation ago. But it does now.
“Wait,” says the narrator in a second ad. “For love, for marriage, for family.”
All the best research shows that if a young woman waits just until the age of 20 to have that first child, her life and the life of that child are enormously improved.
“If we can convince kids that marriage is the way to go, then you are pushing them a few years out. They will be a few years older when they get pregnant,” said Hal Donofrio, who began in 1987 to use his advertising skills to confront Maryland’s appalling teen birth rate.
Here again, the ad campaign is on thin ice. It appeals to young girls to hold out for the Barbie wedding, where they can be “the center of the universe, the belle of the ball, the princess, the only star in the sky.”
We haven’t said that kind of stuff to our daughters in 30 years.
But the rest of the message goes like this: Marriage gives you legal rights and it gives your child legal rights. If you want marriage and a family, have the courage to demand it. You have the right to have someone by your side for the roller-coaster ride of raising a child.
“We want to tell young women that they have been right all along to want marriage and a family, that they don’t have to settle for a 16-year-old father who disappears before the baby is even born, and that they have all the power to get it,” said Donofrio.
One of the posters reads: “Kids of married parents do better in school.” Again, CFOC crosses a line in an age when lifestyle judgments are made at your own risk.
“We aren’t out to point fingers or make anyone feel bad,” said Bronwyn Mayden, executive director of CFOC. “We aren’t saying, ‘Your kids aren’t going to do as well as my kids.’
“This is not an indictment of divorce laws and it isn’t about gay marriage. We are just putting the facts out there,” she said.
And the facts do support marriage: married people describe themselves as happier; they are healthier and they live longer. The children of married people do better in school, are less likely to get in trouble, abuse drugs or alcohol, and are more economically successful.
Finally, though it seems like this ad campaign is directed at teens, it is not. Theirs is a generation that has witnessed the end of courtship and the rise of casual sex so casual the participants might not know each other’s names.
If we can’t get them to date, how can we get them to marry?
In fact, this message is aimed at adults. Parents, teachers, preachers, politicians.
“It is a hard sell to the kids and our work is cut out for us,” said Mayden. “But we want to put marriage back on the radar screen.
“The kids are going to say, ‘Huh?’ But we think the adults are going to say, ‘Now, you’re talking!’ “
“The Silent Majority wants this message,” said Donofrio. “Marriage Works” gives them ammunition and permission to talk up this beleaguered institution, just as CFOC did with a series of ads demanding that parents talk to their kids about sex (“Everybody else is”).
Again, CFOC has found the sweet spot. At a time when the rest of the grown-ups are still fighting over abstinence-only education and when the man in the White House wants to fund programs that strengthen marriage, “Marriage Works” could be a home run.
And if love, marriage and then family again becomes the natural order of things, all the better for the children. Ours, and theirs.
