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The Washington Post
The alliance assembled by Daniels cuts across traditional party lines and includes Catholic, Jewish and Muslim leaders as well as ministers in historically black Protestant denominations.
The Washington Post
The Wall Street Journal
Matt Daniels himself grew up in Spanish Harlem to a single mom on welfare. And he has gathered around him an impressive and diverse board, from Walter Fauntroy, who organized the March on Washington for Martin Luther King, Jr., to the leadership of two of the largest African-American denominations in the United States.
The Wall Street Journal
USA TODAY
Daniels' childhood helps explain his commitment to work with "people who do not look like me." Daniels grew up physically and emotionally close to a half-brother, a gifted boy from another of his father's four marriages, this time to a black woman. Daniels got a firsthand look at discrimination. As an adult, he also found spiritual solace in the black community.
USA Today
Los Angeles Times
Daniels was abandoned by his father and raised in poverty by a struggling mother. The lingering effects of growing up fatherless shaped what would ultimately become the mission of the Alliance for Marriage: "More children raised at home with a mother and a father." The group has worked on a wide range of efforts to prevent family disintegration, including eliminating penalties for welfare recipients who marry, reducing what is often called the "marriage tax'" and making the workplace marriage-friendly.
Los Angeles Times
Time Magazine
Daniels runs the Alliance for Marriage, which wrote the Federal Marriage Amendment now before Congress. In Boston, he became friendly with the Rev. Dr. Ray Hammond, a physician turned pastor who had won national plaudits for helping inner-city youths in Boston. Eventually Daniels with the help of Hammond and several other minority ministers founded the Alliance for Marriage.
Time Magazine
The Christian Science Monitor
Anyone meeting Matthew Daniels for the first time could easily assume that he is a product of a conventional, even privileged childhood. But Daniels can tell a story that refutes those assumptions about his childhood.
His father abandoned the family when he was two. His mother took a job as a secretary. But on her way home one evening she was mugged, sustaining injuries that eventually left her unable to work. The family went on welfare.
Growing up in New York's Spanish Harlem, Daniels was one of only four white students until ninth grade. Despite a difficult environment, he stayed out of trouble. He even won a full scholarship to Dartmouth College, graduating in 1985.
Because of his experience, Daniels has become a passionate advocate of the two-parent family.
"The goal here is not to blame single parents," Daniels says, emphasizing the often heroic efforts single mothers and fathers make to rear their children alone. "It's simply to get the word out about an important social truth."
Getting that word out won't be easy in a media culture that glorifies independence. But for Daniels and all the other advocates working on the front lines of family stability, hope lies in gradually changing messages-- and thus attitudes and behavior -- one TV sitcom, one college textbook, one social policy at a time.
The Christian Science Monitor
Academic Credentials
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