Phil McGraw claims the US needs to stop “rewarding bad behavior” of single mothers and instead encourage them to get married
Phil “Dr. Phil” McGraw: “We pay now if you're a single mother. We didn't pay single mothers back then, we pay them now. And if they get married, we stop paying them. ... You're subsidizing behavior you don't want and not subsidizing behavior you do want.”
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From the July 15, 2023, edition of Trinity Broadcasting Network's Huckabee
PHIL MCGRAW (GUEST): We're making a big mistake in America right now. You don't reward bad behavior. If you were -- if you asked me what's the most fundamental psychological truth that you could say, that just psych 101, what do you boil it down to? It would be: Don't reward bad behavior. And if you were gonna translate that into policy or government, and I'm no politician, I could care less. Red, blue, Republican, Democrat, I don't know enough about it to speak. But I can tell you this, you don't reward bad behavior, and you don't subsidize behavior you don't want more of.
MIKE HUCKABEE (HOST): That's exactly right. That's, that's not really that difficult to understand, is it?
MCGRAW: It's really not. And you know, single mothers, you know in the sixties, we had like that percentage. Now in the twenties, 2020, it's that percentage. Why?
Because we pay now if you're a single mother. We didn't pay single mothers back then, we pay them now. And if they get married, we stop paying them. We're – you're subsidizing behavior you don't want and not subsidizing behavior you do want. It makes no sense to me.
Look, this is chess not checkers, but you've got to stop and think, are we doing things that are fundamentally against what will make this country stand up tall again? And we are, we're subsidizing the wrong things. We're rewarding bad behavior. We need to stop doing that. We need to start rewarding those that work hard, and we need to start enabling good things, not bad things, and give people a track to run on. That's all we've got to do here.
HUCKABEE: You know, I think a lot of people can relate to what you just said. What you said is common sense. And most everybody, when you say it, is like, yeah, I get that, but we're not doing it. And that's the big challenge I think that we face as parents, as business leaders, as pastors, whatever role we play in the country, that's a big, really big challenging part of it.