Family man

Carter wants a tax break for married

By Ann Blackman WASHINGTON (P)

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President Carter says the government ought to give married working couples the same tax benefits available to unmarried working people who live together.

He also says the government should remove from welfare programs the economic encouragement for fathers to desert their families.

The President, in a philosophical Fathers Day interview with the Associated Press, discussed the problems of the American family in 1977 and what the government might do to help.

Away from his imposing antique desk in the Oval Office, he relaxed across the room in a salmon-colored wing chair. Dressed in blue pinstripes, he sat with his legs crossed, as casually as he might in his favorite blue jeans.

Carter, husband for almost 31 years, father of four, spoke of his own family life as a child; of his joy at being a grandfather, of his support for working mothers, including his wife, Rosalynn. Sending her on a diplomatic mission to Latin America "proved to be one of the better things I've ever done," he said.

Then he talked of his hopes for the American family.

In almost every program that his Zadministration puts forward, he said, "the integrity of the family ought to be a factor."

Even the tax laws discriminate against the most traditional family value: marriage. Federal income taxes total less for two working single people who live together than for a married working couple.

Congress has voted this year to reduce the difference, but it still exists.

“And I would like to eliminate the disparity altogether," Carter said.

The new standard deductions effective this year can total $1,200 more for two single working people living together than for a married working couple filing jointly. -Under the old law, the unmarried couple could have a $2,000 advantage when each took the standard deduction. Married persons filing separate tax returns cannot get the same benefits available to unmarried persons.

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The welfare laws, he said, "quite often benefit handsomely the divided family. If the husband works full-time at the minimum wage, he makes a certain income for his wife and children. But if he leaves home or pretends to leave home and continues to work, and his family draws wel*fare payments, their standard of living can be greatly enhanced."

This, Carter said, “is a divisive force that the government artifically imposes on the family system.”

But what will he do if he finds it expensive to eliminate laws that make it

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financially beneficial for welfare families ship. In my mind it's certainly not a substitute for the family life that I described to you.

to break up?

Carter replied, "We're struggling with that question now. I don't think it would cost a whole lot more to keep families together."

The President declined to spell out proposals he might offer to change tax and welfare laws.

Does he approve of mothers working when they have small children?

"I think it's good," the President replied, adding that his wife went to work before their oldest child was two years old.

Should the tax laws be revised to give working mothers a better deal in such areas as child care tax credits and Social Security?

Carter said, "...I don't want to .I don't want to presuppose the kinds of help we might want to give working mothers. But I think the daycare center concept and the tax laws, among other things, ought to be designed to let a parent be employed and also to prevent children from suffering.

"But what form the tax laws should take, I'd rather not say because we are now working on a comprehensive tax re form program."

Carter said the country's educational system could be used more efficiently. The President said schools haven't been adequately used after school hours. He said the after-school program for his 9-yearold daughter, Amy, "really appeals to me.'

"They have what they call an expanded school program where kids can come to school at 7:30 a.m. and not leave until 6 p.m.," Carter said. "This gives both parents freedom to be employed or, where there is only one parent, that person can do so."

Carter said Amy's fourth-grade afterschool curriculum includes computer programming, as as well well as Spanish and photography.

The reporter turned the discussion to homosexuality, a topic of discussion around the country following repeal of a Florida ordinance banning discrimination against homosexuals.

Q. I wonder if you think homosexuality is a threat to the family. Should they be able to adopt children and teach school? And marry?

A. I don't see homosexuality as a threat to the family. What has caused the highly publicized confrontations on homosexuality is the desire of homosexuals for the rest of society to approve and to add its acceptance of homosexuality as a normal sexual relationship. I don't feel that it's a normal interrelationship. But at the same time, I don't feel that society, through its laws, ought to abuse or harass the homosexual. I think it's one of those things that is not accepted by most Americans as a normal sexual relation-

Q. Do you think they should be able to adopt children or teach school? Would you be upset if you knew Amy were being taught by a homosexual?

A. That's something I'd rather not answer. I don't see the need to change laws to permit homosexuals to marry. I know that there are homosexuals who teach and the children don't suffer. But this is a sub-

ject I don't particularly want to involve myself in. I've got enough problems without taking on another.

Carter said he thinks political life in the capital puts special strains on marriages. "I think in Washington there is a particular conflict between ambition and the desire to do a good job, which is legitimate on one hand, and the obligations to hold your own families together and meet the needs of your spouse and children on the other. I don't think the two are necessarily incompatible.”

Carter volunteered that when he has heard of a staffer's possible marriage problems, "Rosalynn and I have invited the family to come over and let the children play with Amy and let us show them that you can have an aggressive, dynamic, competitive political career and at the same time, maintain your allegiances and your obligations to your own family

duties."

Resting his head on the back of his chair, Carter reminisced about family life when he was a child.

"I think there was a much greater sense of social pressure to hold the family together," he said. "It was a disgrace, at least where I grew up, for a family to be separated. Divorce was not accepted as part of life.

"And I think there was a much greater sense of religious commitment, that the marriage vow was sacred, and not only was the love of a partner an important part of it, but an obligation to be involved in honesty, integrity, truthfulness and faithfulness in times of adversity and in times when the ardor of physical love waned. There was almost a sense of be trayal when one left a marriage partner.

President Carter, the parent, is now a grandfather. What does that mean to him this Fathers Day? "It's almost as delightful to have a grandchild as it is to have one of your own children... We are now experiencing the same delight in seeing Jason (age 22 months) and James (almost 4 months) develop without the constant responsibility for their care, and that ability to move in and out of the life of a grandchild and not have the constant responsibility for them is an additional element of the joy."