The former Arkansas governor and possible presidential hopeful said on "The Michael Medved Show" this week that most unwed mothers aren't able to support their children on a Hollywood actress' salary.
"You know, Michael, one of the things that's troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, 'Hey look, you know, we're having children, we're not married, but we're having these children, and they're doing just fine,'" Huckabee said. "But there aren't really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie."
A record 41 percent of American children were born to single mothers in 2008, according to a study by the Pew Research Center.
During Sunday's Academy Awards, a pregnant Portman, who won Best Actress for her role in the film "Black Swan," thanked her fiance Benjamin Millepied. Portman said Millepied "choreographed the film and has now given me my most important role of my life."
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But Huckabee said marriage should have come first and admonished the actress for glamorizing single motherhood."Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that's the story that we're not seeing, and it's unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out-of-children wedlock," he said on the radio show the day after the Oscars.
The same day, Huckabee drew criticism for feeding into birther conspiracy theories by saying on another radio show that President Barack Obama has a different view of the West, "having grown up in Kenya." The president was born and raised in the United States.
Natalie Portman's publicist did not immediately respond to a request for comment today from AOL News. Huckabee issued a statement today clarifying his remarks and insisting that he did not "slam" or "attack" the actress:
"Natalie is an extraordinary actor, very deserving of her recent Oscar and I am glad she will marry her baby's father," Huckabee wrote in a statement sent to The Washington Post today. "However, contrary to what the Hollywood media reported, I did not "slam" or "attack" Natalie Portman, nor did I criticize the hardworking single mothers in our country. My comments were about the statistical reality that most single moms are very poor, under-educated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death. That's the story that we're not seeing, and it's unfortunate that society often glorifies and glamorizes the idea of having children out of wedlock."
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