Marriage Education: what do we know? What should we do about it?
By Harry Benson
Ingredients of a successful policy
If a community – whether city, county, church or other group – wished to construct an effective policy for strengthening marriages and reducing divorces, it appears that a combination of three essential ingredients is necessary.
- A publicly stated policy in open support of marriage appears to have impact on marital stability both in the immediate and wider community.
- The availability of regular ongoing marriage education for all couples as a healthy norm – within such a policy – appears to contribute to improvements in marital stability. The inclusion of PREP for its well-documented stand-alone effects seems sensible. However this is by no means essential. Successful community marriage policies have combined inventories and information & awareness courses to good effect.
- The availability of regular ongoing support, mainly through “mentoring”, also appears important. Easy-to-use inventories make mentoring very accessible to virtually any ordinary married couple.
The benefits of “extended family”
It could be argued that these ingredients represent a rediscovery of the benefits of “extended family”. “Extended family” offers intimate exposure to several couples as a source of reinforced values, role models and support.
In contrast, modern “nuclear families” offer children intimate exposure to just one couple – their parents. Where there is dysfunction between the parents – as is inevitable in all relationships at some level – the children lack an alternative trusted source of values, or role model from whom to learn intimacy, or source of support in their own relationships.
As evidence of this generational influence, Judith Wallerstein’s studies highlight the gulf in relational behaviour between children of either divorce or intact marriage when they become adults (21). Paul Amato’s studies even more clearly show that divorce breeds divorce and marital problems breed marital problems (22).
The key ingredients can be restated as follows:
- Marriage Policy = “Marriage is important”
- Marriage Education = “Ongoing education is normal”
- Marriage Mentoring = “Ongoing support is healthy”