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Dimension VII: Delivery—How is it disseminated to the public?
Marriage educators have a lot to consider in relation to the content, intensity, methods, timing, setting, and target of marriage education. But there is still a crucial dimension left to consider: delivery. This dimension goes beyond earlier discussions of who provides marriage education to whom in what settings where and when to address the broader issue of how marriage education will be disseminated to the public and make a large enough impact on the institution of marriage. For this framework, we identify four general approaches to delivering marriage education: specialized marriage education; integrated marriage education; citizen marriage initiatives; and marriage culture seeding. Each approach plays an essential role in the larger task of strengthening marriages. In discussing these four delivery approaches, part of our purpose is to acknowledge that we will need more than well designed, formal educational programs, even ones that reach out to larger and more diverse groups of people. We will also need initiatives led by citizens and community activists with a concern and a passion to meet a pressing, local need. And we will need educational efforts directed broadly at seeding the culture with influential messages that place greater value on and support for the institution of marriage.
Specialist Marriage Education. There is a need for formal marriage education programs led by trained and often certified specialists. Specialized marriage educators approach the craft as helping professionals with a depth and skill that will provide a valuable opportunity to individuals and couples who seek out marriage education. Specialized education provides interested individuals and couples with formal, programmatic learning with significant content breadth and intensity, and multiple methods. Specialized marriage educators work at the “retail” level of the marriage education movement. But the inevitable limitation of this approach is that it works closer to the “mom and pop shop” level than the Wal-Mart level. Specialist marriage education struggles to reach large numbers of people. Even with creative marketing, the number of individuals who will seek out these specialized services and invest the time, money, and energy they require will be limited. Accordingly, as we have suggested several times so far, we need additional approaches to delivering marriage education that can reach farther.
Integrated Marriage Education. This approach recognizes that marriage education needs to be integrated into a more comprehensive set of human services provided to individuals and couples in multiple settings and multiple times of the life course. Generally, the more an educational initiative can symbiotically attach itself to an established setting that already serves couples, the greater its outreach. When other organizations and institutions integrate the goal of strengthening marriages as an valued part of their mission, then marriage education becomes a component of a larger system with resources and momentum rather than a distinct enterprise hawking its wares for interested customers. Professionals working with individuals and couples in, for instance, religious, healthcare, employment, and community settings, can provide valuable marriage education services as an organic supplement to their primary work. These professionals likely already know and understand the people they work with and can adapt marriage education to meet their particular needs and circumstances. In many instances, integrated marriage education will be less intense than that offered by specialized marriage educators. But because they are more available to people in the course of their everyday lives through professionals and institutions with which they are already familiar, this approach to marriage education holds promise.
Specialized marriage educators will play a role in this integrated approach in at least three ways. First, specialists can take the lead in helping various professionals and institutions recognize the value and potential of marriage education as a part of their services. Second, specialists can provide training to professionals—adjunct marriage educators, if you will—in these settings to help them deliver marriage education. Third, specialist marriage educators could also consult with professionals and institutions to adopt and adapt educational offerings to meet their unique situations. Nevertheless, specialist marriage educators work more at the “wholesale” level assisting other professionals and institutions to integrate marriage education into their repertoire of services. Of course, it is possible that some institutions would be large and dedicated enough to marriage education that they would also want specialists marriage educators inside the organization.
Citizen Marriage Initiatives. This third approach to delivering marriage education to the public recognizes that often the most effective educational experiences are not managed by professionals in a top-down manner. Rather, grass-roots, citizen-led initiatives responding to a shared, local problem can be a powerful way of reaching friends, neighbors, and community members with valuable educational experiences. Moreover, citizen marriage initiatives have the added bonus of going beyond providing educational opportunities to consumers to inviting those consumers to enlist in the cause and become producers or supporters of marriage education in some manner (Doherty, 2000b; Doherty & Carroll, 2002). An interesting distinction with this approach is that marriage education is about more than strengthening an isolated marriage; it also has the purpose of uniting communities, and making them better environments to nuture all marriages. In other words, citizen marriage initiatives attempt to create micro-cultural change. Educational opportunities that emerge from citizen marriage initiatives likely will lack the depth that specialized marriage educators could provide in a workshop. However, the strength of a citizen-led initiative is that it is closely linked to local problems shared by neighbors and community members. Hence, the educational offerings are more likely to meet a real-time, immediate need and attract enthusiastic learners. And these learners often go on to become a part of the initiative, stretching its reach.
Again, specialist marriage educators have a role to play in the citizen marriage approach, albeit more limited. For instance, one role is to help community members articulate a shared but inchoate problem. Then, the specialist can provide whatever support citizen leaders require, including cheerleading. The specialist also can provide citizen leaders a crash course in healthy marriage research to help them grasp the bigger picture of their local efforts. But specialist marriage educators are “on tap” rather than “on top” in this approach.
Marriage Culture Seeding. This final approach to delivering marriage education may be the most amorphous and unfamiliar to specialist marriage educators. It is also the approach with the least amount of action at this time. But it is just as critical to strengthening the institution of marriage.
Marriage education has its origins in the therapeutic, helping professions. Thus, marriage educators generally think of themselves as helping professionals with clients or students who seek out their services. The integrated marriage education approach invites specialist marriage educators to train and assist other professionals to assist in this helping profession. The citizen marriage initiative approach stretches specialist marriage educators to move beyond the helping professional role to assist in generating micro-cultural change as supporters of grass-roots initiatives. Similarly, the fourth approach for delivering marriage education—cultural seeding to strengthen the institution of marriage—differs from the traditional helping professional approach. Cultural seeding refers to attempts to spur cultural change. Formal attempts at cultural change include such means as media-based, public awareness and education campaigns. Formal attempts have as a goal generating informal intervention—creating or feeding a “buzz”—that gets people talking with each other and acting in small ways that over time creates a momentum of positive cultural change (Rogers, 2002). Cultural currents sweep individuals along almost imperceptibly toward a destination. The marriage educator who helps generate a stronger macro-culture of marriage ultimately helps all individuals and couples in the cultural mainstream to achieve their personal goals for a stable, healthy marriage.
The cultural seeding approach to delivering marriage education uses a different set of tools than is common in traditional marriage education. The tools of public health work and mass communications are central to this approach (see Hornik, 2002). These tools allow education, condensed and reduced to summaries or sound bites, to reach large proportions of the population. For instance, a broad, public health campaign that discredits myths that contribute to marital dissolution could slowly shift the common perception that marriage is primarily about romance, impervious to rationale processes. Similarly, if enough journalists over a sustained period drew attention to the value of better preparation for marriage (rather than mere preparation for an elaborate wedding), they could help create a norm of more intentional preparation for marriage, and reduce the number of impulsive or higher-risk marriages in the first place. Public policy may also be a tool of the cultural seeding approach. One important role that public policy plays is that is sends strong signals about what leaders believe is important to the general welfare of our society. Thus, for instance, when a state passes legislation reducing the fee for a marriage license for couples who engage in significant marriage preparation activities, the state indicates that society reaps a benefit from citizens who approach marriage intentionally rather than casually. All who marry within that state are officially invited to be more intentional. Even those who do not take advantage of the reduced license fee receive an important message about the value of stable marriages. The strength of delivering marriage education in a cultural seeding approach lies not in its ability to place a complete set of skills directly in people’s hands, but in its potential for slowing moving the cultural ground under people’s feet in directions that ultimately strengthen all marriages.
The specialist marriage educator has an essential role in the cultural seeding approach, as well. Clearly, the specialist can be a catalyst to bring attention to important issues and to attract the attention of media professionals. Some specialist marriage educators should regularly work with public relations specialists and cultivate relationships with local and national media professionals to get important ideas out. Similarly, specialists can be catalysts and consultants to public awareness campaigns, working with public health and communication professionals who share a concern for strengthening the institution of marriage. Marriage educators and scholars also can help to procure the substantial funding public awareness campaigns require. They can also be intricately involved in encouraging legislators and public policy makers to support marriage education.
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