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Executive Summary
In a progressive society such as the United States, we usually take problems, such as high divorce and non-marital childbearing rates, as a cause for action rather than a reason for resignation. Thus, it should surprise no one that the beginnings of a marriage movement have emerged in the United States over the last decade. A prominent part of this marriage proto-movement has been a wide array of educational initiatives. However, to date there has been no formal effort to develop an integrative conceptual framework of marriage education.
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This monograph provides marriage educators with a set of concepts that will help them better understand their craft and discover unseen possibilities. We offer a map, or framework, depicted in Figure 1, that helps marriage educators think more thoroughly, systematically, and creatively about opportunities to strengthen marriage. We draw attention to the elements of content, intensity, method, timing, setting, target, and delivery, and their implications for marriage education. We note that we have much to learn about marriage education for more disadvantaged individuals and couples who potentially have the most to benefit from educational initiatives. We point out the value of developing marriage education with greater specificity in content, timing, and target. We call for more organic intervention that embeds marriage education in diverse institutional settings with access to couples across the economic spectrum. In the end, we address the need to take marriage education beyond a valuable helping profession and even an expanding educational service integrated into the human service professions to a vibrant social movement.
Dimension I: Content—What is taught?
We discuss three sub-dimensions of content: (1) relational skills; (2) knowledge/attitudes; (3) motivations/virtues. The content of most marriage education is based in some way on the excellent research over the past 20 years that has illuminated couples’ interactional processes as central to the maintenance or breakdown of marital relationships. Less attention, however, has gone to basic knowledge about the institutional features and benefits of marriage, or to the virtues that sustain healthy marriages, despite the real possibility that the mental and ethical elements of the marital infrastructure that support healthy marriages have been eroding for some time. We encourage marriage educators to give these content areas more attention.
Dimension II: Intensity—What is the proper dosage?
Proper dosage is an important part of any intervention; too little means ineffective treatment but too much can be costly and limit access. Marriage educators need to think carefully about the intensity needed for an intervention to achieve its goals. For instance, some have hypothesized that marriage intervention for disadvantaged, lower-income couples will need to be more intensive than traditional approaches to be effective. On the other hand, practical concerns suggest the need for some marriage education to be less intense. Lower-dosage offerings may be needed to attract couples less inclined to seek out marriage education. This is especially true with preventative education, which targets less distressed couples who may not sense the immediate need for intervention. We call for a creative and flexible approach to marriage education that varies the dosage along a continuum of intensity from low to high.
Dimension III: Methods—How is it learned?
Teaching processes may be as crucial to educational outcomes as the content itself. We sample three important method issues for consideration: instructor, learning styles, and maintenance. The provider of marriage education affects program outcomes. The more instructors are familiar with the particular issues participants face, the more credibility they will have. They will also be able to adapt and present curricular content to fit the lived experience of participants more effectively. Curricula differ in how much emphasis they place on cognitive versus experiential learning. Well-educated individuals and couples, who are the most likely to seek out marriage education on their own, are accustomed to more cognitive and didactic approaches. This approach may be less effective for individuals without extensive formal education; they may prefer more active, experiential learning methods. Given the steady stream of new stresses that couples face, it is not surprising that the effects of marriage education appear to diminish over time. We encourage marriage educators to build creative ideas for following up with participants to maintain educational effects. And as a profession, marriage education needs to stretch the temporal horizon of their work to think about multiple interventions across the life cycle.
Dimension IV: Timing--When does it occur?
Marriage educators frequently teach general principles and skills for building and sustaining healthy marriages that appear to transcend temporal and circumstantial boundaries. But couples actually experience several different marriages over time. Certainly general principles exist, but there are good reasons for marriage educators to consider temporal tailoring of their work. Probably the most important reason for temporal specificity is that it makes curricula more concrete. The more tailored educational offerings are to the temporal and life circumstances of their students the more likely they are to fit their perceived needs. By extension, they may also attract more students in the first place. Marriage education has focused primarily on young, engaged or newly married couples. Reaching back to adolescents and young adults who are forming attitudes about marriage as well as forward to couples who are in the busy chauffeuring years and to those whose nests are emptying will reveal rich educational possibilities. Also, contemporary unions often follow more diverse temporal and developmental paths than in the past. Cohabitation, divorce, and remarriage introduce greater complexities, but creative marriage educators will find ways to help these individuals and couples build and sustain healthy marriages.
Dimension V: Setting--Where does it take place?
For at least three reasons it behooves marriage educators to think more concretely about where their craft takes place. First, there are settings that lend themselves well to particular educational topics (e.g., workplace lunchtime seminars on balancing work and marriage; religious firesides on sexual fidelity). Second, we may easily overlook fruitful venues for marriage education, such as the workplace or healthcare settings. Finally, the more settings in which effective marriage education occurs, the greater the proportion of individuals who will be reached. Marriage education needs a more organic approach to intervention; it needs to weave itself naturally into the systems and sectors of professional work where opportunities exist to strengthen marriages. We explore possibilities, strengths, and weaknesses for various settings, including: personal/home, neighborhood/community, religious organizations, education, healthcare, work/military, mass media, and government/public services.
Dimension VI: Target—Who receives it?
There is a need for marriage education to meet the needs of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. The empirical verdict is still out on whether interventions developed primarily for white, middle-class couples will be as effective for racial, ethnic, and low-income groups. Marriage education, which has labored for half a century to gain respect among social scientists, may finally gain it by demonstrating the efficacy of marriage education in service to disadvantaged and minority populations, whom marriage educators have been slow to reach. The promise of well-designed marriage education for more disadvantaged groups is substantial, at least theoretically, because stability rates are lower compared to more advantaged groups. Marriage educators need to direct primary attention to those who can benefit the most from their efforts. Throughout the article, we suggest ways that marriage education will need to be modified to serve more disadvantaged groups.
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 who provides marriage education to whom in what settings and when to address the broader issue of how marriage education will be disseminated to the public to make a measurable impact on the institution of marriage. We identify four general approaches to delivering marriage education, each essential to the overall purpose of strengthening marriages. (1) Specialist Marriage Education. Specialized marriage educators are 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 sessions with significant content breadth and intensity. (2) Integrated Marriage Education. This approach recognizes that marriage education needs to be integrated into a more comprehensive set of human services provided to individuals 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. (3) Citizen Marriage Initiatives. A third approach to delivering marriage education to the public recognizes that not all effective educational experiences are managed by professionals. Rather, grass-roots, citizen-led initiatives responding to a shared, local problem can be an effective way of reaching 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. 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 nurture all marriages. (4) Marriage Culture Seeding. The fourth approach refers to both formal and informal attempts to spur macro-cultural change. Formal attempts at cultural change include such means as media campaigns. Formal attempts often generate informal intervention—create a “buzz”—that gets people talking with each other and acting in small ways that build a momentum of positive cultural change. Cultural currents sweep individuals along almost imperceptibly toward a destination.
The goal of marriage education is to give individuals and couples the knowledge and skills needed to build and sustain a healthy marriage. Marriage education has been growing as a field over the last decade. But if marriage educators hope to reach every one who desires these educational opportunities, and indeed, if they want to expand the number of people who are interested in marriage education, marriage education needs to attain the status of a broad, mature social movement.
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