Towards An Integrated Strategy For Marriage Education

Despite the impressive growth of marriage education over the last decade as a helping vocation, and even with encouraging signs that it is weaving itself into various institutions that provide human services to broader segments of the population, still this will not be enough to make a substantial difference in the institution of marriage if it is unaccompanied by micro- and macro-cultural change. While it is valuable for each marriage education enterprise to think about expanding its outreach to more people, getting marriage education infused into the culture is more than the sum of its formal, programmatic parts separately growing and extending its boundaries. What is needed is a social movement that infuses marriage education into the normative infrastructures of our society and everyday lives in a manner similar to how the environmental and personal health movements have changed our individual and collective lives.

Unquestionably at this early, developmental stage of the marriage education movement, it is a bit presumptuous to propose a grandiose, population-level treatment plan for marriage education. But there are hints of what such a model could resemble. One possible template comes from an emerging public health issue. Our society now is well past the age when medicine is just a valued social service. Health is a deeply held, widely shared personal goal and a valued public good. We are no longer content with treating disease, as important as that is. And we are even past the time when a proto-profession was beginning to succeed at integrating the practice of health promotion into the mainstream of the healthcare system. Instead, as a society, we desire preventative education that gives individuals the knowledge and skills they need to sustain a healthy life. Obesity education is a timely, specific example. Health scientists have recently realized that we are on the verge of a health epidemic that will have serious, deleterious consequences for generations, and that even now threatens smoking as the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States (Mokdad et al. 2004). The Centers for Disease Control has proclaimed obesity a national epidemic, with more than a quarter of adults obese and an additional third overweight (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001). Moreover, obesity is increasing rapidly, especially among children and disadvantage populations. Obesity will spin off future health crises, as well, such as diabetes.

Treating obesity is extremely difficult. The best treatment, in this case, is prevention. And prevention success in this area will produce happier and healthier lives, with reduced personal and public costs. The importance of this cause is such that public policy makers are unwilling to sit on the sideline and cheer the individual efforts of healthcare workers. The federal government will spend more than $100 million dollars over the next few years for programs and research to prevent and control obesity (National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2003). States will also invest funds in the fight. Even the Internal Revenue Service now treats obesity as a disease allowing expenses for weight reduction to be deducted for tax purposes, like other healthcare expenses. The U.S. Surgeon General has issued a comprehensive, strategic action plan that calls for private and public partners to fight the epidemic of obesity. This plan involves low-, moderate-, and high-level educational initiatives with multiple messages delivered in numerous settings and sectors of society tailored to different age and socioeconomic and racial groups and accompanied by substantial public and private resources to promote and evaluate these efforts (see U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001). The effort to promote healthy marriages, we believe, requires no less an effort.

The goal of a marriage education movement is to give contemporary individuals and couples the knowledge, skills, and virtues needed to build and sustain a healthy marriage. Marriage education has accelerated as a helping vocation over the last decade, and is beginning to integrate itself into the portfolio of human services provided by various institutions. These efforts to date have helped many. The movement will mature as marriage educators reach out to assist every one who desires these educational opportunities, and as they expand their intervention efforts to include micro- and macro-cultural change. We hope that this article helps marriage educators think more systematically and creatively about their craft in ways that will produce wise action to bless the lives of children, adults, and the communities in which they reside.