If we take classes to learn the skills we need to survive in the world at large, as well as the working world, should we take classes to learn how to be a good spouse, too?
About a week ago, Utah Rep. Dixon Pitcher introduced a bill that would require would-be spouses to wait at least three days after obtaining a license before getting married, unless they took premarital training first. Wyoming introduced a similar bill; couples that didn't attend three hours of marriage counseling would have to wait a year before getting a marriage license. Other states have tried to pass legislation that would require counseling before couples could divorce.
Clearly there's a movement to get people -- with the help of teachers and counselors -- to think before marrying or divorcing. It sounds like a good idea, but do marriage prep courses work?
Yes and no, according to a 2010 Brigham Young University study, which examined about 50 such classes around the country. Yes, the classes significantly increased couples' communication skills. No, the classes didn't improve relationship quality or satisfaction.
As one researcher noted, "Engaged couples are so in love that they can't be more satisfied. Their heads are bumping against the ceiling."
Maybe trying to talk sense into young lovers who are about to walk down the aisle is too late. Perhaps we should start talking about what makes for a healthy marriage in high school; at least that's what the majority of responders in an informal survey Susan Pease Gadoua and I offered as part of our research for our book, "The New I Do," indicated.
Is there a place for marital education amid algebra, environmental ed and world history classes?
Some high schools already offer that. In 1998, Florida became the first state to require a class on relationships and marriage for high school students, part of a larger plan to encourage marriage skills by discounting marriage licenses for couples that take a premarital skills course. The mandate hasn't had much impact because "loopholes in the law make it easy to avoid changing the education curriculum," according to the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Loopholes or not, many see a need for such high school classes. In 2000, long-time teacher Marlene Pearson was asked by the National Marriage Project to review the effectiveness of several marriage and relationship programs used in schools. As she says in her study, "Can Kids Get Smart About Marriage," youths are:
Confused and misguided about the differences between sex and love, living together and marriage, manhood and fatherhood. They get little help or accurate information from their elders. The Baby Boom generation, veterans of the sexual and divorce revolution, has little to say, and certainly not much good to say, about marriage. This leaves young people like my students with few clues as to how they achieve a goal they almost universally seek. They have to try to figure it out by themselves. But the sad truth is that it is hard to figure out marriage on your own. Most young adults in most societies across the world are able to depend on the teachings and traditions of the larger community in life matters as consequential as finding a lifelong mate and getting married. But very little guidance is available in our society today, and what guidance there is comes from Hollywood and Madison Avenue. As a result, young adults are floundering and often failing in their personal and family lives.
But are high schools -- most of which have had to lay off teachers and staff because of budget cutbacks and are struggling to boost academic scores to keep up with new legislation -- the best place to teach kids about marriage? As a spokesman for the Florida Education Association noted, "Were schools designed to do this much socialization and values clarification? Many teachers would argue it would be great if they could focus more on academic subjects and worry less about these."
At one point, eight other states besides Florida addressed statewide school-based marriage education. Initiatives failed in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. South Carolina dropped a program after using it for five years.
South Dakota uses the Connections curriculum, which focuses on marriage and relationship communications skills; a 2004 study of the program found marginal success -- some students felt somewhat more negatively about divorce and somewhat more positively toward premarital counseling. But because it was an elective class, the students who most needed to learn marital skills didn't benefit because they didn't sign up for the class.
Are teenagers good subjects for learning marital skills anyway? Maybe, especially if you look at them in love. Adolescents "are often more focused on how they feel about the relationship and what they are getting out of it rather than a mutual process that includes how the other person feels about the relationship," according to Brenda McDaniel, assistant professor of psychology at Kansas State University, who has been studying how 18- to 20-year-old dating couples handle conflict.
But the bigger question is, what marital skills do we teach and what kind of marriage are we talking about? "Traditional" marriage, as the Heritage Foundation stresses? What do we teach teens who are gay or lesbian, or kids who are being raised by choice mothers or have two fathers or two mothers? What message will we send teens if schools promote a husband-wife marriage as the only healthy -- or "real" -- relationship?
Should we be teaching teens how to be a good spouse? And, if so, what do we teach and who should do it?
Follow Vicki Larson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/OMGchronicles
They need to know how the laws treat men vs women when it comes to divorce, child custody, child support, alimony, claims of domestic violence and child abuse. Once boys are aware of the facts, if they choose to marry, they won't be blind sighted if things go south in their marriage.
Marriage lessons were traditionally learned at home from the best example...PARENTS. This has become obsolete in today's society. There are too many outside forces working against these types of 11th hour programs.
Parents today spend more time giving children advice on how to survive once you've been through a divorce. This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Feminism promotes single parenting and living life without men (despite the fact that studies show single parenting damages kids). In addition young men watch each day as divorced men lose their possessions and their rights to see their children. While women see this as some type of victory over men; high-fiving each other every time they hear about a celebrity wife winning money from a divorce. Women are even writing books on how to beat the prenup system, which is enough to make most men's skin crawl (it's a wonder more women file for divorce). Our society promotes legalized prostitution.
The only way to fix marriage is to even out the balance of power. You can never make these things work if only one person has everything to lose. Prenups should be MANDATORY and lawyers should be utilized in the beginning versus the end. No more consolation prizes.
people, the "family unit" isn't going anywhere. single people have families too, as well as unmarried people who live together and raise children together, as well as (dun dun dun) gay people. we can all build a family with those we love, if we work hard enough at it. marriage is not the magical answer to all things good and holy. you have to work together and be able to make private decisions together to make any serious relationship work, and there is no class or textbook that can teach someone how to do that. they have to learn it for themselves through experience and emotional growth and be able to turn to family and loved ones for advice when needed, not an overwhelmed high school teacher who frankly may not even know what to say.
A recent survey found America's most sucessful 30% came from generations of traditional, "Ozzie and Harriet" type homes.
we're mass producng losers who need to feel bad about themselves: it's the last hope for change.
The Fall of Rome came with moral decay, fiscal irresponsiblility, mercenary armies: not like we haven't been through this before, and there probaly isn't much to be done about it.
Nice try, though.
But what is generally referred to as 'the Fall of Rome' doesn't include the eastern empire. This, with its centre in Constantinople, managed to cling on for almost another thousand years until it was eventually conquered by the Turks under their leader Mohammed II in the year AD 1453.
As for Rome, when empires fall, the land and people don't go away (well, most of them don't) : just the empire.
Most women today don't know how to be happy. From the moment you meet them you can tell they are searching for some type of happiness they can't find from within. They've cut themselves off from their radiant feminine core in order to become men. I'm glad they can get their own source of income, but trying to be the "second man" in a RELATIONSHIP will NEVER work. There can only be one man and one woman in a relationship PERIOD. If you ask a woman to pass the salt from across the table these days it takes about five minutes as she processes if she's being submissive for doing so. So she gets dumped and goes back to her feminist handbook which tells her that she was just too "strong" a woman for him.
Go around a foreign woman for a day and the results would surprise you. Watch how the men light up around her feminine energy. Watch how the American woman question what magical powers she has. Then go to a mall one day and sit and look at the faces of the "modern woman", they all look so miserable and discontent.
Instead of feminism, people ought ot take up ball room dancing.
I've worked for women and had them work for me. We put on our little grey faces and get the job done, like everybody else.
But the Tango! Vive la difference.
Oh and just one more thing___By the way_____ we are cutting your salaries and making you pay more now towards health insurance coverage and making you pay more now for pension coverage and requiring you to work 10 more years until you can qualify for a retirement pension___Now get out there and do good job..
Schools do start needing to become more relevent instead of hanging onto the 100 year old model of tests>all.
How does that saying go? I'm too old to know everything.
The older I get, the worse it gets!
Churches and Families is where this sort of thing belongs, not schools.
The politics in schools is already bad enough.
Besides, this sort of thing is learned more by association, interaction, life.
The public education version will be some sterile effort guaranteed to discredit whatever it is trying to say.