The promotion of marriage and two-parent families became an explicit public policy goal with the passage of the 1996 welfare reform bill. Marriage has the putative effect of reducing welfare dependency among single mothers, but only if they marry men with earnings sufficient to lift them and their children out of poverty. Newly released data […]
This document highlights common factors experienced by immigrant couples that can be beneficial and strenuous to the couple relationship. It also includes specific issues program developers should consider when working with recent, Spanish-speaking immigrant couples residing in the United States. The recommendations in this memo are drawn from discussions at the Supporting Healthy Marriage and […]
As an institution, the family’s distinguishing trait is its powerful combination of love,discipline, and permanence. Families can teach standards of personal conduct thatcannot be enforced by law, but which are indispensable traits for democratic civilsociety. These traits include honesty, trust, loyalty, cooperation, self-restraint, civility,compassion, personal responsibility and respect for others. (Author abstract, modified)
Even the most loving couple will have conflict at times. Conflict itself is not bad. It is the way people deal with conflict that may cause problems. If conflict does not serve a purpose or solve a problem it can cause disruption and chaos. However, couples who do not have open conflict probably ignore issues […]
There has been much debate among family scholars about how to define and measure relationship satisfaction. Much of the disagreement stems from two sources: how to define the construct of interest and whether to use a global or specific measure. (Author abstract)
The United States Conference of Mayors’Council for the New American City and the Dollar Wi$e Campaign have compiled this Financial Education Curriculum Matrix for use by cities in implementing local financial literacy campaigns. The purpose of this Matrix is to array financial education materials that meet a number of criteria established by the Dollar Wi$e […]
This article reports on the development and long-term evaluation of a marital distress prevention program for German couples, the Ein Partnerschaftliches Lernprogramm (EPL, A Couple’s Learning Program). The EPL is a 6-session program designed to teach couples effective communication and problem-solving skills. In the current article, the EPL is evaluated in a prospective, quasi-experimental, controlled […]
Mr. Howard Hendrick, Director, Oklahoma Department of Human Services, addresses Congress to share some of Oklahoma’s welfare reform successes, with a particular emphasis on family strengthening efforts consistent with the express purposes of TANF to promote marriage. Mr. Hendrick also proposes family strengthening strategies.
This article reports the results on marriages of a randomized clinical trial for couples experiencing the transition to parenthood. In addition to a control group, there was 1 intervention, a psycho-communicative-educational 2-day couples’ workshop. The outcome measures were marital quality, postpartum depression, and expressed hostile affect (assessed using an observational coding of marital conflict discussions […]
Mr. Howard Hendrick, Director, Oklahoma Department of Human Services, appears before Congress to share the genesis and status of Oklahoma’s strategy to strengthen marriages and reduce divorce.