The divorce revolution–the steady displacement of a marriage culture by a culture of divorce and unwed parenthood–has failed. It has created terrible hardships for children, incurred unsupportable social costs, and failed to deliver on its promise of greater adult happiness. The time has come to shift the focus of national attention from divorce to marriage […]
This research project was conducted as part of the evaluation for the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative. In 1999 Governor Frank Keating announced the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, with the objective of reducing the divorce rate in Oklahoma by 1/3 by the year 2010. One aim of the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative is to change the culture of support […]
The impact of welfare policies on discouraging or encouraging marriage has long been a topic of discussion. Welfare programs, by providing single parents with the economic means to support their children, are thought to discourage marriage by their nature. The negative economic effects of single motherhood are well-known. In 2000, the poverty rate for children […]
This National Survey is one of the first major studies on the strengths of marriage versus the exclusive focus on problems. Using a sample of 21,501 married couples (both husbands and wives) from all 50 states, this survey used a comprehensive marital assessment tool called ENRICH which focuses on 20 significant areas and contains 195 […]
This lecture explores why marriage is important and necessary for the well-being of the participants and of society. It discusses marriage as a countercultural institution, the selflessness of marriage, how recent federal court rulings regarding the right to privacy threaten to further undermine marriage, and how marriage promotes the common good by building families and […]
Examined several protective mechanisms that may reduce deleterious correlates of marital conflict and marital dissolution in young children. One set of potential buffers focused on parent-child interaction: parental warmth, parental scaffolding/praise, and inhibition of parental rejection. As a second set of potential buffers, each parent was interviewed about their “”meta-emotion philosophy””–that is, their feelings about […]
President Bush’s initiative to promote marriage among low-income people and the role of psychologists in ensuring programs employ evidence-based practices are discussed. The involvement of a psychologist in the Building Strong Families that targets low-income, unmarried couples who are expecting a baby is highlighted, as well as the involvement of psychologists in the Oklahoma Marriage […]
Research has demonstrated that soldier retention rates, overall satisfaction with military life, and healthy coping methods are all affected by the soldier’s marital and family life satisfaction. Still, marital conflict, in general, and domestic violence, more specifically, tends to be prevalent among military families. Since 1999, the Building Strong and Ready Families (BSRF)program has provided […]
The current study compared cardiovascular risk profiles and trajectories (i.e., within-person changes) of women who were married or cohabitating and who had high relationship satisfaction with those of women with moderate or low satisfaction and with those of women who were single, divorced, and widowed. Participants were 493 women from the Healthy Women Study, a […]
Marital discord is one of society's most common and urgent problems. The destructive outcomes of marital discord have been documented with the 50 percent (Cherlin, 1992) to 67 percent (Martin & Bumpass, 1989) divorce rate for first married couples. Evidence also exists that many couples, who do stay married, continue their marriages in distressed and […]