This paper presents progress to date on a review examining how marriage and relationship programs–defined as programs to improve the relationship between two people involved romantically–affect the quality of couples’ relationships. This is an important issue given changes in the past several decades in marriage and divorce rates, the rise of single parenting, and the […]
After explaining why Oklahoma should be fertile ground for faith-based social service initiatives, this paper explores the challenges Oklahoma is having partnering with faith-based organizations (FBOs). Oklahoma’s complicated social welfare system and political culture is described, including constitutional limitations that hamper the State’s ability to confront social service issues in a coherent fashion. The overhaul […]
This paper comments on three studies that explored influences on couple relationships. One study has an ethnographic focus (Edin, England, and Linnenberg), another combines large sample survey research with ethnographic methods (Cherlin, Burton, Hurt, and Purvin), and the third relies on large sample methods using complex econometric analyses (Ahituv and Lerman). Findings from the studies […]
The current study examined whether the effects of positive expectations on changes in marital satisfaction over the first 4 years of marriage were moderated by the nature of spouses’ interaction behaviors and relationship attributions. Consistent with predictions, when spouses’ skills were most positive, positive expectations predicted more stable satisfaction over time whereas less positive expectations […]
This article discusses the effects of cohabitation and marriage on binge drinking, cigarette smoking and marijuana use in the U.S. The authors argue that marriage causes reductions in risky behaviors like binge drinking and marijuana use (especially for men), but has little effect on smoking. Less consistent are the effects of cohabitation on risky behaviors. […]
Drawing on a national longitudinal study of 297 parents and their married offspring, the authors found that parents’ marital discord was negatively related to offspring’s marital harmony and positively related to offspring’s marital discord. The transmission of marital quality was not mediated by parental divorce, life-course variables, socioeconomic attainment, retrospective measures of parent-child relationships, or […]
The Welfare Peer TA Network sponsored a multi-State TA event on July 15-16, 2003, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. This event was co-coordinated with Public Strategies, the public relations firm that manages the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative. The Administration for Children and Families’ Region VI, VII and IX Offices provided additional support, ensuring this event met State […]
Partners in romantic relationships provided reports on perceived changes in their love, commitment, and satisfaction and completed contemporaneous scales on the same relationship phenomena multiple times over several years. At each wave of the longitudinal study, participants whose relationships had remained intact perceived that their love and related phenomena had increased since they had last […]
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 […]