It's been a quarter of a century since several states began experimenting with public policy support for relationship education services to help couples build and maintain healthy relationships and stronger marriages. Just a few years later, the federal government began investing $75 million to $100 million a year in community-based relationship education programs that primarily target diverse, low-income individuals and couples. Over the past decade, in his 12 blogs for the Institute for Family Studies, I have chronicled these policy experiments and studies that attempt to evaluate their effectiveness.1 And I have published widely in academic media about this new policy initiative.2
But I wasn't holed up in an ivory tower. I was a visiting scholar at the Administration for Children and Families, which directs federal policy efforts in this area. I visited publicly funded relationship education programs in Alabama, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas, and sat down with many more relationship education administrators who run programs elsewhere. I talked. I am part of the research advisory group for one of the nation's leading programs in Oklahoma City. And last year, I left my academic job to work for a few more years at one of the nation's other major relationship education businesses here in Utah.
Lately, I've been getting philosophical about this work and want to take a step back and feel the bigger picture. I must confess that I am both optimistic and pessimistic about this policy initiative. I am glad that these needy individuals and couples are receiving a solid education that helps them “row upstream” to improve their relationships, rather than just drifting along with the flow of relationships. think. These types of relationship enhancement programs have a long track record of helping both privileged and less privileged couples. Apparently my optimistic side should win this battle.
But my skeptical, scientific brain worries that I'm expecting too much from this Polyan-like policy initiative. Challenge 1: A series of classes (most of which average only about 10 hours of total class time) introduces the strong, stable, bold aspirations of a stressed and troubled couple into the face of negative, not to mention personal challenges. How can we overcome these cultural factors? relationship? Conundrum 2: Even if these programs are more powerful than I can tolerate as a scientific skeptic, how can these programs be used in numbers that can really move healthy, stable families in our society? How can we reach ambitious couples and co-parents?
After 25 years, here is my working answer to this initial conundrum. I think it's “sticky”. meta message These interpersonal classes that bring about lasting change sink into participants' minds and stay with them. But perhaps the real secret ingredient is the meta-message you get from these classes, regardless of the content or method of teaching. In other words, relationships are about learning and growing. Fate is not in the driver's seat. you. Relationships are not particularly natural. It takes effort. But people can get smarter and do better jobs.
But I don't expect the federal government, with its ballooning budget deficit and chronically dysfunctional Congress, to double down on investments in human relations education to reach more poor people. So my evolving answer to the second conundrum is: Even if these government-supported relationship-strengthening efforts impact only a small number of people each year, they can amplify their impact by stimulating cultural change, allowing more people to shape society and society. I think it will help. Maintain healthy relationships and stronger marriages. We are cultural creatures and flow along the currents of culture. We desperately need these trends to move in the right direction. Governments can help by sending clear and strong signals.
I'm not optimistic about help from other social institutions. Will the media take up the cause of strong marriages and stable families in the same way that it has helped promote cultural values of diversity and inclusion, for example? I'm skeptical. Similarly, despite the large body of research showing the positive effects of marriage on children and adults, it is unlikely that academia will adopt a pro-marriage agenda any time soon. Progressive ideology instilled in academia tends to view marriage as an anachronistic institution that is on the decline in modern society. Of course, institutional religion generally preaches the value of strong marriage. But the data shows that today's young people, who are forming families, are increasingly absent from the pews.
Every year, policy funding provides good interpersonal education to hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged youth and young adults. These policy funds are powerful cultural signals about what is important to building successful lives and thriving communities.
But the government, under both Republican and Democratic control, has been experimenting on a small scale with what it can do directly to help individuals and couples gain the knowledge and skills needed for healthy relationships. My hope is that these government-funded interventions can go beyond the actual classroom participants and encourage a broader culture toward smarter relationship-forming strategies and combating relationship entropy.
Usually the culture drips under From the advantaged to the disadvantaged. But while advantaged people personally invest in their marriage and receive the dividends, they often balk at promoting this stock to disadvantaged people whose family lives are more unstable. If government efforts to promote family stability and marriage among those least able to benefit from it can have some success, and I think they can, perhaps this excellent educational program will all defy social gravity and trickle into the broader cultural conversation. Change attitudes and behaviors on a large scale. We have already seen some evidence of anti-gravitational properties. For example, several books by progressive authors published in prominent publications in the past decade take this policy initiative and its goals seriously. Some conclude that this is not a good idea, while others give it lukewarm and conditional applause. But at least they're paying attention and affirming the issues they're trying to address. Similarly, prominent media articles consistently highlight the need for good policy. I've also heard from academic colleagues across the country that there are long waiting lists for university courses that focus on building and maintaining healthy relationships and strong marriages.
However, there are some caveats. Having followed research on the effectiveness of various social policy approaches and taught many family policy courses, I have found that the desire for benevolent policy does not extend to solving the problems that are being sought to be solved. I am acutely aware of how much there is not. The distance between design and performance is often large and discouraging. It's as if part of our societal problems are resistant to our antibiotic policies.
However, stable families make essential contributions to civil society. What if our elected officials ignore this huge social problem that affects the life chances of millions of children and derails the lives of many young people? What other major social problems of our time are outside the scope of public policy attention? Government funds are fighting rising rates of childhood obesity and soaring levels of depression and anxiety in teens. . With birth rates well below replacement levels, national leaders at home and abroad are wondering what appropriate steps they can take to provide the next generation of workers and citizens they need. It's bothering me. And, of course, governments are already deeply involved in efforts to ameliorate the costly problems that arise when healthy relationships fail to form or break down.
It may be a cliché, but it seems like a better idea to build an inexpensive fence at the top of a cliff than to buy an expensive ambulance at the bottom. We grapple with the problem of family instability, despite the complexity and uncertainty of how to resolve it, balancing potential collective benefits with individual freedom and diverse values. I think we need to continue to address this issue in a subtle way. There are smart people who disagree with my view that public support for relationship education is a good way to address this problem. But I think we need to keep trying.
we can We bring about change in the lives of couples by educating them about good relationships in various ways. Good marriages are not easy, but we know how healthy relationships are formed and we understand what knowledge, skills and virtues maintain them. However, we probably overestimate how much people can actually understand this knowledge at a behavioral level and apply it to their daily lives. Every year, policy funding provides good interpersonal education to hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged youth and young adults. These policy funds are powerful cultural signals about what is important to building successful lives and thriving communities.
This is what I try to see the bigger picture as I look at relationship education programs across the country and read research on their effectiveness. Gradually, the idea that lasting love is something you learn and grow from, and that eternal dreams are possible with wise effort (and some cultural cheerleading) to make it a reality, has gradually permeated the culture. I see you there. That thought creates hope, and hope is powerful.
Alan J. Hawkins is manager of the Utah Marriage Commission and vice president of the National Alliance for Love and Marriage Education. This is a revised version of the article originally published. public square magazine.
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2. Search for “Alan J. Hawkins relationship education” in Google Scholar to see a list of related publications.