Marriage Education: what do we know? What should we do about it?
By Harry Benson
Introduction
In order to learn whether couples can improve their odds of staying happily married, thereby reducing rates of family breakdown, we need to know three things.
- We need to know what “risk factors” make marriages more likely to succeed or fail. For example, we might reasonably assume that couples who are better-off or those who communicate well together will probably have a more successful marriage. But this would be our personal assumption. We need objective research to check this out.
- We need to know whether any of these “risk factors” can be changed by outside influence – specifically by “marriage education”. Ideally we would learn this over time by comparing couples who receive a programme with similar couples who do not.
- We also need to know which approaches to marriage education are most effective, simply because there are so many of them.
Predictors of marital stability
A good starting point is to establish that an array of research studies have identified many factors predictive of the “stability” of a marriage – whether a couple will stay together or not. Howard Markman and Scott Stanley helpfully arrange these factors into two groups (1).
“Static” factors are those things we probably can’t do much about. These include a defensive personality, parental divorce, prior cohabitation; prior divorce, previous children, different religious beliefs, marrying young, whirlwind romances, and serious financial difficulties.
“Dynamic” factors are those things we definitely can do something about. These include a negative style of communication, difficulty with handling disagreements, unrealistic beliefs about marriage, different attitudes about important things, and a low level of commitment to one another.
To illustrate this more clearly, couples who stay married tend to have fewer negative automatic interactions – bad habits. Couples who divorce tend to have more. Markman’s research group describes these destructive patterns of behaviour in terms of “Escalation, Invalidation, Negative Interpretations, & Withdrawal” (2). Another prominent research group, led by John Gottman, describes them in terms of “Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, & Stonewalling” (3).
It is striking that all of these predictive factors are negatives – things that have been done badly. Positive factors – things that have been done well – are far less powerful predictors of marital stability. In other words, it’s both the negative aspects of our background as well as the extent to which we handle our differences negatively that predict marital success or failure.
Therefore in order to improve “stability”, we should now be thinking of marriage education as an attempt to reduce these negative factors.
Predictors of marital satisfaction
But as well as looking at “marital stability”, researchers have also looked at “marital satisfaction” – how happy couples are together.
It should be no great surprise to discover that these two issues are not the same. Most of us know of seemingly unhappy couples who stay together. We also know of seemingly happy couples who split up.
Research provides more specific instances. New parents, for example, report that their marital satisfaction deteriorates with the arrival of a new baby. Yet in those early years, the same couple is less likely to get divorced (4).
The predictors of marital satisfaction also tend to fall into static and dynamic groups. “Static” factors concern the positive aspects of a couple’s background. For example, one major survey found that happy couples are far more likely to say they have a good personality match and shared beliefs & values.
“Dynamic” factors concern the positive ways couples handle their differences. For example, the same survey found that happy couples are also far more likely to communicate well, handle differences well, discuss problems well, show affection to one another, and agree how to spend their time and money together (5).
Therefore in order to improve “satisfaction”, we should now be thinking of marriage education as an attempt to build up these positive factors.