What’s Love Got To Do With It? The Role of Healthy Couple Relationships and Marriages In Promoting Child, Family, and Community Well-Being (original) (raw)
Related papers
2017
Couple Relationship Education (CRE) programs are a prevention resource used to assist adult individuals, couples, and families reduce relationship distress and improve prosocial behaviors. Regional Extension agents (REAs) and other community family life educators (FLEs) who teach CRE are involved in a facilitation process that develops relationships and rapport with their participants similar to other helping relationships. To date, no published research has focused on how CRE may affect the REAs/FLEs who provide the programs through community adult education programs. Informed by relational-cultural theory and the ecological systems perspective, the current study focused on assessing change in ten outcomes measuring REAs/FLEs’ (N = 54) individual, couple, and co-parenting functioning and whether that change differed by gender. Results from repeated measure ANCOVAs indicate REAs/FLEs experience gains across several domains of functioning. There were no differences by gender. Implica...
Cooperative extension initiatives in marriage and couples education
Family Relations, 2004
Cooperative extension has a long-term history of delivering family life education. Further, the organization has developed numerous research-based resources and undertaken statewide initiatives in marriage and couples education. Most promising of all is the work of a group of extension specialists to create a practical, research-based curriculum that may reach communities in the United States through the established network of extension educators and their collaborators. We review various family relationship models and describe how the design of the new couplesÕ curriculum is based on those models. Family relations specialists throughout the cooperative extension system have developed resources for marriage and couples
Marriage and relationship education: Recent research findings
Family matters, 2016
The ways in which intimate couple relationships1 are entered into and sustained have altered significantly over the last few decades (Moloney and Weston, 2012), with many unprecedented changes to how couples form and dissolve relationships and make decisions to have children (Weston and Qu, 2013). Couples choosing to live together without being married, getting married at increasingly later ages and having greater access to divorce, are some of the trends in relationships that are important to consider when designing programs and delivering services to couples and families (Weston and Qu, 2013).
Linking Changes in Couple Functioning and Parenting Among Couple Relationship Education Participants
Family Relations, 2013
The current study represents a novel test of parenting outcomes among participants in couple and relationship education (CRE). Utilizing a systems theory framework and empirical linkages between couple functioning and parenting, this study examined the extent to which several parenting dimensions (coparenting conflict, parental involvement, and positive discipline practices) change after CRE participation and, importantly, whether and how these changes are related to changes in dimensions of couple functioning. In a sample of 623 adult parents, diverse in gender, race, and marital status, positive changes were found in the parenting dimensions over time. In addition, levels of change in the couple domain were associated with levels of changes in the parenting domain over the same period of time, with a pattern of stronger links between conceptually similar dimensions of couple functioning and parenting. For the first time in U.S. history, educational efforts to build healthy relationships and marriages are receiving specific support through a federal Healthy Marriage Initiative (HMI)
A comprehensive framework for marriage education*
Family Relations, 2004
In a progressive society such as the United States, we usually take problems, such as high divorce and non-marital childbearing rates, as a cause for action rather than a reason for resignation. Thus, it should surprise no one that the beginnings of a marriage movement have emerged in the United States over the last decade. A prominent part of this marriage proto-movement has been a wide array of educational initiatives. However, to date there has been no formal effort to develop an integrative conceptual framework of marriage education.
Strengthening couples' relationships with education: Social policy and public health perspectives
Journal of Family Psychology, 2008
There is some evidence that skill-based couples relationship education (CRE) enhances couples' maintenance of healthy, committed relationships. This article analyzes issues in the balancing of a limited but growing knowledge base on the effects of CRE with current social policy that is creating an impetus for widespread dissemination of CRE. It is suggested that enough is known to act now, and that by doing so, the field has a unique opportunity to substantially (and rapidly) add to the existing knowledge base. Specifically, there can be expansion of knowledge of the efficacy of CRE with diverse populations and service delivery contexts, as well as the influences on the reach of CRE to populations at high risk of future relationship difficulties. While the current article focuses on CRE, the issues discussed have relevance to warrant dissemination to many areas of family psychology intervention.
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2014
Government interest in strengthening families in the United States and Great Britain has contributed to a rapid growth in couple relationship education (CRE) interventions, with a recent increase in programs for low-income families. We describe the policy contexts that initially led to increased support for CRE in both countries but now threaten its continuation. We summarize meta-analytic research and discussions of single studies by authors who draw opposing inferences about CRE effectiveness, often from the same studies. We discuss three sets of findings not featured in previous reviews, all of which focus on the potential benefits of CRE for the well-being of children. First, without intervention, average couple relationship satisfaction declines, with negative consequences for children. Second, including both parents in father involvement and parenting interventions results in value-added contributions to family functioning. Third, we describe 9 CRE intervention trials that include child outcomes, 8 of which support the assumption that CRE benefits children. These studies represent only a first step in determining what happens to children when their parents experience CRE. From both research and policy perspectives, there are too many positive findings to give credence to the claim that CRE programs should be discontinued and funding directed elsewhere. But there are too many negative findings to support the conclusion that CRE has been an unqualified success and that existing programs should be offered more widely. The negative findings and criticisms have much to teach us about potential modifications to CRE programs that will lead to more effective CRE approaches.