Site Areas
Wedding Centre
Health Club
Marriage Clinic
Chapel
University
Citizen's Centre
Coffee Shop
Admin Centre

Contents
Articles
Books
CDs / Videos
Tips
Services

Resources
Forums
Membership
Contact Us
Site map
Link to Us

Search

Free Tell A Friend from Bravenet


In association with:

Marriage books and much more from Amazon.co.uk

Celebrate your marriage with flowers!

Set up your Wedding Registry!

Marriage and divorce advice from justask.org.uk

Take our Demographic survey

Family Friendly Site

   Home  > Articles

What works in Relationship Education?

By Dave Percival

Day 2

Samantha Callan opened day 2 with a highly topical issue given the turmoil in the banking sector this week. The root cause of the current credit crunch is default on mortgage loans; default is 4.5 times more likely after relationship breakdown, and UK data indicates that over 70% of the defaults are in the “sub-prime” range. There is an inescapable conclusion that lending high multiples to high risk couples is a bad idea!

Chairing the day was handed to Dr Anna Vella who introduced Dr Doug Snyder who addressed “Screening for marital distress: Epidemiological and clinical perspectives”.

  • The use of inventories as part of Relationship Education allows better targeting of the education to specific needs in the couple.
  • Marital dissatisfaction is strongly correlated with a range of mental and physiological health issues, and treatment of these without also addressing the relationship issues (with therapy) reduces the chances of successful outcomes.
  • There is evidence that there is a threshold or tipping point above which marital dissatisfaction can lead to both instability and other problems. The tipping point may be reached both through external factors (eg affairs etc), or through steady drift internally.
  • Studies suggest that at any one time up to 30% of all couples may be above this tipping point, and therefore in need of specific interventions to improve stability. Effectively they are living with a strong pre-disposition to instability which external factors may well trigger into a crisis. vRelatively simple tools can identify this population.

Brian Doss then proceeded to outline for us “Expanding the reach and effectiveness of marital interventions”. Some of his key findings included:

  • The couples who seek and receive help are not necessarily those who most need it
  • In the US premarital education is about 95% delivered in a religious context, typically about 6 hours in all
  • We need to:
    • increase the reach of empirically based programmes (they are 50% more effective than un researched programmes)
    • Better understand what is most effective
    • vDevelop new models suitable for the situations we are not currently reaching
  • To do so requires greater advertising, increased funding, engagement with other third parties (eg employers), and widening the means of delivery

Bill Coffin had us rolling in the aisles with his whistle stop overview of “Marriage.gov: a promising public policy” and overview of the US policy implementation to date.

  • The policy is a health initiative aimed at trying to ensure that every child can grow up in a functional family with both its parents.
  • The roots of the programme are back into both the current research, but also the key concepts developed by David and Vera Mace (post war leaders of what is now Relate in the UK) on the requirements for commitment, communication and creatively handling conflict.
  • A key feature of the US approach has been to welcome and encourage multiple programmes to increase availability, and “see what works” in practice.

After lunch, and a tour of the House for the foreign visitors led by Andrew Selous, Chairman of the all party group on sustainable relationships who had kindly hosted the event, Angela Abela from Malta outlined the challenges facing their society in “What are couples in transition between different cultural value systems expecting from relationship education?”

  • In the space of one generation family life is transitioning from a traditional community based basis to one which resembles most of US/European countries.
  • There is a key message here that even where traditional models have family have been the norms for young people, the pressures of today’s culture means that parents need additional skills and resources to address issues like rising un-planned pregnancy, etc.

In the final presentation Harry Benson outlined his latest findings in “Back off or fire back? Bad habits amongst married and unmarried new parents”.

  • There are significant differences in the ways that cohabiting and married couples argue, probably associated with the men being less committed, and the women less secure in their relationships
  • Differences in inherent conflict style resulting from different patterns of partnership formation (eg sliding into cohabitation) would be a plausible mechanism for the different outcomes from the different relational basis
  • Relatively simple interventions educating just one partner in recognizing the behaviours show signs that they can alter the approach of couples.

The colloquium concluded with open discussion drawing together many of the threads, and thanks to the world leading academics and authorities on this subject who had made the time and effort to come and share their insights.

Day 1


In this article
- Introduction
- Day 1
- Day 2

Bookmark and Share
Printer Friendly
More From this author

More Articles
- Why are cohabiting couples so unstable
- Meeting Places
- Relationship Education Conference 2009
- 100 Plus Hints And Tips For Building Good Relationships

Hot Picks
- 6th National Relationship Education Conference
-
- Take the Couple Check-up!
- Marriage first aid
-
- Marriage help for friends
- Deepen your love & marriage

Discuss
- Marriage news from around the world
- Coffee Shop Chat - have some fun!!
- Marriage Problems - ask for help!
- Visit the Index


 2-in-2-1 Today
Take our Couple Checkup - put your relationship on strong foundations by checking out the strengths and growth areas!
Difficulties communicating? - 55 cards to improve your couple communication
What people say about 2-in-2-1 - we thrive on your feedback!
Couples Wanted!! - for TV and press enquiries - tell your story!
Cyber sex and Internet addiction - is the internet threatening your marriage??

Top

Copyright ©1999-2024 2-in-2-1 Limited. All rights reserved. Disclaimer Privacy Statement