Thursday, July 18, 2002

A story published today by the Christian Science Monitor reports that across the country, the quest to strengthen the bond between couples is fast becoming a priority for governments at all levels.

After decades of lamenting the nation's stubborn divorce rate, many lawmakers now want to confront the problem early on – improving marriages before the partners get to the point of dividing up their personal stuffs.

At least a dozen states have passed legislation or are considering bills to encourage marriage education. In Louisiana this year, Gov. Mike Foster (R) appointed a commission to look at ways to promote marriage. High school seniors in Florida are now required to take a relationship-skills course before they graduate. And localities as diverse as Chattanooga, Tenn., and Grand Rapids, Mich., are getting involved in premarital counseling.

President Bush wants to include marriage education in his welfare-reform proposal that Congress is taking up this year. The rationale is that such initiatives will not only help curb divorce rates, but also reduce welfare rolls by cutting down on the number of out-of-wedlock births and single-parent families.

Yet the nation's most extensive experiment in improving the covenant between couples – and the one most often cited as a model – is unfolding here on the plains of Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, as it's called, involves churches, counselors, public and private social agencies, schools – and the state's top husband.

"Tell me the goodness of a system where it is easier to get a marriage license than a hunting license," says Gov. Frank Keating (R), one of the originators of the program and its chief cheerleader. "In Oklahoma today, you have to take a course before you can get a hunting license."

In the "buckle" of the Bible Belt, as the state is often called, nearly 60 percent of registered voters say they attend church regularly. The national average is about 40 percent. Nearly two-thirds of voters identify themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians. The predominant faith is Southern Baptist: 1 in 5 Oklahomans is affiliated with the denomination, which, like Catholicism, eschews divorce.

Yet split marriages are common. Nearly one-third of all Oklahomans have been divorced at least once, compared with 21 percent nationally. Oklahoma has either the highest or the second-highest divorce rate in the country, depending on whose numbers you use. "It's like a plague," says Anthony Jordan, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and a clergy liaison to the Marriage Initiative. "And we've all got to deal with it."

Experts point to a number of reasons the rate might be so high. Young people marry earlier than normal here, perhaps under pressure to live by traditional standards. Typically, first-time grooms say their vows at 24 and brides at 22 – about two and a half years earlier than the median for the country.

Poverty, another contributor to divorce, is also entrenched. When you travel outside the major cities of Oklahoma City and Tulsa – affectionately referred to as OKC and T-town by locals – the state quickly becomes rural and, often, poor.

In many ways, Oklahoma's struggle with divorce is also the country's. Ever since no-fault divorce laws swept through the states in the 1970s, it's been relatively easy for couples to break up. Divorce rates started rising, peaking in the early 1980s. Though they've edged down recently, one statistic remains fairly constant: One in every two couples in America ends up splitting apart – one of the highest rates in the industrialized world.

This number, combined with changes in attitudes toward marriage, has helped spark much of the momentum for marriage education and promotion. So, too, has a fundamental proposition: that it is possible to teach what goes into a good marriage, or at least to help two people survive moments of tribulation.

To pursue its experiment in marital tutoring, Oklahoma has set aside $10 million in TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or welfare) funds. So far, about $1 million has been spent in an attempt to reduce the divorce rate by one-third by 2010. The program consists of voluntary marriage education classes. While no one is required to take the courses, some people receiving government assistance can use the classes to fulfill part of a work requirement.

As part of the initiative, churches across the state have signed an agreement to institute a waiting period before they will marry couples and to offer more premarital counseling. But other segments of society here have joined the battle against divorce as well, from employers who talk up the impact of healthy marriages on the workplace, to media that have focused on the problem.

Others believe it is possible to teach couples what to avoid, even if they can't provide a formula for marital bliss. "We know more about what specifically to warn people not to do, than we know about specifically things to tell them they should do to make great relationships," says Scott Stanley, a marriage expert at the University of Denver and a developer of the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) used in Oklahoma.

Still, some professionals question whether marriage can be taught like macramι or auto mechanics in seminars. They point out that human relationships are often difficult to orchestrate, especially those where poverty is part of the mix.

"It is simplistic to believe that improving communication, even as a single first step, will then lead to a decrease in divorces," says Jan Figart, a child-health specialist at the Community Service Council of Tulsa, who has been working with low-income clients for 20 years.

Opponents of marriage promotion don't disagree that the nation's children need help, or that reducing divorce is a good goal. But some Democrats and some of those who work with low-income families believe that people need education and good wages to get out of poverty, not a wedding band. They also point to other factors that can influence marriage and divorce among the poor, such as substance abuse and a man's ability to get a job. Improving the economic well-being of the poorest families, they contend, will do more to reduce divorce than seminars on anger management and intimacy.