Bedford Community Family Trust

RESEARCH

Evaluation of CFT pre-marriage courses

FEB 05 Family interventions that work (pdf) Children do best when parents stay together and don't fight as a couple, and use both warmth and structure as parents. A handful of studies show how marriage policy, relationship education and parenting programmes can strengthen families in each of these areas. Policy makers must now act.

The public benefits of marriage (pdf) It's often wrongly claimed that married people are only happier, healthier and wealthier than the unmarried because they start out that way. The research evidence shows that marriage contributes causally to both benefits and protections. We neglect marriage at our peril.

Research on marriage education (pdf) Marriage education is most effective if we apply three key principles: a public policy on marriage; widespread access to relationship education; and the social support of friends, family or mentors.

These links will take you to more specific summaries of what the latest research says:

FEB 06 Do you influence who your spouse votes for?

JAN 06 Is cohabitation a stepping stone to wedded bliss?

DEC 05 Does divorce make people happier?

NOV 05 Why cohabitation is bad for your marriage

OCT 05 An intriguing new theory on commitment

SEP 05 The importance of both positive and realistic expectations about marriage

JUL 05 Marriage education works for rich and poor, black and white

JUN 05 The meaning of cohabitation is crucial to future relationship success

MAY 05 Men & women are not so different in the way they view their marriage

APR 05 Marriage is declining slowly, not fast

APR 05 The big problem is no longer divorce but the collapse of unmarried families

MAR 05 Divorce affects the education and relationships of unborn grandchildren

JAN 05 Pre-school is good – unless you're a toddler or stuck there all day

DEC 04 The importance of positive affect in marriage

NOV 04 “Community Marriage Policies” have reduced divorce rates

OCT 04 A relationship formula can predict marriage quality 13 years later

SEP 04 Therapists are not as value-free as they sometimes claim

JUL 04 Compatibility is not that important

JUN 04 Most newlyweds fight physically!

MAY 04 Yes, you can "have it all"

APR 04 Does divorce make people happy?

MAR 04 Can I tell if they are a perfect couple?

FEB 04 Joint INCOMES can be BAD for your marriage

JAN 04 Joint ACCOUNTS can be GOOD for your marriage

DEC 03 Hard evidence that marriage (but not cohabitation) improves wellbeing

DEC 03 How to buy the best insurance policy against divorce

NOV 03 The effect of conflict on children of divorce

OCT 03 Family breakdown is rising but divorce is not to blame

FEB 06 DO YOU INFLUENCE WHO YOUR SPOUSE VOTES FOR?

A fascinating new study in the February issue of Journal of Marriage and Family has looked at how spouses or partners influence each others political voting patterns. Previous research has suggested that husbands voting patterns are not influenced by their wives although wives are influenced by their husbands. This complex and detailed study suggests this is not quite right.
Authors Man Yee Kan of Essex University and Anthony Heath of Oxford University started with the premise that there may be similarities between the ways couples manage their household roles and the way they vote. Individual attitudes and behaviour in both areas depend on the same extent of influence by their spouse.
A range of economic theories compete for possible explanations as to why spouses might influence one another. Do spouse voting patterns follow the money? According to this theory, maximising family income is key. So if the husband is the breadwinner, the wife may vote to maximise the husband's earning potential. Or do spouses maximise their own individual self-interests? In this case, spouses may vote independently of each other. Do families compensate for role-reversal in one area by being more traditional in another? Here, if the wife earns the money, she may vote according to her husband's economic interests even if she has a better job. Or do spouses influence each other depending on their priorities? If home is top priority, a wife may be influenced by her husband. If work is top priority, she will vote independently.
Man and Heath compared voting intentions of 2800 British couples who were married or cohabiting just prior to the 1992 election (won by the Tories, seemingly a very long time ago!) All of the theories above bar the first gained limited support. They found that couples do generally influence one another's voting patterns to some degree. Although this finding is in sharp contrast to previous research, it may not come as such a surprise to aficionados of common sense!
However there was one intriguing exception. Men tended to vote independently when their wives were the main breadwinners. Other research shows that, in a similar situation, men also have a similarly “independent” approach to housework. Interestingly, the same is not true for wives. One possible explanation might be that husbands secretly resent being usurped from their traditional role as provider, leading to reduced contribution to the housework and independent voting habits.
While individual choice is still the predominant factor, spouses also influence each other's voting patterns so that they become more like-minded over time. But there's plenty of fun to be had explaining the anomaly of why dependent men, but not women, act so independently.

Reference: Man, Y.K. & Heath, A. (2006) The political values and choices of husbands and wives. Journal of Marriage & Family, 68, 70-86 .

JAN 06 IS COHABITATION A STEPPING STONE TO MARITAL BLISS?

A simple cross-sectional survey is useful in order to find out whether two factors are linked. But it says nothing about whether or not one factor causes the other. Whenever social scientists want to find out whether an outcome occurs because of the influence of a certain factor, they use longitudinal or panel studies.
From longitudinal studies, for example, it is possible to compare a group of people who marry with a group of people who don't marry. After taking into account baseline differences between these two groups before any of them get married – such as education, income, age, health and other background factors – it is possible to see whether marriage has any unique effect on health or well-being or whatever.
Paul Amato at Pennsylvania State University has been following 2,000 US families for over 20 years, interviewing them extensively every four or five years. The key research finding about the effects of both conflict and divorce on children's wellbeing is one of many that derive largely from this excellent panel study. See BCFT research summary for further info.
Although it is well-known that married people tend to be happier than the unmarried, researchers Claire Kamp Dush and Paul Amato wanted to use this panel study to find out whether couples moving in together were on a stepping stone towards marital bliss. They propose that commitment is a continuum, whereby people in more committed relationships experience greater levels of subjective well-being.
From the families in the study, the authors looked at 691 young adults who had participated in 1992 and/or 1997 interviews. Of these 426 participated in both surveys.
A cross-sectional survey of the larger group suggested that there is indeed a continuum of happiness related to degree of commitment. Married people tend to be happier than cohabiting people, who in turn tend to be happier than dating and single people. However this finding alone does not tell us whether degree of commitment is cause or outcome of being happy.
By using the longitudinal element of the study, Kamp Dush and Amato showed that happiness in the first survey had an unexpected influence on whether couples cohabit or marry later on. Unhappier people were actually more likely to begin cohabiting or get married in the first place! And happiness appeared to have no influence on whether couples subsequently split up. This means that the continuum of happiness cannot be explained away as a selection effect. So it's not true that married people are only happier than anyone else because they start out that way. Quite the reverse in fact!
However the researchers also found that going up a level of commitment increased subjective well-being. Those who dated then moved in together did well. Those who cohabited and then got married did well. These gains in happiness occurred regardless of the starting level of the relationship.
There are of course some flaws in this study. Time spent together was not taken into account. Because cohabiting relationships are inherently unstable, it is possible that cohabiting couples are at peak happiness whereas married couples are not. The benefit of cohabiting would therefore be overstated and the benefit of being married understated. It is difficult to draw general conclusions because the sample was young and there were relatively few cohabitees. The study also ignores the well-known negative influence of cohabiting on subsequent marriage. Happiness is a bit of a sideshow when it comes to the much more important issue of whether people split up or not.
Nonetheless, on a purely subjective level, this study shows that moving in together makes you feel OK. But getting married makes you feel great! The more you commit, the better you feel.

Reference: Kamp Dush, C. & Amato, P. (2005) Consequences of relationship status and quality for subjective well-being. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 22, 607-627.

DEC 05 DOES DIVORCE MAKE PEOPLE HAPPIER?

Although it is well known that married people are generally happier than divorced people, it does not necessarily follow that divorce itself makes people unhappy. Indeed an economist would argue that couples must presume divorce will make them happier. In order to justify divorce, the perceived benefits of ending a marriage must outweigh the costs of divorce.
Economist Andrew Oswald of Warwick University has become celebrated for his studies of happiness. In a paper due to be published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, and published online in October 2005 , Jonathan Gardner and Andrew Oswald studied the effect of divorce on happiness using data from the British Household Panel Survey. 430 people out of 10,000 surveyed had experienced divorce or marital separation during the previous 10 years. By comparing measures of happiness in the years before and after the divorce, the study was able to look at the impact of divorce on happiness.
Their findings show a significant gap in levels of happiness between those headed for divorce one or two years later and those who remain married. During the year of the divorce itself, the unhappiness gap reaches its peak, narrowing again during the subsequent two years.
As secondary findings, divorcees with children experience greater unhappiness both before and after divorce compared to divorcees without children. And divorcees who remarry become happier than those who remain single – curiously though, only during the first year following divorce but not the second.
This study, probably the best of its kind to date, is presented as evidence that divorce makes people happy. Doubtless this will be the media headline when the study is published formally. What the study does show is that divorcees recover from the immediate trauma of divorce but still do not generally escape the levels of unhappiness experienced during their marriage. Divorce does not make people happy. It makes them less unhappy. As with much of social science, the reality is rather less sensational than the media would like it to be.
Of course, the whole study of divorce and happiness is a moot point from the perspective of a child in any case. Booth & Amato's 2001 20-year study of 2,000 American families remains the best study of the effects of parental behaviour on children. They showed that conflict, not happiness, is what counts. Children do well either within a low-conflict marriage or after a high conflict divorce. Children do badly either within a high-conflict marriage or after a low-conflict divorce.
Happiness might matter a lot to adults. But, to children, happiness is a red herring!

Gardner, J. & Oswald, A. (in press) Do divorcing couples become happier by breaking up? Journal of the Royal Statistical Society

NOV 05 WHY COHABITATION IS BAD FOR YOUR MARRIAGE

For the vast majority of couples, living together either before or instead of marriage has now become the socially accepted norm. In fact many couples view living together as a good way to test their relationship before they get married.
Paradoxically, it has long been clear to social scientists that couples who live together before marriage tend to experience lower relationship quality and higher break-up rates when they do eventually marry. Even for those familiar with this finding, it has been difficult to explain – let alone convince – couples of the untrendy merit of living separately until they make an express commitment.
Whilst a great deal of research now shows that both selection effect (riskier couples tend to cohabit) and relationship effect (the experience of cohabitation makes the relationship riskier) play a part, a new explanation for why the phenomenon occurs at all may be at hand. Scott Stanley at the University of Denver suggests the answer may be found in commitment theory.
Commitment theory proposes two types of commitment. Dedication is the internal force that draws people together. Dedication involves a sense of couple identity or we-ness and a sense of long-term future together, a prioritisation of the relationship and a willingness to sacrifice other choices. Constraints are the external forces that increase the cost of leaving. Constraints involve external factors that see two people as a couple, such as children, family, financial commitments, house, friends, family, being married, and lack of alternatives.
The big secret to a successful marriage or relationship is to build and sustain high levels of dedication . When dedication is high, constraints feel positive. When dedication is low, constraints feel negative. “ I feel trapped ” is the common refrain of those who feel penned in by their constraints.
Stanley 's “ inertia hypothesis ”, presented in a February 2005 paper , suggests that couples who move in together increase their constraints without a concurrent increase in dedication. Riskier couples might choose to split up if they court without living together. However by cohabiting, the same riskier couples reduce their available alternatives and make it more difficult to leave the relationship. Through inertia, they then slide into a lower quality and possibly doomed marriage.
The inertia hypothesis thus provides a plausible explanation for why cohabiting couples face increased risks to both satisfaction and stability when they do marry. It could be because the choice to cohabit simply makes it harder for riskier couples to leave.

Stanley, S. Line, G. & Markman, H. (2005) The inertia hypothesis: Sliding vs deciding in the development of risk for couples in marriage. Paper presented at the Cohabitation: Advancing research and theory conference. Bowling Green , OH .

OCT 05 AN INTRIGUING NEW THEORY OF COMMITMENT

Scott Stanley at University of Denver has put together a fantastic and very readable paper on how men and women tend to see commitment differently. The November 2004 paper provides tremendous insight into state-of-the-art thinking and research on commitment.
In simple terms, his theory is that most women commit when they move in with a man whereas most men commit when they decide to marry.
In Stanley's words, “ Attachment triggers committed and sacrificial behavior in women whereas a decision to be committed triggers committed and sacrificial behavior in men. In other words, women begin to give their best to men when they are strongly attached. However men may be less inclined to give fully of themselves to women unless they have decided that a particular woman is their future. This theory could therefore explain…
1. Why men seem to resist marriage more than women, even though there is growing evidence that they see the importance of marriage, in some ways, more than women.
2. Why commitment levels for men are very strongly associated with attitudes about sacrificing, but much less so for women.
3. Why some, but not all, couples who cohabit prior to marriage are at greater risk, and contain men who score lower than other men on measures of dedication to their mates.
4. Why male behavior reflecting responsibility in their lives and toward their wives grows when they marry .”

Stanley , S. (2002) What is it with men and commitment anyway? Keynote address to the 6 th annual Smartmarriages conference. Washington DC

SEP 05 THE IMPORTANCE OF REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

Is it better to expect the best of your marriage and be occasionally disappointed or expect the worst and be occasionally delighted? As a convinced optimist and former pessimist, I sit firmly in the optimist camp. Expect the best and you will achieve more, even if you have to bear the pain of failure occasionally. Studies have for years affirmed the better outcomes in life that tend to be achieved by optimists.
A study by James McNulty and Benjamin Karney in the 2004 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology adds some important qualifications to this. They recruited 82 newlywed couples in the Florida area and followed them over the first 4 years of marriage. Couples completed questionnaires every six months and were also videoed twice during the period.
It is well established that marital satisfaction levels tend to decline in these first few years of marriage. The couples who did best in this study – i.e. whose satisfaction declined least – were those who started their married life with both less positive observed behaviours and expectations or more positive behaviours and expectations. Those who did worst were those who started off with more positive observed behaviours and less positive expectations or vice versa.
In other words, for marriages that start off functioning well, positive expectations are helpful. For marriages that start off functioning less well, positive expectations are not helpful.
The message is clear. It's good to have positive expectations but you must also have the skills necessary to achieve those expectations. The ideal is to be both positive and realistic.
Do a BCFT course and you can achieve both!

McNulty, J. & Karney, B. (2004) Positive expectations in the early years of marriage: Should couples expect the best or brace for the worst? Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 86, 729-743.

JUL 05 MARRIAGE EDUCATION IN THE ARMY

The aim of marriage and relationship education is to improve the quality of relationships over time. A handful of recent studies have demonstrated this convincingly. However the limitation is that most studies have been conducted amongst predominantly white, middle class, newlywed couples.
A new study by Scott Stanley and others, published in the June issue of Family Process, looked at how 335 couples in the US Army benefited from the PREP marriage education programme. This study is important because the sample comprised a much more diversified group of couples. Typical income was below average, half of the sample was non-white, all ranks were represented from private to colonel, and almost all couples were married.
The couples received two days of relationship education delivered by Army chaplains – not professionals. Couples reported that their relationship quality, risk of destructive behaviour, ability to deal with conflict, and level of confidence had all improved significantly as a result of the programme. Gender, ethnicity or income made no difference to the assessment. In other words, the programme benefited men and women, black and white, rich and poor alike.
There are limitations to this study. There was no control group. The one month follow-up study didn't work because too few couples participated (the study was disrupted by 9/11). The Army chaplains were not assessed on their training delivery. The sample may not generalise to a wider population. And assessment was self-report only, whereas observation has been shown to be a far more reliable measure.
Despite all this, couples reported bigger improvements in their relationship indicators than is normally the case on studies of newlyweds. This is good news for courses aimed at married couples rather than newlyweds. A good programme should have more benefit to married couples than to pre-married couples who are more positive to start with.
It's also good news for courses aimed at non-white, non-middle class, non-newlywed couples. Those of us who run programmes in prison know that relationship education does transfer to different populations. This study is a step in the right direction of providing hard evidence.

Stanley , S. et al (2005). Dissemination and evaluation of marriage education in the army. Family Process, 44, 187-201

JUN 05 IT'S NOT WHAT YOU DO BUT THE WAY THAT YOU DO IT

Its long been known that living together before marriage makes marriages more likely to fail. The debate has largely focused on whether the reason is selection – the type of people who cohabit are more likely to divorce – or causal – the experience of cohabitation causes people to behave differently and make divorce more likely.
But an intriguing new study by Julie Phillips and Megan Sweeney in the May issue of Journal of Marriage and Family suggests that much depends on the meaning and structure of cohabitation. To demonstrate this, they looked at how the factors influencing future marriage prospects of 4,500 American women spanning several different ethnic groups.
The study found that premarital cohabitation raises the risk of divorce during the first 10 years of marriage by 50% amongst white women. Yet amongst black and Hispanic women, premarital cohabitation has a benign influence, if any, on their future marriage.
The study is important because it is amongst the first to highlight ethnic differences in the factors effecting marriage prospects. As other examples of these differences, Hispanic brides who marry as teenagers appear to do especially well and black brides who marry while pregnant are at especially high risk.
The authors plausibly suggest these group differences arise because of the way cohabitation tends to be viewed within each ethnic group. Amongst whites, cohabitation is more often seen as a trial marriage intended to test the water. Higher divorce rates could then be due to the experience of living together itself increasing barriers to exit, reducing available alternatives, and thus leading more unsatisfactory relationships into marriage. Amongst blacks and Hispanics, cohabitation is seen more as a precursor to or substitute for marriage. In either case, the experience of cohabitation would then be expected to have less impact on the subsequent marriage.

Phillips, J. & Sweeney, M. (2005) Premarital cohabitation and marital disruption among white, black, and Mexican American women Journal of Marriage & Family, 67, 296-314

MAY 05 MEN ARE FROM EARTH, WOMEN ARE FROM EARTH

Very occasionally a new piece of research comes along that appears to turn received wisdom on its head. A new study by Lawrence Kurdek in the February issue of Journal of Marriage and Family may be a classic example.
For years it has been thought that men and women have very different views and experience of marriage, a “his” and “hers” version. Both theory and evidence support this view. Biological and social psychology theories suggest different adaptive roles for men and women. For example, men are more physiologically sensitive to stress and conflict – BCFT courses refer to this as an explanation for why men tend to “ Opt out” more than women. For attracting a mate, men's resources are more important to women whereas women's appearance is more important to men – i.e. men want a mate who can bear a child; women want a mate who can support a child. And marital outcomes are generally better predicted by information from the wives – presumably because wives are the relationship experts.
However most findings to date have compared men and women from different marriages . Kurdek's study is one of the first to compare men and women within the same marriage . This requires a new statistical technique to tease out any real differences after taking into account the way husbands and wives influence each other anyway.
The study followed 265 couples over the first three years of marriage. In line with previous research, wives were found to be generally more positive about their marriage than their husbands. But wives rosy view of their marriage also tended to decline faster over time. Nonetheless these differences between husbands and wives were much smaller than previously thought. There was also no evidence that the factors that predicted happy marriages years later were any different for men than women.
As always there are limitations to this study. In particular the sample was not representative – mostly white and well-educated. The couples who completed the study represented just 3% of the original group asked and half of the group that started the study. All sorts of biases creep in when self-report measures are used.
However by using new statistical procedures and comparing couples from the same marriage, Kurdek has put the boot into the Mars and Venus view of “his” and “hers” marriages. Although there are differences in behaviour between men and women, they are by no means as large as previously thought. Moreover men and women appear to view their own marriage in much the same way

Kurdek, L. (2005) Gender and marital satisfaction early in marriage: A growth curve approach. Journal of Marriage & Family, 67, 68-84

APR 05 THE SLOW DECLINE OF MARRIAGE

“ Forecasts show a swift decline in marriage ”, declared the Telegraph last month, reporting a government study of population change. The full study, available online at the Government Actuary Service website, is a superb analysis of how the married and unmarried population is likely to change over the next 30 years or so.
While the media headline focused on the “swift” decline of marriage, the numbers suggest otherwise. In round numbers, over the next 30 years, the adult population will grow by about 6 million people. During this time, the number of married people will decline by 2 million and unmarried people will rise by 8 million – or thereabouts. In other words, although there is a decline in marriage, the rise in unmarried population is the much bigger deal.
Interestingly, the headline number reported in the media and the study refers to the married population declining from 50% to 40% of people. This percentage includes both unmarried couples and individuals. Government sponsored summaries of the Census and the British Household Panel Survey say much the same thing.
Yet when the numbers are compared for couples, a very different picture emerges. The married population is expected to decline from 84% to 72% of couples. Yes. It's true. Six out of seven couples in this country are married. Perhaps its surprising that government encouragement and support for married couples is non-existent when it should be such a vote winner. This is hardly a “swift” decline.
So the real (unpublished) story is not the decline of marriage but the huge increase in the unmarried population. This is more bad news for Britain 's families. It is already the case that three quarters of all family breakdown affecting young children involves unmarried parents. On these forecasts, this trend towards unmarried families will almost inevitably lead to a continued rise in family breakdown.
The big family problem is no longer divorce. It is the collapse of unmarried families. Politicians should take note that this is guaranteed to store up yet more problems in schools, health, well-being, crime, truancy, etc.

Office of National Statistics (2005) Population trends, 121, 77-84

APR 05 THE COLLAPSE OF UNMARRIED FAMILIES

New BCFT research shows that Britain’s unmarried families are collapsing. Three out of every four families with young children who split up are unmarried. Divorce is not the major problem any more.
This finding is the first time that family breakdown has been quantified in such a way. For policy makers, it highlights the importance of monitoring family structure. For relationship educators, it highlights the importance of accessing unmarried couples during the ante-natal process.
This finding may indeed be stunning. But it can only remain a best estimate. Whereas information on marriages and divorces is easy to accumulate and monitor accurately, information on the formation and dissolution of unmarried families is hard to find and must be estimated. Not surprisingly, statisticians say little about unmarried families. Not surprisingly, the media focus on marriage and divorce.
The research was done by combining three pieces of research. What is known from national data is the number of births to married and unmarried couples. What is known from surveys is how stable these different family types are. By adjusting for actual divorce rates over time, it is possible to estimate the number of married and unmarried families splitting up in any given year. The divorce estimates can then be cross-checked against actual data on children under five experiencing divorce. The total family breakdown figures can be cross-checked against the public estimates of all one-parent families.
The main question is how good the figures are on family stability. One major European survey published in 1999 found that by a child’s 5th birthday, 8% of married parents and 43% of unmarried parents had split. The very latest Millennium survey, tracking children born in the year 2000, found that after 9 months 1% of married and 7% of unmarried parents had split. BCFT will be very interested in the Millennium survey 3 year figures which will be out this summer.
There has been no dispute of these figures to date. The only issue is what to do about it.

Benson, H. (2005) What interventions strengthen family relationships: A review of the evidence. Paper presented at 2nd National conference on relationships education. London

MAR 05 SINS OF THE GRANDFATHERS…

Although it is well-known that divorce transmits problems to the next generation, few studies have looked at whether divorce transmits problems to the second generation. Logically, if divorce breeds divorce as well as other problems, then there should also be another generation of knock-on effects from these further divorces.
A new study by Paul Amato and Jacob Cheadle in the February Journal of Marriage and Family is the first to find clear links between grandparent divorce and grandchild outcomes. The study followed 2000 families over 20 years, focusing especially on the 691 adult grandchildren.
After taking grandparent education into account, grandparent divorce was associated with an average 9 month reduction in education for each grandchild. Grandparent divorce was also associated with significantly greater marital discord and poorer parental relations.
These effects are not large. But nor are they trivial. As the authors point out, “given that fewer than 10% of (grandchildren) had been born at the time that their grandparents divorced, the existence of these connections is remarkable. These findings suggest that parental divorce has consequences, not only for the children of these parents, but also for subsequent generations not yet born at the time that the divorce occurred.”
The strengths of this study are that it is prospective – i.e. asking questions at the time rather than relying on memory; it is direct – i.e. it asks parents about parents and grandchildren about grandchildren; and it is wide-ranging, covering education, relationships and mental health. The main limitation is that grandparents were not interviewed directly. Although education and divorce are fairly objective measures, grandparent family relations were not known. A more cautious interpretation of this finding would be that family problems have a tendency to persist for generations.

Amato, P. & Cheadle, J. (2005) The long reach of divorce: Divorce and child well-being across three generations. Journal of Marriage & Family, 67, 191-206

JAN 05 PRE-SCHOOL IS GOOD FOR YOU, BUT NOT TOO MUCH OR TOO YOUNG

A major new study by the Department of Education and Skills has found that part-time pre-school attendance (5 hours a week) helps children do better when they get to primary school. The “Effective Provision of Pre-School Education“ (EPPE) study followed 3000 children from age 3 to 7.
However there were a number of important caveats to this finding. Fulltime attendance (10 hours) at pre-school did not produce better school outcomes later on but did slightly increase anti-social behaviour. This was also true for children under age 2 in day nurseries for whom there is no learning advantage either. Not surprisingly, children did best overall when they had a supportive home environment, two parent family and higher socio-economic status.
This appears to be a really well-designed study. The main policy messages were that part-time pre-school attendance after age 2 is good for kids and that the quality of the home environment is more important than the mother's educational qualifications.
However the striking omission is the almost total absence of comment on the effect of family structure on child outcomes. There was just one vague observation that “marital status varied with socio-economic status”. An emerging pattern with other UK government sponsored research is to pronounce the benefits of two parent families. More detailed research commonly finds that most of this benefit accrues in married families. Even if an investigation into family structure did not fit with the policy brief, it's an important omission. I will try to follow this up with the study authors.

Sylva, K. et al (2004) The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) Project: Technical Paper 12 - The Final Report: Effective Pre-School Education. London : DfES / Institute of Education , University of London .

DEC 04 THE POWER OF POSITIVE AFFECT

A wealth of research since the 1990s has dramatically improved our knowledge of what makes marriages work or not. Much of this new research concentrates on observing short videos of couples dealing with difficult issues. Perhaps the best known finding has been that the negative ways we handle our differences influences the way our relationships turn out years later.
A paper in the November issue of Journal of Marriage and Family by Thomas Bradbury and Benjamin Karney attempts to make sense of the contradiction inherent in this kind of research. Surely couples get together because they enjoy each others company and not because they handle problems well?
Their new study followed 172 newlywed couples over 4 years. They found that marriages did best when either the level of communication skills was high OR “ positive affect ” was high. Positive affect means displays of affection, humour, interest or curiosity. It is only when communication skills are low AND positive affect is low that couples tend to do badly.
The authors advise relationship educators to emphasise the “ value of expressing positive emotions … constructive engagement in the marriage … and the need for empathic listening and response ”.
The study also looked at how individual backgrounds and environmental stressors influence relationship outcomes. Men whose parents fought and women whose parents divorced appear to face more relationship problems. These high risk couples probably need more intensive interventions than those from stable homes.
My reading of this finding on positive affect is that it adds support to the view that attitude – and not communication skills – is the big deal in marriage. Attitude determines both positive affect and whether we attribute bad behaviour to a bad day or a bad spouse. Attitude also determines the degree to which we behave negatively and destructively during conflict.

Bradbury, T. & Karney, B. (2004). Understanding and altering the longitudinal course of marriage. Journal of Marriage & Family, 66 , 862-879.

NOV 04 COMMUNITY MARRIAGE POLICIES REDUCE DIVORCE

Although many studies around the world have shown it is possible to improve the quality of relationships, very few studies have shown it is also possible to reduce divorce rates. All of these studies involve programmes of active participation by couples themselves.
Paul Birch and colleagues have produced the first ever study to show that divorce rates can be reduced through public policy. Whether the effects are due to active or passive involvement is not yet clear. What is clear is that a relatively small scale public policy can have a significant effect on private behaviour.
The study in the October issue of Family Relations looked at divorce rates in 122 American towns or cities that have implemented a “Community Marriage Policy” (CMP). A CMP is a statement of intent by local church leaders to value marriage and support married couples through courses and mentoring. They compared these with towns of similar characteristics and trends in the same state. · Divorce rates fell by an average of 2% a year faster in the CMP towns than in the non-CMP towns. The authors could not account for these changes by other explanations, including urbanity, economics, population, or pre-existing trends in marriage and divorce rates.
“The results reported here are important not because of their magnitude (which was modest) but because they are present,” writes Birch. In other words, they didn't expect to find that a few articles in the local media and a few courses for a small minority of couples would have any effect at all on the wider community. Without CMPs, 30,000 more families would have split up than actually did.
This study shows for the first time that it is possible to reduce divorce rates through a public policy. Bristol, Bath, Swindon and Newport have pioneered the first CMPs in the UK. Whether these have any impact is untestable at present because the government chooses not publish local divorce data. But we have too much to lose not to try.

Birch, P., Weed, S., & Olsen, J. (2004). Assessing the Impact of Community Marriage Policies on County Divorce Rates. Family Relations, 53, 495-503.

OCT 04 PREDICTING 13 YEARS OF MARRIAGE

It's already known that a snapshot of relationship information taken before the wedding day can distinguish between couples who end up happy, fighting or divorced five years later with 80-90% accuracy (see article "Old habits die hard").
The limitation of this research is that only these three extreme groups are compared. Some researchers argue that predicting outcomes for a more typical group of couples becomes far less accurate - in the order of 60-70%. In other words, you're going to get one third wrong - which means you can't make predictions.
A new study by Mari Clements in the August issue of Journal of Marriage & Family followed a group of 100 couples over 13 years. This is by far the longest prediction study to date. During this time 20% of couples ended up divorced, 58% happily married, and 22% married but distressed.
They found that a particular combination of factors collected before the wedding day could accurately classify 77% of these couples thirteen years later. This is similar to other prediction findings, but perhaps even more remarkable because of the sheer passage of time.
However when they tried to see whether this combination might work for any another group of couples, they could only correctly classify 62% of the couples. This sounds good. But it's not very useful. You and I can achieve 58% accuracy simply by predicting that all couples will end up happy!
This study tells relationship educators two important things. We can be really confident what to teach because the seeds of success or failure over thirteen years of marriage are present before the wedding day. But because we don't know what particular combination of factors is important for any individual couple, we can't categorise their future prospects with any confidence.

Clements, M., Stanley, S., & Markman, H. (2004). Before they said "I do": discriminating amongst marital outcomes over 13 years. Journal of Marriage & Family, 66, 613-626.

SEP 04 FAILING TO BE NEUTRAL ABOUT DIVORCE

Divorce may have become more socially acceptable but several studies show that people still hold a generally negative bias towards divorced mothers and their children. One of the latest of these studies shows how this is equally true of family therapists in America, a group that prides itself on making no judgement about the merits or otherwise of a person's marital status.
This study, by Christine Schultz and Leigh Leslie in the July issue of Family Relations, asked 74 trainee counsellors to recall details of a story about either a married or divorced mother.
The group who read the divorced mother story recalled one third more negative characteristics than those who read the married mother story. There were no differences in how many positive characteristics were recalled. In other words, the story about a divorced mother triggered a more negative stereotype than the story about the married mother.
This study is familiar territory to students of "social cognition". You see a skinhead (do such things still exist?) and it triggers a heightened sense of alertness in you automatically. You see somebody of a different colour/sex/age and it triggers some other reaction in you automatically. The extent to which you discriminate or not then depends on your subsequent choice. But the initial reaction to a stereotype happens automatically whether you like it or not.
The interesting thing in this study is that family therapists appear to be unable to override the wider cultural bias against divorced mothers. So far as counsellor claims to neutrality go, RIP

JUL 04 HAVE I MARRIED MR/MRS RIGHT?

How can I know whether I've married the right person? Does such a person even exist? Perhaps that person has the right kind of personality so that we just click? Perhaps he/she will be my soulmate? Are we compatible?
Studies of how personalities affect marital happiness over time suggest that this whole question of "right person" becomes irrelevant after five years. "Right relationship" is the key.
A study of 83 German newlywed couples by Klaus Schneewind and Anna-Katharina Gerhard in the 2002 issue of Family Relations found that when couples first get married, personality plays a small direct role in influencing marital happiness. However after five years of marriage, the direct influence of personality has completely vanished and become indirect.
What becomes far more important is the couple conflict resolution style. In percentage terms, personality accounts for 20% of marital happiness on the wedding day but has 0% direct influence on the marriage five years later. Couple conflict resolution style starts off at 10% and ends up at a much more significant 50% five years later. These are averages of course.
In practical terms, the message is clear. Personality plays a significant part in bringing couples together. But what ultimately matters very much more is the way the couple resolves conflict.
What this research shows is that successful marriage is not about marrying the right person. It's about having the right relationship. It's not who you are that counts, it's how you do it ... which is exactly what BCFT is here to teach!

JUN 04 MOST NEWLYWEDS FIGHT PHYSICALLY!

I came across such an extraordinary statistic this month that I simply had to buy an online copy of the full study in order to check it out properly!
Some form of physical aggression is present in 57% of newlyweds, according to a 1989 study by Daniel O'Leary and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical and Consulting Psychology. Their study followed 272 newlywed couples in New York from pre-marriage to 30 months.
Not surprisingly, couples tend to underreport aggression: i.e. one spouse reports it but the other doesn't. Even using these lower numbers where both spouses concur, 31% of men and 44% of women committed aggressive acts during their engagement. "Pushing, grabbing and shoving" was the most commonly cited act. In every category of aggression, women were more likely than men to be the aggressor.
Where aggression was reported at all three pre-marriage / 18 month / 30 month interviews, marriages were likely to be of lower quality and headed downhill. Yet even then only 30% of the women and 24% of the men in these more aggressive marriages reported low relationship quality, compared to 11% of women and 9% of men in the non-aggressive marriages. Based on other interviews, the authors explain how recipients of physical aggression tend to minimise its importance and attribute the bad behaviour to alcohol, stress or frustration - i.e. anything other than the marriage.
These very high rates of physical aggression, whilst surprising to me, are apparently not a surprise to those familiar with this field. Other studies show that a third or more of young adults report acts of physical aggression from spouses or partners. Aggressive acts decline markedly with age. This study shows that the rate of aggression amongst newlyweds is about 3-4 times higher than amongst married couples generally. So it's not just New Yorkers!
PREP, the pre-marriage course used by BCFT, has been shown to reduce aggressive behaviour, as well as improve all the other good bits of marriage. All the more reason to encourage engaged couples to do a pre-marriage course as a matter of common sense.

MAY 04 CAN YOU HAVE IT ALL?

We all know the debate about the tension between work and family for mothers. Choosing to marry and have children are vital components on most women's agenda. Yet modern social and economic pressures encourage women to work, to build up their careers, and to delay having children. When they do have children, what the children of dual income families say they want is "hang-around time", according to one researcher.
The question is "can you have it all?"
A new study by Jeffrey Hill and colleagues in the April issue of Family Relations compared the experiences of 500 mums who worked either part time or full time for computer giant IBM. The part time working mums worked an average of 20 fewer hours per week. They used 20% of this free time for housework. However they used 80% of the free time looking after the kids or taking time out for themselves. With a 40% reduction in work time came a 40% reduction in salary, amounting to an average 11% reduction in overall household salary.
The part time working mums reported greater flexibility of employment, greater success in the family, reduced conflict and strain from work interfering with family, more time involved with their children, and more time spent on vacation. They also reported a more traditional husband/wife division of roles, with greater responsibility for home life and less responsibility for providing the family income. Feminists might not like this. But the mums do.
However family life interferes with work to the same extent for both part time and full time working mums. The authors speculate that this is due to the additional family responsibilities taken on at home.
So, according to this study, the answer appears to be "yes, you can have it all" - if you work part time, if your husband earns enough for you to take the financial hit, and if you work for IBM.

Hill, E.J., Martinson, V. & Ferris, M. (2004). New-concept part-time employment as a work-family adaptive strategy for women professionals with small children. Family Relations, 53, 282-292.

APR 04 HAPPINESS, STAYING MARRIED AND GETTING DIVORCED

Conventional wisdom has it that those "trapped in unhappy marriages" are often better off getting divorced. The first major study to challenge this assumption found quite the opposite effect. The study, led by University of Chicago Professor Linda Waite and published last year by a New York think tank, was based on a two-stage survey of 5,000 adults in the late 80s and early 90s.
The first interesting finding was that the concept of "unhappy marriage" is largely a myth. It turned out that three quarters of the 645 people who said they were unhappy had happy spouses. So most of the time, we're dealing with unhappy people and not unhappy marriages.
The study then looked at what those initially unhappy people said about their marriage five years later. They found plenty of evidence that people became happier if they stayed married and no evidence that they became happier if they divorced. In fact, two thirds of those who initially said they were "unhappy" reported being happily married five years later. More remarkably, 80% of the "very unhappy" people ended up happily married.
Finally the couples who divorced did not typically end up happier, less depressed or feeling more in control of their lives. This was true even after the authors took into account any possible effects of race, age, gender or income.
So should you "follow your heart" and get out when things are bad? In the vast majority of cases, the best answer appears to be "No".

Waite, L., et al. (2000) Does Divorce Make People Happy? Findings from a Study of Unhappy Marriages. New York: Institute for American Values

MAR 04 SPOTTING MR & MRS RIGHT

This study was published a year ago in the Journal of Marriage & Family and it's real cracker!
So you think you can tell whether a couple is either "so right for each other" or "won't make it"? Well, you can't!
Researchers Rachel Ebling and Robert Levenson from Berkeley in California wanted to find out the answer for sure. They knew already from other research that today's happy and unhappy couples can be distinguished with incredible accuracy simply from a short video clip of them talking five years earlier. Subsequently unhappy or divorced couples had certain common patterns of behaviour that can be analysed from the earlier video.
They asked 177 people to watch some old videos of couples and make a decent guess at what happened next. The researchers expected that professionals who make a living at dealing with marriage would do best: counsellors, marriage researchers and the like. They expected ordinary folk to do worst.
The results were not at all what they expected. It turned out that nobody could do any better than guess whether couples stayed together or split up. Flicking a coin would have had the same result. Counsellors couldn't do it. Couples who had been married many years couldn't do it. In other words, regardless of your perspective on marriage, you can't tell whether a couple will make it or not.
Even more intriguing was that the supposed experts on marriage turned out to be the worst at guessing whether a couple would be happy or not. Those who guessed best were the long-term married, the newly engaged and the newly divorced.
In other words, direct experience of marriage - even a bad experience - makes you a better judge of future happiness than professional expertise. So be assured! Married couples need married couples, not professionals.

Ebling, R. & Levenson., R.W. (2003). Who are the marital experts? Journal of Marriage & Family, 65, 130-142.

FEB 04 HOW JOINT INCOMES CAN BE BAD FOR YOUR MARRIAGE

Having two roughly equal earners in the house is bad news for a married couple, according to Stacy Rogers in the February issue of Journal of Marriage and Family.
Couples face their highest risk of divorce when the wife contributes 50-60% of overall earnings, especially if one person is unhappy. On the other hand unequal earnings are good news for married couples because they depend on each other more.
This fits with other research that says married couples tend to specialise roles rather than share them equally. Specialisation leads to greater stability.
Interestingly, the reverse of this is true for unmarried couples. Equal sharing of income and responsibilities provides greater stability for unmarried couples. The snag is that such an equal arrangement is difficult to monitor and maintain. The authors speculate that this may be one reason why unmarried couples have such high break-up rates.
My own speculation is that a focus on equality highlights the key role of fairness. It's then easy to see how any deviation, whether perceived or real, can lead to thoughts of unfairness. Unfairness leads to contempt, one of the key predictors of relationship problems.

Rogers, S. (2004). Dollars, dependency and divorce: four perspectives on the roles of wives income. Journal of Marriage & Family, 66, 59-74.

JAN 04 JOINT BANK ACCOUNTS AND RELATIONSHIP SUCCESS

Couples who cohabit and couples who marry for the second time share two characteristics in common. They both tend to use separate bank accounts and they both have a high risk of splitting up. First time married couples, on the other hand, almost always have joint bank accounts and have by far the lowest break-up rates amongst any couples.
Previous British studies have suggested that most first time couples use joint accounts while most second time couples use separate accounts. But the sample sizes in these studies have been too small to draw broad conclusions. A study by Kristen Heimdal and Sharon Houseknecht in the August 2003 issue of Journal of Marriage & Family looked at 1000 married and cohabiting couples in Sweden and the USA.
How much a couple earned or how well they were educated had no effect on whether they had joint or separate accounts. However in both countries type of relationship made a big difference. In each country, the vast majority of married couples had joint accounts and about half of the cohabiting couples had separate accounts. Cohabitors were over 2-3 times more likely to have separate accounts. Those who had ever been divorced were also twice as likely to have separate bank accounts.
Why couples choose separate or joint accounts is not addressed by the study. But it's not hard to speculate a link between financial arrangement and break-up risk. Cohabiting couples are often quite explicit about keeping their accounts separate. UK studies show that cohabitees, even with children, are between 3 and 5 times more likely to split up than married couples. Second time married couples also explain their decision in terms of the wisdom of keeping things separate. My own analysis of Office of National Statistics data shows that second time marriages in the UK are 80% more likely to end in divorce than first time marriages.
In my view, there's a strong case for saying that separate bank accounts raise the risk of future relationship problems. All the important predictors of relationship success boil down to attitude. If I have a separate bank account, I might be saying that my own personal autonomy comes first. If couples don't burn their bridges when they commit to a new relationship, they are setting themselves up for failure. When the let-out clause is there, they're more likely to use it when times get tough. That's what it looks like anyway.

Heimdal, K.R. & Houseknecht, S.K. (2003). Cohabiting & married couples' income organisation: Approaches in Sweden & the United States. Journal of Marriage & the Family, 65, 525-538.

DEC 03 MARRIAGE, NOT LIVING TOGETHER, BOOSTS WELL-BEING

A new study says marriage boosts well-being, whilst living together makes no difference.
Modern received wisdom is to disregard marriage and treat cohabitation as much the same thing. Although many studies have found significant differences between married and cohabiting groups in terms of health, wealth and well-being, the claim is made that these differences are mostly or entirely due to selection effects. Married couples are healthier and wealthier simply because healthier and wealthier couples get married. In practice it is extremely difficult to test whether this claim is true or false without following a large sample of people over time and comparing differences between those who marry and those who cohabit.
A new study by Kathleen Lamb and others in the November issue of Journal of Marriage & Family addresses precisely this issue and finds that getting married reduces the odds of depression while moving in together and cohabiting does not. In terms of depression at least, there is no evidence of a selection effect. It is all down to the type of relationship you have.
Lamb & al looked at a sample of 722 people out of the 9,000-strong US National Family & Household Survey conducted in the late 80s and early 90s. Levels of depression reported in the initial survey made no difference whatsoever to the odds of getting married or cohabiting. This rules out any selection effect. Levels of depression in the follow-up survey were unchanged amongst those who cohabited whereas they reduced significantly amongst those who had got married without cohabiting. There was also a small reduction amongst those who cohabited and then married although this was not significant. This demonstrates a relationship effect.
This study pours cold water on the view that cohabiting and marriage are the same thing. Furthermore the study presents solid evidence against the argument of a so-called "stepped approach to marriage". Marriage makes the difference. Going via cohabitation actually reduces that difference.
This is not the first study to demonstrate this. It's just one of the clearest. A study in the previous issue of JMF found that the gap in outcomes between those who cohabit and those who marry had not closed between the 1960/70s and 1980/90s. If cohabitees were worse off to start with, the increased popularity of cohabitation over time should have reduced the gap but it didn't (Kamp Dush et al, 2003). Although there is mixed evidence for selection effects, several studies find strong evidence in favour of a relationship effect (e.g. Marks & Lambert, 1998; Horwitz et al, 1996).
Although the selection and relationship effects are not mutually exclusive, the main question has always surrounded relationship effect. The jury has now decided. Marriage boosts well-being. Cohabitation makes no difference.

Horwitz, A., White, H. & Howell-White, S. (1996). Becoming married and mental health: a longitudinal study of a cohort of young adults. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 58, 895-907.

Kamp Dush, C., Cohan, C., & Amato, P. (2003). The relationship between cohabitation and marital quality and stability: change across cohorts? Journal of Marriage & Family, 65, 539-549.

Lamb, K.A., Lee, G.R., & DeMaris, A. (2003). Union formation and depression: Selection and relationship effects. Journal of Marriage & Family, 65, 953-962.

Marks, N. & Lambert, J. (1998). Marital status continuity and change among young and midlife adults: longitudinal effects on psychological well-being. Journal of Family Issues, 19, 652-86.

DEC 03 INSURING AGAINST DIVORCE

According to various on-line sources and Relate, the act of getting divorced apparently costs an average of £13,000. That of course excludes the many longer-term ongoing costs of a household divided in two.
Using my business background, I wondered what an insurer might charge for a divorce insurance policy - if you could buy such a thing. In that way, I can work out whether marriage preparation represents value for money in lieu of an insurance policy!
Let's assume a couple wants to protect themselves against divorce in the first 5 years of marriage. That's about the maximum life-span of our course anyway. So we ask the insurer.
The insurer looks at the £13,000 cost of a divorce today and figures that will go up 2% annually with inflation. He knows the risk of a marriage ending in divorce within 5 years is 14%. He also knows the insurance premium he receives can be invested at an interest rate of 5%. Finally he wants to make a profit of 20% on top of this.
Having worked this all out, and because he knows about BCFT, he offers the couple a choice!

EITHER they could give themselves financial security by insuring against the risk of divorce over 5 years, costing £1,900. Incidentally a 15 year policy should cost about £3,500.

OR they could give themselves both relationship and financial security by doing a BCFT course which actually reduces the risk of divorce by up to 80% over the first 5 years.

For BCFT's registration fee of a mere £20, marriage preparation is therefore a considerable steal!

NOV 03 THE EFFECT OF CONFLICT ON CHILDREN OF DIVORCE

Professor Paul Amato and his colleagues have been following 2,000 married adults and their children since 1980, interviewing them every 4 years or so. At each interview point, a series of studies have been published. The great strength of this particular series is how the researchers get continuous information about marriage, happiness and conflict.
Some of the adults stay married. Some of the adults divorce. They can compare the effects of marriage and divorce on both adults and children over time without adults or children re-writing history. This is almost certainly the best and most comprehensive overall study of marital history yet conducted anywhere in the world.
One of the latest studies from this series, by Alan Booth and Paul Amato, came out in the 2001 Journal of Marriage and Family. It looked at the effect of both marriage and divorce on children's well-being and relationships.
The study found that children's well-being was highest EITHER during a low conflict marriage OR after a high conflict marriage that ended in divorce. Children's well-being was lowest EITHER during a high conflict marriage OR after a low conflict marriage that ended in divorce. Relationships with friends and family also varied depending on the parents level of conflict and marital status in much the same way as well-being.
This is the best and clearest evidence that both marriage and divorce effect children's well-being and relationships. The level of conflict is critical to this. Children do best in low conflict marriages or following high conflict divorces. Children do worst in high conflict marriages or following low conflict divorces.
So much for the appeal of an amicable divorce.

Booth, A. & Amato, P. (2001). Parental Predivorce Relations and Offspring Postdivorce Well-Being. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63, 197-212.

OCT 03 ACCELERATING FAMILY BREAKDOWN

According to the Office of National Statistics journal Population Trends, there were 1.75 million families comprising 2.9 million children living in one-parent homes in the UK in the year 2000. This represents one quarter of all UK families and children, a proportion that has trebled over the last 30 years.
If divorce was entirely to blame for this, there should have been no change in one-parent homes over the last few years. This is because divorce rates have remained virtually unchanged since the late 1970s.
However in fact the total number of one-parent homes is rising at around 2.5% per year. Nearly half of all one-parent families are now single mothers who have never married. Population Trends points out how this proportion has risen especially fast since 1996.
What these statistics demonstrate therefore is the growing impact of family breakdown amongst unmarried parents. Break-up rates of unmarried parents are over 5 times higher than married parents within the first 5 years of a childs life. 40% of UK babies are now born to unmarried parents, compared to 5% historically between 1850 and 1960.
Politicians take note. Three in every four young children who experience family breakdown have parents who did not marry. The rapid rise in unmarried families is causing family breakdown to accelerate. Research links family breakdown to every negative social indicator - crime, ill-health, poverty, education problems, violence. That's why all these indicators keep getting worse. The problem isn't poverty. The problem is too much avoidable divorce and too many couples no longer thinking marriage is worthwhile.

Haskey, J. (2002). One-parent families - and the dependent children living in them - in Great Britain. Population Trends, 109, 46-57.