Is it possible that many unhappy couples need education rather than
therapy? And are laypeople sometimes just as good as psychotherapists
at teaching the skills for a successful relationship? These are
threatening notions to some behavioral health professionals. But over
the Fourth of July weekend, about 700 clinicians went to Washington, DC,
to attend the third annual meeting of an organization founded on those
ideas.
"Smart Marriages: Happy Families" is the title of the conference
sponsored each July by the Coalition for Marriage, Family, and Couples
Education. In addition to the mental health professionals, the meeting
drew 300+ clergy, educators, governmental policy makers, as well as
reporters from media outlets including CNN, USA Today, Time, and The
Washington Post. This conference is worth paying attention to for at
least three reasons: First, it's practice-oriented. Second, it's
multi-disciplinary. And third, it's iconoclastic. "Smart Marriages"
eschews the clinical detachment therapists traditionally maintain. The
bias is against divorce, in favor of marriage.
Perhaps because the meeting is devoted to a set of clearly defined
(though not universally agreed upon) ideas, the atmosphere was more
alive and exuberant than most professional gatherings we've attended in
recent years.
Coalition founder Diane Sollee says the work she and her colleagues are
doing comprise a "marriage and family education movement...It's an
optimistic, cost-effective approach to reversing the epidemic of divorce
and family breakdown...The idea in founding the Coalition was to put
marriage education on the map. I thought there was a whole body of
knowledge that wasn't getting out there...The threatening thing [to some
therapists] is that we've known for 20 years that you don't have to be a
behavioral health provider to teach marriage education."
Keynote presenter Michele Weiner-Davis tells us some therapists are
resistant to the "Smart Marriages" approach because they were trained
under the premise of being neutral toward divorce. "I've gotten some
strange stares when I've spoken (to other groups) about taking a
pro-marriage stance."
Sollee says she's received plenty of support from therapists in
general, but not from the various professional associations. She's
approached several, she reports, trying to cooperate on educational
programs. Their leaders said, "Why would we want to support education
and not therapy?"
But an educational approach does not seek to eliminate clinicians from
the picture. "That's like saying that someone who teaches diet and
exercise is against heart surgeons," Sollee says. In fact, behavioral
health professionals are the ones who have done the research and
developed most of the marital education programs featured at the
conference. And they train their therapist-colleagues to incorporate
these skills and workshops into their own private practices.
Below are several ideas, quotes, and statistics we picked up at the
"Smart Marriages" meeting:
--"A large part of marital therapy is not working," according to John
Gottman, a marital researcher at the University of Washington. "That is
a very consistent finding in the research." To learn about good
marriages, he says, the experts should be studying happy couples rather
than couples in therapy.
Gottman claims to have tracked 650 couples for up to 14 years. He
finds that despite what many marital therapists teach, communicating
well and learning how to solve conflicts are not the keys to preserving
marriage. Instead, he says, it is a profound friendship that keeps
marriages strong.
--A long-term first marriage is a new status symbol, according to a
report in The Wall Street Journal (April 29, 1999). This is partly due
to the fact that such unions are seen as nearly impossible to achieve,
given the high divorce rate of the last 30 years. 85% to 90% of the
American public will get married at least once, the Journal says. But
the divorce rate for those marrying for the first time in 1999 is still
predicted to be 50%. Meanwhile, research shows that married people are
healthier, wealthier, more successful by all measures--and have better
sex.
--"Therapist-assisted marital suicide has become part of the standard
paradigm of contemporary psychotherapy." That's from William J.
Doherty, director of the marriage and family therapy program at the
University of Minnesota. He cites a recent study which finds that only
13% of the country's 352,535 mental health professionals were
specifically taught marital therapy as part of their professional
training. "It is safe to say the great majority of those doing couples
therapy have had no formal training at all."
--Several states are passing laws that attempt to bolster marriage.
Florida's "Marriage Preparation and Preservation Act" rewards couples
for getting premarital counseling and requires 9th and 10th graders to
receive a marriage skills class. Louisiana and Arizona offer couples
the option of a "covenant marriage," which requires premarital
counseling and sets stricter conditions for divorce. In Utah, Governor
Mike Leavitt has created a "Commission on Marriage" to study these and
other programs.
You can contact the Coalition's director Diane Sollee or get more
information about the "Smart Marriages" conference, at the Coalition for
Marriage, Family and Couples Education, 5310 Belt Rd. NW, Washington, DC
20015-1961, (202)362-3332, fax (202)362-0973, www.smartmarriages.com,
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Web site features a directory of
programs and providers in areas including marriage, premarital, couples,
parenting, sex, and stepfamily education; info about training courses
with locations, schedules, prices; links to program Web sites; plus
reports, research summaries, and legislation.
