An optimistic view of the future of marriage pt 1(Smart Marriages)

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Shifting Gears : An Optimistic View of the Future of Marriage
Diane Sollee, MSW, Director, CMFCE at the
Conference on Communitarian Pro-Family Policies, Washington, DC, November 15, 1996,
sponsored by the Communitarian Network

There are good reasons to be optimistic about the future of marriage.

Before you dismiss this proposition, I ask you to put aside your doubts – and certainties – about marriage and divorce, and look at the challenge of family break down from a new angle. We have before us an optimal set of circumstances – a convergence of factors – that will allow us to usher in a new era of smart, satisfying, stable marriages. We can do this in time to welcome the new millennium with something really big to celebrate if we can get our act together and recognize and utilize the untapped tools and new information we already have on hand. I believe we are that close.

I say this with full awareness of the divorce statistics – the prevailing 50% divorce rate and the predictions that things can only get worse. I know that children of divorce are themselves more likely to divorce and that people have figured out what is causing divorce – it’s marriage! – and so they are avoiding it. People are waiting later to marry and cohabitation is increasing dramatically.

Richard Cohen, Washington Post critic-at-large, represents the frustrated majority when he snarls – that although it is no longer possible to ignore, or explain away the damage divorce does to children – the least those who preach family values and a tightening of divorce laws can do is to come clean and admit there are no solutions. Admit that what they are doing is asking people to choose between their own happiness and the happiness and well-being of their children. As Cohen, and so many see it, we are stuck – things are awful, but there is no acceptable way out.

He is half right. We have all – liberals, conservatives, feminists, promise keepers, policy makers, clergy, activists, grandparents, teenagers, teachers, marriage therapists, and critics-at-large – become discouraged under the weight of the divorce epidemic. We have made the connections between family breakdown and many of our most alarming problems including: delinquency, poverty, violence, school failure, depression, substance abuse, and poor health.

We agree that divorce is too expensive – for individuals and for society. It splits resources – both financial and emotional – and gives nothing back. We have even managed to agree that “daddies do matter” and that children do better when they grow up in stable, two-parent families – and better still if they can grow up with their two married biological parents.

And, we have also come to the full realization that no marriage is an island – that we are all affected not only by our own divorces but by those around us.

Yet, as much as we hate the fallout, we’ve become convinced that divorce is inevitable – one of life’s necessary evils.

This is due to our attitudes about marriage. We think of a marriage as a crap shoot, a game of chance with 50-50 odds of finding and marrying “the right person”.

If we marry “the wrong person”, we want the right to exit and try again.

And, we want to preserve this right for our fellow citizens. No one, we have come to believe, should have to live in an unhappy marriage. We hold this truth to be self-evident. Cohen sounds like Patrick Henry as he defends the divorces of Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich, “These guys,” he says, “were in marriages that were dead. To remain in such a marriage would be itself a form of death.”

I want to tap Richard and the rest of the discouraged and disenchanted on the shoulder and turn them around so they can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

But first, I want to use them to make a point. They are the majority. They admit that family breakdown is a serious, sobering problem. They have connected divorce and family breakdown with societal regression. They are alarmed and in despair and would welcome practical, workable, acceptable solutions.

I offer their “Readiness” as people’s Exhibit A.

Going to the Chapel

Exhibit B, I’ll call “Willingness.” A current overview of research into American values and attitudes finds that: 1) we value a happy marriage and family above all else and 2) we believe these are prerequisites for our own personal happiness and satisfaction. The surveys turn up these results whether they poll teen-agers or adults or are
conducted by popular magazines or academic institutions. Even more interesting is that over the past twenty years – rough years for marriage – these sentiments have actually increased.

Those who question the findings offer a range of explanations for why we claim to so highly value marriage but then divorce like lemmings. The explanations range from the most benign – we don’t mean it and just say we do (to look good) – to discouraging theories about a general decline in the American character. Social scientists postulate a diminished ability for self-sacrifice; a lack of commitment; a loss of a sense of duty; and a pervasive narcissism. Americans are accused of believing they can “have it all”, and worse, in their “overweening sense of entitlement”
believing they deserve to have it all — success at work, marriage, beautiful children, fit physiques and happiness.

I consider these high expectations a reason to celebrate. Something to build on. Think where we’d be if Americans gave up on these ideals and no longer believed that getting married, working hard, bearing, supporting and raising
kids is the route to happiness.

Eighty-five to ninety percent of Americans still marry – in spite of the odds. They still have children in the face of the predictions that they, themselves, will never equal their parents’ earning power. They take on the difficult task of step-parenting. They adopt crack babies, handicapped children, and traumatized children from third-world countries.

They go to war for their country, run into burning buildings to rescue strangers, work all day and go to school at night. And many of these self-sacrificing, committed, hard-working and caring people end up divorced. Think about Bob Dole – his commitment and courage in battle, fighting back from his war injuries, his long dedicated years in the Senate and his grueling run for the presidency. Bob Dole divorced. So did Ronald Reagan.

I’m optimistic because I don’t think divorce has much to do with character, or lack of it. I believe that it’s about something very simple – a misunderstanding about what makes marriages work – or fail. I believe that if people knew how to make their marriages work they would keep their vows, raise their children, and no one would have to point fingers and accuse them of being “entitled narcissists.” In fact, we don’t fault people when they aim high and set off to have it all – we toast them, buy them gifts and shower them with rice. We only call them names when they fail.

Women’s increased earning power is also presented as a contributing factor to the divorce crisis. Their wages enable them to more easily leave their marriages. This is obviously true. If women have an independent income they can more easily afford to leave. However, it doesn’t explain why they leave. They don’t want to leave because they can afford to leave. If they could stay married, they would reap the benefits of a dual-income, two-parent family. Or, they could afford the option of taking time off to raise their children or having their spouse stay home and raise the children. They’d like to have a partner to bring home some bacon and take out half the garbage and do half the
parenting. They leave because they don’t have basic knowledge about the nature of marriage – what to expect – and the skills to keep their marriages satisfying.

I strongly suggest that if we must continue to discuss theories like these we do it in hushed tones. The children might be listening.

I also have to get it on the table that I think it is destructive and a waste of time to talk about solutions that suggest that we lower expectations or turn back the clock.

My confidence in believing we can celebrate where we are, build on our areas of progress and move forward has to do with my conviction that we have new answers – research, tools, and know-how – at the ready and simply are not putting them to work. We’re not getting the new information to the couples that need it. Actually, that’s an understatement.
It’s worse than that. It’s not just that we’re not putting what we know to work, the new information about what makes marriage work is actually one of America’s best kept secrets.

The Information Age

So, we have Exhibits A and B, Readiness, and Willingness. Exhibit C is “Receptivity.”

We live in the Information Age. Our president has identified education as a national priority. Our citizens understand and embrace the notion of prevention. The majority of Americans – of any age – can explain the connections between diet, exercise, seat belts, Vitamin C, designated drivers, bike helmets, smoking, early detection, smoke alarms – and well-being. Americans are optimistic about the advances being made in science, medicine and education. They believe in self-care, self-improvement, prevention and mastery. They are eager about and receptive to more information about how to take care of themselve and their families.

It was announced this week that in only two years Americans have achieved a 30% reduction in the rate of SIDS deaths – sudden infant death syndrome – through an information campaign that introduced just one new parenting skill. We told parents not to lay their infants face down in their cribs, but to lay them on their sides or backs instead. I’m convinced we can do as well in reducing divorce. Don’t lay your marriage face down!

Prevention

Readiness, Willingness and Receptivity. Add to that Preventive Education – Exhibit D.

I was invited to this meeting to talk about increasing access to marital therapy. I am a marriage and family therapist who has spent the past twenty years at the national level doing just that – working hard to increase access to therapy and counseling. I concentrated on increasing the numbers of practitioners, persuading insurers to reimburse for marital therapy, and convincing the public of its effectiveness. Until recently, I believed this was the best way to strengthen marriages and prevent divorce. However, in twenty years, while the numbers of therapists and access have increased dramatically, the divorce rate hasn’t budged – it’s held steady at 50%.

Part of my work at the America Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) involved traveling across the country and around the world checking out the best and brightest the profession had to offer. Over the past ten years I became convinced that it is the pioneering work focused on skills-based education that offers the solution.

You all know the difference between giving a man a fish and teaching him to fish. The man who knows how to fish can feed himself and his family forever. A couple who knows how to solve their own problems can keep their love – and their marriage – alive forever.

You may also have heard the one about the dedicated marital therapist working the river bank. Day after day he pulls drowning couples from the river. He is only able to save about 20%, and can bear it no longer. He decides to walk upstream to see if there is any way to keep couples from falling in.

Thirty years ago, a handful of therapists, discouraged at how tough it was to revive the marriages which made it in for marital therapy, set out to find an approach that made better sense. One they could live with. These marriage education pioneers (Mace, Guerney, Miller, Olson, Gordon, etc) decided they had to teach couples how to keep from
falling in the river. Or, how to get out if they found themselves drowning – or starving. Teach them the survival skills. What to expect as they walked along the river bank; how to fish; how to do the marriage walk without losing thier balance or getting too close to the edge; or if they slip in, how to tread water, and how to climb back up the bank – how to be skillful about maintaining a successful marriage and family.

At the same time, marital researchers (Gottman, Markman, Notarius, etc) not so much frustrated as curious, set out armed with the ever more sophisticated tools coming on line – video cameras, computers, portable heart monitors, stress hormone analysis, etc. – to see if they could figure out what made some marriages work while others failed.

These pioneers amassed a compelling body of information about how to keep people from falling in the river and taking their children down with them. Or, climbing out if they fell. They identified skills that strengthen marriage and prevent divorce. More importantly they have demonstrated that these skills can be learned – and of greatest interest
for our purposes – they have developed, refined, and tested courses that teach the skills in a time and cost-efficient manner.