The lifelong covenant of marriage by Margaret Andrews
November 1999
by Margaret Andrews
published in Conservatism magazine

It's time to shift counselling from crisis periods to relationship preparation and enrichment

By Margaret Andrews: Convenor of the Marriage Education Programme Inc., Melbourne, Australia. In this article Margaret Andrews examines the continuing popularity of marriage despite its challenges. Marriage offers more stability and a wide range of better outcomes than cohabitation. And she calls for relationship counselling to be refocused on preparation and enrichment - rather than on crisis periods.

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We need to understand and communicate to the broader society that marriage is the optimal family structure when the health and welfare of men, women and children are considered. As Professor William Doherty, President of the US National Council on Family Relations, has noted: "For adults, a stable, happy marriage is the best protector against illness and premature death, and for children, such a marriage is the best source of emotional stability and good physical health.' There is conclusive evidence to show that marriage is a 'healthy environment' associated with lower mortality and morbidity and strong evidence that the process of divorce leaves men, women and children vulnerable to ill-health."

When marriages fail

Conversely, a considerable body of research evidence indicates that adults and children are at increased risk from mental and physical problems due to marital distress.

In a recent review of the literature, Professor Linda Waite, the University of Chicago professor of sociology and a past president of the American Population Association, observed: "In a variety of ways and along a number of dimensions, married men and women lead healthier lives than the unmarried. This includes more drinking, substance abuse, drinking and driving and generally living dangerously among single men. Married women more often have access to health insurance. Divorced and widowed men and women are more likely to get into arguments and fights, do dangerous things, take chances that could cause accidents. The married lead more ordered lives, with healthier eating and sleeping habits. Marriage improves both men's and women's' psychological well-being. Perhaps, as a result, married men and women generally live longer than single men and women."

The research findings also relate to children. A large number of studies have shown that divorce has both a short term and a long-term impact on children. It also demonstrates that this impact often extends into adult life with consequences for health, family life, educational performance and occupational status.

An example is the work of Professor Paul Amato. His latest research found that only one quarter to a third of divorces end up being better for the children, than if the parents had stayed together. By contrast, about 70% of divorces end low-conflict marriages, which would have been better for the children to have continued rather than ending. Amato concludes: "With marital dissolution becoming increasingly socially acceptable, it is likely that people are leaving marriages at lower thresholds of unhappiness now than in the past. Unfortunately, these are the very divorces that are most likely to be stressful for children. Consequently, we conclude that the rise in marital disruption... has, on balance, been detrimental to children".

Professor Amato further noted that many of those divorces which ended low-conflict marriages could have been avoided. These were not violent marriages, but rather marriages where the partners had become bored, or 'grown apart'. It is arguable that these marriages were salvageable with an increased understanding by the partners of the realities of married life and communication skills to maintain 'togetherness' and romance in the relationship.

Yet happy marriage is still a universal aspiration. Despite worldwide negative trends, surveys repeatedly show that young people desire a lifelong marriage and happy family life. Even after the trauma of a failed marriage, many people will marry a second and even third time. However statistics reveal that second and subsequent marriages break up at an even greater rate than first marriages.

Which leads to the conclusion that overall divorce is not the answer. As American marriage therapist Michele Weiner-Davis notes: "If divorce were truly an answer, people would learn from the mistakes they made in their first marriage. Their second marriage would provide them with opportunities to apply what they learned... .but.... people are not prepared for the complexities of second marriages or blended families... People discover that the grass isn't any greener on the other side after all."

Rather says Weiner-Davis, divorce creates new problems. In her best selling book Divorce Busting, she observed: "I have witnessed the suffering and disillusionment that are the predictable by-products of divorce. I have seen people who have been divorced for five years or longer with wounds that won't heal. These people failed to anticipate the pain and upheaval divorce leaves in its wake. I have heard countless divorced couples battle tenaciously over the very same issues they believed they were leaving behind when they walked out the door. I have heard too many disillusioned individuals express regrets about their belief that their ex-spouse was the problem only to discover similar problems in their second marriages or, even more surprisingly, in their new single lives... And then there are the children, who are also the victims in a divorce. ...Battles over parenting issues don't end with divorce, they get played out even more vigorously with children as innocent by-standers or even pawns... I have come to the conclusion that divorce is not the answer. It doesn't necessarily solve the problems it purports to solve. Most marriages are worth saving."

Like it or not, marriage has become a major casualty of the cultural changes over the past few decades. Modern life is more complex, lived at a faster pace, with more demands than in the past. Personal fulfilment has replaced economic security as the cultural basis for marriage. Economic conditions have required most families to have both spouses in the paid workforce. Legislation has made divorce easier to obtain. Community supports for marriage have been weakened. Factors shaping contemporary marriage and modern attitudes to marriage have led to a culture of divorce being seen as an acceptable answer to an unsatisfactory marriage.

The instability associated with cohabitation

The remarkable increase in cohabitation has led to a further destabilisation of marriage. Changes to laws governing the rights of cohabiting couples have made that lifestyle a much more common option in most of the industrialised world. Different patterns of cohabitation have been identified in three groups of European countries.

First, countries where cohabitation is well established (most of the Scandinavian countries);

Secondly, those where it is emerging primarily as an extension of courtship and a prelude to marriage (UK, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Finland and Austria);

Thirdly, those countries where cohabitation is relatively uncommon (Ireland and the Southern European countries).

Cohabitation in Australia and the United States fits mainly in the second group, that is, as a pathway to marriage. This trend toward pre-marital cohabitation in much of Europe, Australia and the US is especially significant, because despite increasing evidence to the contrary, many people consider 'trial marriage a good idea'.

However, two aspects of the phenomenon of cohabitation bear further consideration. The first is the inherent instability of cohabiting relationships. According to recent American research, the median duration of cohabitation is 1.3 years. About 53% of first cohabiting unions will result in marriage, 37% will dissolve and 10% will continue. While about half of cohabitors will marry the person with whom they cohabit, another 26% reported plans to marry their live-in partner, but did not. 10% to 30% of cohabitors intend never to marry.

Domestic violence occurs more often with cohabiting couples than with married persons and cohabitors are likely to carry this pattern into marriage. Indeed some research has found, where violence already exists in the relationship, there is a 95% to 98% likelihood of it continuing after marriage.

The other disturbing trend is that marriages which are preceded by cohabitation are up to twice as likely to subsequently breakdown. The 1992 Australian Institute of Family Studies Family Formation Project, found that after five years of marriage, 13% of those who had cohabited would divorce, compared to 6% of those who had not cohabited. Ten years later the proportions were 26% of those who had cohabited and 14% for those who had not. According to that study pre-marital cohabitation is one of the three pre-marital experiences contributing most to the risk of marital breakdown. The other two are having an ex-nuptial child, and leaving home at an early age.

These findings about cohabitation have been supported by research in Britain, Canada, the US and Sweden. Much effort is now being made to shed more light on the risk factors of cohabitation. It would appear that risk factors fall into two categories.

The first is the predisposing attitudes and behaviours which cohabitors bring to their relationships, whether de facto or married. These factors include libertarian attitudes to sexual exclusivity, commitment and the exchange of resources. Independence, individualism and autonomy are also associated with cohabitation. Cohabitors tend to be less religious and exhibit an increase in risk-taking behaviours. Reduced confidence in being able to sustain a life-long marriage, especially in the context of divorce already being a family experience, is also a factor which appears to play a role. Cohabiting couples may drift into marriage because they are getting older, or have become used to each other, or are subject to peer and family pressure to marry. Having lived together, some couples' ability to choose clearly may well be impaired.

The other category of risk factors is the effect of the experience of cohabitation on those individuals involved. These include changes in attitude about commitment and permanence in relationships, thus making some people less tolerant to the normal vicissitudes of married life and more open to divorce. These risk factors would seem to relate to the US findings, that those who cohabit more than once prior to marriage, have higher rates of later divorce; and those cohabitors who do subsequently divorce, tend to break up early in the marriage.

But people still aspire to marriage

We have heard that marriage remains a dominant aspiration for many people; that it has positive benefits for men, women and children; that divorce often has negative consequences, particularly for children and could, in many cases be prevented; and that many people subsequently regret their divorce and say it could have been avoided. Further, it appears even harder to make a success of a second marriage, which often involve blended families.

Rebuilding a culture of lifelong marriage will require considerable effort. In many of our countries neither economic factors nor religious and societal values hold marriages together. Thus, I believe that marriage education can play a vital role in supporting the lifelong covenant of marriage. At a social policy level, it involves a recognition of the crucial importance of marriage for the stability of families and society, and the implementation of national policies that support husbands and wives, especially in their care of children. Amongst other things, this involves educating people about marriage, both its importance and the consequences of its breakdown.

It also involves educating young engaged and newly wed couples about the nature of lifelong marriage and supporting them in gaining the knowledge and skills needed to sustain them throughout life. Given that personal fulfillment is now the dominant measure of marital stability, such education can offer couples the opportunity to examine their expectations of marriage and learn to respectfully negotiate their lives together.

It is therefore important that we take steps to inform and educate people about their choices, both the population generally, as the report of the US National Marriage Project does, and also individuals through marriage education opportunities.

Marriage education

Marriage education is essentially different from marriage counseling or therapy in that it focuses on the development of the appropriate knowledge, skills and attitudes to build and maintain healthy relationships; as opposed to counseling and therapy which has as its primary orientation the solution to specific emotional problems presented by the clients.

Modern marriage education can be traced to a number of events over the past few decades, including the development of marriage counseling in many countries in the 1940s and 50s; the emergence of Marriage Encounter in Spain in 1962, and the marriage enrichment movement in the US the same year; the development of psychological and behavioural theories over the past three decades; and the evolution of adult education principles, with an emphasis on the idea that people learn best through experiential opportunities.

A recent report to the Australian Parliament on Strategies to Strengthen Marriage and Relationships identified three contemporary approaches to marriage education. Assessment approaches seek to gather data on partner attitudes and behaviours which can be used to set growth goals and attitude or behaviour change. The underlying belief is that insights about one's attitudes, behaviours, and expectations can lead to changes in thinking or behaving that give marriages a better chance.

Australian pre-marriage education programmes typically involve couples in an exploration of their awareness of factors such as expectations of marriage, the influence of their family background, communication patterns, conflict styles, and the ever-changing nature of the life cycle. Programmes often include information sessions about financial issues and home buying, sexuality and family planning. Those conducted by church agencies usually include sessions on spirituality and marriage.

A third approach to marriage education involves the training of couples in communication and conflict resolution skills, especially active or reflective listening. Well-known US programs include Relationship Enhancement, Couple Communication and PREP (Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program). Some of these programs, such as PREP, are used in European countries like Germany and Norway.

Of all nations, programmes of marriage education are most commonly found in Australia. More than one-quarter of all couples marrying in Australia participate in some form of marriage education. Significantly, those marrying in churches have a higher level of participation, for example about two-thirds of Catholics do some form of marriage education. Although almost a half of couples are now married in civil ceremonies, very few of them participate in marriage education. Yet the divorce rate for people marrying in civil ceremonies is about twice that of those marrying in churches, synagogues and temples. Part of the reason for the high participation rate in marriage education in Australia, by international standards, is due to support by the Federal Government.

A critical area for marriage education is the early years of marriage. One quarter of separations in Australia occur before the third wedding anniversary. Add to this fact, the high and increasing rate of cohabitation and the increased risks it places on the survival of the marriage, it is essential that we develop programmes to support newly-weds through the early adjustment phase of marriage. The Marriage Education Programme in Melbourne, Australia, of which I am convenor, has recently developed a programme for newly married couples which includes a series of newsletters, Modern Marriage, with the aim of supporting young couples through the early years of marriage.

The theme of this session is marriage as a lifelong covenant. To have a vibrant society, we need strong, healthy, energetic families. Functional families rely on successful, intact marriages. There is a complex array of demands that are placed upon marriages and families by our ever-changing, fast-paced, modern society. We therefore need to affirm and support existing marriages and get new marriages off to a good start, so they have the resources to meet the ongoing challenges which will be encountered over a lifetime.

I dream of universal educative programmes, which begin with encouraging school students to learn good communication skills in their interactions with their classmates and their parents, through to work colleagues and eventually marriage partners and family members. Marriage education programmes should support young couples by enabling them to evaluate their decision to marry, clarify their individual and mutual expectations, affirm and build on their strengths and acknowledge and discuss their differences. I believe these practical solutions could make a monumental contribution to sustaining the lifelong Covenant of marriage.