THE
DALLAS OBSERVER
Just Get Married! May 29,
2003 |
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Bells will be ringing as a new pro-marriage, anti-poverty plan takes
root in Texas |
BY MARK DONALD |
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Mark Graham |
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Dallas marriage therapist Kelly Simpson hopes to spearhead the
"Texas initiative," a broad-based Dallas effort to promote marriage and
strengthen relationships by offering classes such as those she developed for the Army.
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"Then there was the guy who loved his wife so much, he almost told her." --Anonymous
It seems a bit bizarre and a lot ironic that the Army, part of the mightiest military
machine in history, is offering its troops a touchy-feely weekend workshop in romance. Yet
eight soldiers and their spouses in various stages of connubial bliss are registered at a
San Antonio Holiday Inn for a three-day course in the pleasurable arts. All hope--or so
they say this May evening--to command a better understanding of the emotional needs of
their companions by building the communication and intimacy needed to enhance their
marriages. Hopefully, the sex will get better, too.
There was a time when the Army's attitude about marriage was different. "We used
to say, if the Army wanted you to have a wife, we would have issued you one," says a
company commander who attended the workshop. But now the Army, like much of the federal
government, is in the business of promoting and strengthening marriage.
The Army got it right when it hired Dallas marriage therapist Kelly Simpson to teach
romance skills to its fighting men and women. Simpson is attractive but unthreatening,
girlish but gracious, farm fresh in her candor but Park Cities in her pinstripes. As she
offers an overview of the weekend's activities, a playful smile deepens her dimples.
Topics will include differing intimacy styles, the biology of love and ministering to each
other's sexual needs. Several couples have previously attended her communication skills
workshop, but it can't be easy for soldiers to talk about surrender--sexual, emotional or
otherwise.
Simpson gets everybody on their feet, playing a game she calls "suck it up, blow
it out." Each couple stands face to face--a drivers license pressed to the lips of
one partner. The goal is to pass the license between partners, by blowing or sucking, and
thereby mimicking the give-and-take implicit in a cooperative relationship. The spirit of
the game is playful, but the sucking, blowing sounds have an undulating, erotic quality.
Small wonder it's the last exercise of the evening before the couples retreat to their
rooms.
"Each couple will receive a little brown goody bag," says Simpson, who has
filled them with baby oil, string, candles and other trinkets in hope they might get
creative with the menu of sexual options that will be discussed. "Research shows that
the best sex happens in long-term married relationships."
I begin to wish I had taken my editor up on her offer and invited my wife to come along
for the ride. Throughout the weekend, it becomes obvious the couples are growing more
intimate, staring into each other's eyes during the exercises, listening without
interrupting, passing out government-issued Kleenex as they openly recommit themselves to
their marriage vows.
"This is not traditional marriage therapy," Simpson later says. "This is
marriage education." No attempts are made to heal the inner child, to diagnose
dysfunction, to blame Mom for neurotic behaviors. "There is lecturing and group
discussions, which create the opportunity to take in information in a less defensive
mode."
Marriage education is the centerpiece of the Bush administration's Healthy Marriage
Initiative, a controversial social experiment that seeks to use federal welfare funds from
the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program to promote marriage and reduce
divorce, particularly among the poor, whose children are five times as likely to live in
poverty if raised in mother-only households. But family disintegration knows no economic
boundaries, and states such as Oklahoma, which has become a national pro-marriage model,
are already preaching a get-married, stay-married agenda to couples of every stripe.
Simpson hopes to be at the forefront of a broad-based "marriage promotion
program" in the Dallas area, using much of the same material she developed for the
Army.
Though at first blush, the pro-marriage movement seems the agenda of the family-values
crowd--religious conservatives locked in a cultural war with single moms, cohabitants and
Hillary Clinton--a body of research from respected social scientists has given renewed
zeal to those whose primary weapon had been a few selected verses of scripture. This
research suggests that marriage confers undeniable benefits on children, couples and
country. It has also drawn together an odd confluence of conservatives, sociologists,
marriage educators, fathers' rights activists and divorce-law reformers who have found
enough common ground to consider themselves a movement… |
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The Detroit Free Press
November
5, 2003
FAMILY
LIFE: Programs aim to make life better for kids by teaching their
parents
to cooperate and communicate what the government is interested in
is
the quality of marriage relationships, he said.
Put under News Page
BY WENDY WENDLAND-BOWYER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Each week while her husband is at work, Peggy Torres and a dozen
other
Grand Rapids moms pile into a Sunday school classroom at Madison
Square
Christian Reformed Church for a class called Encouraging Family
Foundations.
There, the women learn about things that cause stress in
relationships,
such as budgeting money, co-parenting and communincation. The
class,
overseen by the Child and Family Resource Council, a nonprofit
children's agency and paid for with $200,000 in welfare funding,
is the
only one of its kind in the state.
But within a year, Grand Rapids will have dozens of similar
programs,
all geared toward strengthening relationships and marriages.
"I would highly recommend it to anybody. It is
excellent," Torres, 38,
said of the class her welfare worker recommended. She and her
husband,
who had been separated, were back together before the class
began.
Earlier this year, Grand Rapids was chosen by the
U.S.Administration for
Children and Families to be one of three cities nationwide to
pilot a
program that promotes marriage and communication between parents
as a
way to combat child support collection problems.
Organizers hope for big impacts on children's well-being.
"What we know from the research is that when a parent's
relationship
suffers . . . that negatively affects the child," said Mark
Eastburg,
executive director of Healthy Marriages Grand Rapids, the
organization
that will oversee the $1.5 million, 5-year program. "If we
can improve
and strengthen those relationships, the effects on the children
will be
positive."
Eastburg envisions numerous classes aimed at strengthening
marriages,
urging couples to consider marriage, or at the very least,
helping
people who have children together get along better. The classes,
which
will start next year, will be offered at community centers,
churches and
nonprofit agencies throughout the city.
Calvin College will evaluate the program's effectiveness, as
will the
federal government.
Improving children's lives by strengthening their parents'
relationship
is something the Bush administration is emphasizing. And there's
money
to support nearly every situation.
This fiscal year, about $1.2 million will go toward programs to
improve
the marriages of refugees. About $100,000 is going to help
marriages
among American Indians.
There are grants to help the marriages of couples who are
adopting, who
are on welfare, who have low incomes or who have a spouse just
out of
prison.
There are grants to study what is working, and grants to collect
marriage and divorce statistics. In total, about $6.2 million
will be
spent this fiscal year.
And when Congress reauthorizes the federal welfare bill,
possibly
sometime next year, there could be $300 million more.
"I really think it is quite astonishing how marriage has
leaped onto the
public agenda," said Theodore Ooms, a senior policy analyst
at the
Center for Law and Social Policy, a Washington, D.C., think tank
who has
been studying the movement for the past several years. "I
really do
think this is an issue that has bubbled up from
communities."
Wade Horn, the U.S. assistant secretary for children and
families, said
it makes sense for the government to promote healthy marriages,
particularly among low-income couples who may not have the
resources for
counseling. Research shows that children with married parents
are less
likely to live in poverty and are at less risk of other
problems. He
stressed that the government is not forcing anyone to marry, and
that
the courses are always voluntary.
What the government is interested in is the quality of marriage
relationships, he said.
"It is a little unclear to me why there seems to be no
problem with
providing parenting education, but suddenly people are concerned
about
marriage education," Horn said. "Offering parenting
classes doesn't mean
the government is pushing people to be parents. Offering
marriage
education does not mean the government is pushing people into
marriage."
But some researchers, such as Pamela Smock, associate director
of the
Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan,
question
this new government focus.
"If the goal is something like promoting child well-being,
then what we
want to do is have direct intervention to promote child
well-being, not
do something so indirect so that their parents will get
married," she
said.
Smock also questions how marriage-promotion programs would work
when
some women have children by more than one man.
"So do we want these people to marry father No. 1, father
No. 2, father
No. 3?" Smock asked. "Which people should we be
encouraging them to
marry?"
U.S. Census numbers show that the number of Americans choosing
to have
babies or live together without being married is growing.
In both Michigan and the United States, 33 percent of all babies
are
born to unwed mothers. Also, the number of non-married couples
who live
together was about 4.2 million in 1998, up from 439,000 in 1960.
Many involved in the city's new marriage grant admit that
encouraging
marriage is a huge goal, with many hurdles. The Encouraging
Family
Foundations class financed through the Family Independence
Agency has
some women who attend who have children bymen who turned
violent. Others
are like Tanisha Smith. She and Michael Gessmer have two
children
together and another on the way. They live together and are
engaged but
are in no hurry to walk down the aisle.
Part of the reason is money. Part, Smith said, is fear.
"We hear a lot of incidents, like his brother. He got
married, and now
they are split up," said Smith, 20. She said she and
Gessmer have a good
relationship, and they don't want that to change. "It is
just really
scary."
Renita Reed, executive director of the nonprofit Restorers Inc.,
is
working with Healthy Marriages Grand Rapids on the city's new
grant and
wants to work with couples like Smith and Gessmer.
Reed said most of her program's clientele are single moms, many
of whom
are interested in relationship classes. Restorers already offers
low-income families classes on debt counseling, employment
assistance
and housing rehabilitation.
"I'd love to see
families get the encouragement and support to stay
married and be happy, or
have the courage to make that walk and
commitment of
marriage," Reed said. "My hope is this will be another
opportunity for them to
be able to do that."
Copyright
(c) 2003 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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