Can Government Rescue Marriages?

By Dr Scott M Stanley & Dr Howard J Markman

The Move To Mandate Premarital Counseling

Following closely on the heels of the legislative movement to make divorce harder is the movement to make marriages better by mandating premarital counseling as a requirement for obtaining a marriage license. Some states are considering an incentive model, with longer delays for getting a license unless a couple gets premarital counseling (e.g., Maryland and Michigan) or by giving a tax break (e.g., Iowa), while other states (e.g., Minnesota and Mississippi) are considering an outright mandate for premarital counseling. The intention is to help couples increase their odds for successful marriage from the start. The good news is that couples can learn to have better marriages. The bad news is that government force could lead to unintended negative consequences.

The Good News: Reducing Marital Distress and Divorce Is Possible

Our studies show that marital failure is predictable to a surprising degree--with up to 90 percent accuracy in classification of future outcomes for research samples, using only premarital data. Hence, for many couples the seeds of divorce are present prior to marriage. The factors that predict marital failure range from relatively static dimensions, such as history of parental divorce and differences in religion, to more dynamic dimensions such as communication and conflict management patterns. The dynamic factors make the most attractive targets for premarital counseling because these factors are both highly predictive of divorce and amenable to change. In essence, it is not how much couples love each other, but how they handle conflict that best predicts future marital distress or divorce--and conflict is inevitable.

Added to the prediction research, studies on our Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) strongly suggest that couples can learn skills and enhance ways of thinking--prior to marriage--that significantly improve their odds of having good marriages. We and our colleagues in Germany have tracked the positive effects of such training for years following the marriage ceremony, with better communication, greater satisfaction, 50% lower break-up rates, and 50% lower incidence of physical aggression.

The Bad News: Possible Unintended Negative Consequences

Trying to prevent marital distress is hardly controversial. The controversy is whether or not governments should force it on a broad scale. Government mandated premarital counseling may have serious negative effects that are not being considered.

First, many segments of society are averse to increasing governmental intervention in family life. The fact that it is harder to get a driver's license than a marriage license is often mentioned in this debate, but getting a marriage license is different. Sure, there are areas of personal behavior where most would agree that the government should intrude--and some areas where the issue is highly controversial. But are people really going to accept the government's intrusion into marriage any more than they want the government telling them how to raise their children?

Second, mandating premarital counseling would be a bureaucratic nightmare. There would be endless debates about what should be required and who is qualified to provide the training. Further, we note that premarital counseling is most often conducted by religious institutions. Since government mandates usually come with government standards, mandating premarital counseling could allow the government unprecedented regulatory control over processes that are currently and preeminently the province of religious institutions. This is a significant 1st amendment concern.

Some will note that many religious institutions have been mandating premarital counseling for years, so what's wrong with the government doing it, too? Since religious institutions often are more deeply embedded in the lives and culture of people than government is, they can likely mandate without the same degree of negative consequences. After all, the idea is consistent with a degree of accountability within the community of faith. It is also not unusual for military institutions to mandate such training as a requirement for chapel based marriages. However, since there is a preexisting education and training mentality - as in religious institutions - this probably works more positively than a broader-based government effort could.

Third, we are concerned that there are virtually no data on the effectiveness of mandated programs while there is steadily growing evidence on the effectiveness when couples volunteer for such programs. We do hope, over time, to have better data on the effects of mandating premarital and marital training within both religious and military institutions.

Given the possible negatives of various initiatives to strengthen the institution of marriage, we argue for a less complicated path until we have had more discussion and research on the effects of the alternatives.