Barrie Thorne Jennifer Randles, University of California-Berkeley
In 1996, Congress overhauled the federal welfare system to encourage the formation of married two-parent families to promote child well-being and reduce parents? reliance on government benefits. As a continuation of this policy shift, in 2001, President George Bush created the Healthy Marriage Initiative (HMI), a policy that earmarked $150 million dollars annually in federal seed money to support community-based education programs that teach youth and adults how to value marriage and communicate more effectively. This project studies three primary questions: 1) How do government-sponsored marriage education programs frame healthy relationships and marriage, the skills necessary to create and sustain them, and the problems that undermine them?; 2) How are relationship skills taught in the classroom?; and 3) What is the experience of instructors and individuals who participate in marriage education programs? The study uses a three-part qualitative research design including: 1) textual analysis of the most commonly used HMI-approved relationship skills/marriage education curricula; 2) participant observation in HMI-funded relationship skills courses and marriage educator training workshops; and 3) interviews with educators and participants in HMI-funded classes for low-income and poor non-married parents in Northern California.
The research completes an in-depth study of how marriage education programs work in practice, especially as they tailor their messages for low-income groups. Marriage education promotes a particular way of thinking about marriage and its role in society, specifically its ability to transmit social and economic advantages. This project analyzes how curricular materials portray marriage themes, how instructors promote them in the classroom, and how participants respond to them.
Broader Impacts: The research can inform improvements in relationship education curricula that go beyond instruction in communication techniques and include discussions of larger socio-structural issues, such as job insecurity, the growing challenge of balancing work and family, changing gender roles, and for many, living in poverty.
