If you'd like to receive our full e-newsletter each month, just email us. The BCFT e-newletter includes Harry's soapbox (see below) and some relationship tips.

Jun 2008 BCFT really needs you!

May 2008 Wisdom from Adam & Eve

Apr 2008 Marriage may be down but it's far from out

Mar 2008 Would a wise woman pop the question?

Feb 2008 Why doesn't relationship education seem to work in schools?

Jan 2008 The fundamental flaws of sex education

Dec 2007 Nutcrackers wanted!

Nov 2007 Deciding, after a lifetime of sliding

Oct 2007 Is he marriageable?

Sep 2007 Strengthening families - complex but not complicated

Jul 2007 The future is Oklahoma!

Jun 2007 Building margin into our lives

May 2007 The next generation of marriage and relationship education

Apr 2007 Relationships, labels & mental health

Mar 2007 The growing case for marriage preparation

Feb 2007 Heroic stepfamilies and impossible conundra

Jan 2007 Why Polly Toynbee is wrong about marriage and cohabitation

Dec 2006 Coping with "crevasses" - the ups and downs of a "stable" relationship

Oct 2006 Exploding the myth that all couples are equal

Sep 2006 Equal rights for cohabiting couples?

Jul 2006 Helping mum & dad stay together

Jun 2006 Turning despair into hope

May 2006 Effective policy ignores the merchants of doom

Apr 2006 The case against professionalisation

Mar 2006 Understanding the blob of commitment

Feb 2006 Putting prevention on the political map

Jan 2006 Is the tide turning at last for family policy?

Dec 2005 Seven secrets of a highly successful Christmas

Nov 2005 Why lawyers are bad for your marriage

Oct 2005 Rising divorce rates - the trend that doesn't exist!

Sep 2005 US welfare reform has made a dramatic impact on poverty rates

Jul 2005 The government is censoring new family research

Jun 2005 Mr Blair says he can't parent our children, yet he does!

May 2005 None of the manifestos address family stability or family breakdown

April 2005 Why a new proposal for unmarried parents does not undermine marriage

Mar 2005 Putting relationship education in the public eye

Feb 2005 Choosing to love

Jan 2005 The case for marriage preparation

Dec 2004 How well trained do mentors have to be?

Nov 2004 Public policy can reduce divorce

Oct 2004 Pre-nups are a dreadful idea : thoughts of divorce make divorce more likely ·

Sep 2004 BCFT suggests ways the government could better support families

Jul 2004 Why smacking is the wrong issue, according to the latest research.

Jun 2004 How do we know what to teach? Using the latest research to find out what really matters

---

 

June 2008 - Harry's soapbox

BCFT really needs you!

• BCFT relationship courses have already made a difference to thousands of families and children. But we can do so much more.

• Our day-to-day work is going really well but we could do with a few more regular supporters to help with our running costs. It cost us just £24,000 to put 930 people through BCFT courses last year — premarriage, post-natal, parenting & prison . But we need another 30-40 donations of £10 per month to keep things in the black.

• We're also starting a fantastic new project which will make our post-natal course ADAPT much more accessible to fathers and also available to those of you outside Bristol. Click here for a one page summary. We're about £5,000 short of the £20,000 needed.

• Prevention never seems quite as urgent or dramatic as treatment. But it is just as important. Please make a donation now if you can. Help us make a difference. Click here for a Gift Aid & standing order form.

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

 

May 2008 - Harry's soapbox

Wisdom from Adam & Eve .

• I am often asked if BCFT is a religious charity. The answer is no. BCFT activities are based on secular research. Our courses are about relationships, not religion. However I personally happen to be a Christian. So I thought I'd discuss this month how I reconcile my beliefs with research.

• Lots of people claim that religion and science have little to say to each other. But if the reality of life is as the Bible claims, a diligent scholar ought to be able to make insightful predictions about family life that are subsequently borne out by social science research findings.

• In practice the two approaches complement each other wonderfully. Modern social science studies both reflect and illuminate ancient Biblical principles, and vice versa. Allow me to illustrate.

• Marriage & divorce. The Bible is up on marriage and down on divorce. The first and most obvious prediction might therefore be that families headed by a married couple will tend to do well whereas those headed by divorced couples will generally do less well. A mass of research studies confirm this to be the case on average. There are ongoing debates about the relative influence of selection, background, personal and relational factors. But even taking these into account, the basic prediction still holds generally true across a variety of outcomes for both adults and children.

• Cohabitation. The Bible says little per se about unmarried cohabitation perhaps because it is only in recent history that the availability of birth control has made cohabitation a viable lifestyle option. Until that time, some form of explicit commitment was an essential precursor to living together and parenthood. A Biblical scholar would describe this kind of commitment in terms of “covenant” and might predict that cohabitation without some form of preceding covenant would be less stable. This turns out to be the case even if couples have children and to a lesser extent even if they eventually marry. In fact the odds of parents with a young child staying together are influenced more by whether they are married or not than by any other background factor, such as their age, income, education or ethnic group. Couples who make their “covenant” – i.e. get engaged – only after they have already lived together are also more likely to be less committed and less stable on average.

• Attitudes and beliefs A new generation of research is exploring how Biblical themes – such as sacrifice, forgiveness, meaning and commitment – have strong and surprising influences on marriage. For example, couples who attach a sacred or God-inspired meaning to their marriage tend to have higher quality relationships together. The premise here is that if God has joined them together, involving God in the marriage would seem an advantage. There are also courageous and thoroughly non-pc predictions to be drawn from the New Testament analogy of Jesus and his church as husband and wife, through observing how each views and treats the other. Perhaps the most remarkable findings are the gender differences that are hard to predict or explain by purely secular means. Men in particular – much more than women – need to make clear deliberative decisions about their future in order both to commit fully and to be willing to sacrifice.

• Behaviour Although many people would point to communication as the key to a happy marriage, a Biblical scholar would find little direct evidence to support this. In fact by far the most pervasive Biblical theme on relationships is the repeated contrast of negative and positive. Don't do the bad and do the good. Take off the old and put on the new. Don't talk down and build up. Only in recent years has this negative/positive theme received considerable support from social science. Negative and positive are different aspects of marriage, not mere opposites. So being nicer to one another does not necessarily eliminate our less attractive characteristics. In fact, negative behaviour tends to have most influence in the earlier years of marriage. Positive behaviour becomes more important later. This is the single biggest message for effective relationship education programmes: that couples need to reduce their bad habits and build up their good habits.

• Differences My personal favourite is the Adam and Eve story in the Garden of Eden. The account presents a picture of an intimate marriage before the fall and a conflicted one afterwards. And yet the story focuses exclusively on their nakedness, the one aspect of their minds and bodies that is not involved in the sinful act of eating the forbidden fruit. Surely their eyes, nose, ears, mouth, brains, bodies, hands, arms and legs played the key role? A plausible explanation for this is that nakedness represents our greatest area of difference. Intimacy and conflict depend on the extent to which we expose or cover up our differences. .

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

 

April 2008 - Harry's soapbox

Marriage may be down but it's far from out.

(This is an edited version of an article published in the Western Daily Press)

• The Office of National Statistics announced last week that marriage rates had fallen to the lowest on record. 4% fewer couples got married in 2006 than during the previous year. Marriages rates (the proportion of single adults who marry in a given year) are now down two thirds from their peak in 1970.

• So is this the end of marriage, as traditionalists might claim? Is the government to blame? And does it really matter anyway?

• The latest surveys and population studies show that three quarters of all UK adults in their 30s are either already married or will get married at some stage; two thirds of first marriages still manage to last a lifetime, and six out of every seven couples in the UK today are married. If present trends continue as they are, government forecasters still project that five out of every seven couples will be married twenty years hence.

• Despite the long-term downtrend, marriage thus remains remarkably popular, resilient and successful for the vast majority of British adults.

• It's also possible that the recent decline is overstated. The number of mid-summer weddings remained almost exactly the same as in 2005 and is little changed over the few years before that. Just maybe more couples are avoidng the huge costs of a traditional wedding and getting married abroad.

• Marriage may be down. But it is far from out.

• However the decline of marriage is an issue of growing importance for public policy. For as long as marriage rates have fallen, family breakdown has risen. In the 1960s and 1970s, rising family breakdown was driven by rising divorce rates. But with divorce rates largely unchanged since the mid 1980s, family breakdown has been driven ever since entirely by the collapse of unmarried families.

• Never mind the painful costs to individuals and families themselves. Support for families that split up now costs at least £20 billion every year. Fewer marriages translate directly to increased family breakdown and an ever rising bill for the taxpayer.

• Politicians and policy makers often claim that it's not marriage that keeps people together. They claim that family background is the most important factor and that government policy should neither encourage nor favour marriage.

• Two years ago, I conducted the largest ever analysis of family breakdown in the UK , based on the Millennium Cohort Study of 15,000 mothers with three year old children. Even when comparing couples of similar age, income, education, and ethnic background, unmarried parents were still more than twice as likely to split up during this period.

• In fact the single biggest influence on whether a couple stayed together or split up was not income or education – although these matter. It was whether couples were married or not.

• Something about being married matters a great deal. The latest research evidence suggests the difference lies in the attitudes and behaviours that are more often found amongst married couples. One of the most compelling findings is that men and women commit in different ways. Women tend to commit when they live with a partner. Men tend to commit when they make a clear decision about their future. Men who slide into a relationship – as do many unmarried couples – tend to have lower levels of commitment compared to men who make clear decisions about their future.

• Deciding to pop the question may not be the only way to show lifelong commitment. But it is the clearest possible sign a woman can get.

• Marriage is not just a piece of paper. It's what marriage represents that matters.

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for Mar 2008.

Would a wise woman pop the question?

• Marriage may be declining these days but some things never change. Most men still pop the question and most women still like it that way. Above all else, asking for a woman's hand in marriage is certain to inspire confidence and security about a man's commitment to the future together as a couple.

• Traditionally February 29th, the leap day, is the day when women who are fed up with waiting to be asked get to pop the question themselves. But is this a wise idea?

• The key point to grasp is that women and men often have very different assumptions about commitment. Whereas most women commit to a relationship when they move in together, most men will only fully commit when they have made a clear decision about their future. Getting married needs to be a choice men make for themselves.

• This finding comes from studies at the University of Denver . Men who move in with their girlfriend before proposing tend to have consistently lower levels of commitment throughout the early years of marriage compared to men who propose before moving in together. This distinction doesn't appear to apply to women who commit regardless of the order of events.

• The theory is that men in particular need to decide rather than slide in order to commit. Sliding into marriage, more as a result of inertia than a deliberate and intentional decision, can thus make a relationship more vulnerable. One third of men who get engaged having previously lived together never fully commit.

• In other words, women can wrongly assume their partner is equally committed just because they live together. Alarmingly high break-up rates amongst unmarried parents, whatever the circumstances, make the point. Having a baby doesn't necessarily mean dad is as committed as mum.

• I find this idea often resonates amongst couples whose marriage is in trouble. One wife, recently separated after fifteen years together, was astonished to hear her husband admit he had spent the first six months of their marriage wondering if he had made the right choice. She had no idea he had been in such turmoil. It became easier to understand, even if not to excuse, how lack of commitment led him to drift away from his wife and ultimately have an affair with someone else.

• The idea of sliding or deciding also resonates on a far more mundane level. For example, I know I will do things because my wife wants me to do them. But unless I make my own decision to stop being reluctant and start putting my heart into it, I will always feel I have an opt-out clause if things go wrong. I can say I never really committed. She, as a woman on the other hand, is far too generous spirited to take such a childish male stance!

• So here's my ha'porth, offered with suitable humility, for any woman who wants to feel confident about securing a reliable future together with their partner.

• When a man proposes and initiates marriage himself, he is making the clearest statement possible about his commitment to you. This is because men tend to commit when they make their own clear decision about your future together as a couple.

• Women, on the other hand, tend to commit when they have moved in with a man. Living together may therefore be your statement of commitment. But your man may not have quite the same feelings of permanence.

• The biggest mistake you can make is to make the automatic assumption that he feels the same way as you. Many women find themselves left holding the baby because of their wrong assumptions. A marriage based on inertia or social pressure, convenience or drift is asking for trouble. Don't let it happen to you.

• So if you've popped the question this Leap Day 29 th February, make sure he is as intentional about your long-term future together as you are! Asking him to marry you won't necessarily make him more committed. It will depend on him. But you can be pretty sure about his commitment if he makes it obvious that marriage is what he really wants as well.

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for Feb 2008.

Why doesn't relationship education seem to work in schools?

• Is relationship education in school the best place to start strengthening families? A new study in the journal Family Relations suggests that the benefits for teenagers are temporary at best. Although the well-regarded US-based Connections programme produced short term improvements in conflict management and family relationships at home, these gains did not last. Teenagers who completed the 15 hour programme did not differ in key relationship attitudes or behaviours during the subsequent few years compared to those who did not attend.

• Relationship education programmes have been shown to be consistently effective for adults. So why is it that the same approach doesn't yet appear to work for kids?

• With adult relationships, there's a huge body of predictive research that shows how certain attitudes and behaviours tend to distinguish the successful from the unsuccessful. Modern relationship education programmes then apply these principles in order to teach adult couples how to strengthen their relationships and reduce their risk factors. The general idea is to do less of the destructive bad habits and more of the fruitful good habits. A number of outcome studies now show that these programmes have significant impact on relationships up to five years later.

• With teenagers or young adults who may or may not yet have formed an intimate relationship – but either way are unlikely to have taken on the typical responsibilities of independent adult life – it is not nearly as obvious how to measure the outcomes of a relationship education programme. For teenagers, the usual measures of positive and negative behaviours, levels of conflict, satisfaction and stability with the couple relationship do not apply if there is no couple.

• Fortunately others have taken this pioneering route with greater confidence. Several relationship curricula now operate in US schools based on adult relationship education programmes. The new study outlines the Connections curriculum which covers personality, relationships, communication and marriage. Two groups of 36 students who share matching backgrounds are compared: an experimental group that completes Connections; and a control group that does not. Each group is followed up immediately after the programme and then again at 1 year and 4 years later. The questions are sensible and cover both behaviour and attitude changes. There are study limitations in that the two groups are small, matched and mostly female rather than large, randomly allocated and evenly split. But this is all OK and still ought to give a decent flavour of how a typical programme will work out over time. So far so good.

• Unfortunately the results suggest the programme has little impact on the most important relationship outcomes. Most disappointingly of all, the big attitude and behavioural changes we'd want to see are simply not there. The programme had no effect at all on attitudes to either marriage or divorce. And the two groups did not differ in subsequent incidences of sex, cohabitation or affairs/cheating.

• Yes, there are positives. The Connections group became less likely to use physical aggression (pushing/shoving/slapping, etc) as a conflict strategy compared to the control group. But the group was 2½ times more aggressive to start off with. The two groups end up looking pretty similar a few years on. There are other more positive changes that appear in the Connections group immediately after the course. However after 1 year and 4 years, these advantages have also disappeared. Finally there is evidence of slightly improved wider family relationships following the course, perhaps enhanced by reports of requests for extra copies of the curriculum for parents and relatives at home.

• So why doesn't the programme appear to make much of a lasting difference? For me there are two main possibilities.

• First, the study may be flawed. Even if teenagers did benefit from the programme, key changes might have gone unnoticed because of small sample size, inappropriately matched controls, and high attrition rates.

• Second, the programme may be flawed. For teenagers not in an intimate relationship, the course will have no immediate application or salience. Any subsequent benefit will almost inevitably be diminished by time. A programme that focuses on the nature of relationships rather than skills might still be worthwhile. For example, young women might benefit from awareness that men think differently – female commitment and willingness to sacrifice to a new relationship are not necessarily reciprocated as women might assume.

• This is by no means a death knell for relationship education in schools. Nor does it in any way diminish the case for relationship education for adults. But it does dent the argument somewhat. Fans of school relationship curricula will have to hope that more supportive evidence is on its way.

Reference: Gardner , S. & Boellaard, R. (2007) Does youth relationship education continue to work after a high school class? A longitudinal study. Family Relations, 56, 490-500.

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for Jan 2008.

The fundamental flaws of sex education

• As a vocal proponent and practitioner of relationship education, I probably ought to have been excited that the subject made front page news last month. Alas not. Relationship education came up within the specific context of sex education in schools.

• A letter to the Times from a group of prominent UK children's organizations, sexual health experts and MPs, expressed concern that half of our teenagers “ have not been taught about teenage pregnancy and wouldn't know where to find their local sexual health clinic ” and that this “ may go some way to explaining disproportionately high rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections in this country ”. The signatories proposed that “ no school should be able to opt out of delivering good sex and relationships education to their pupils ” and that “ relationships should be taught as part of (the curriculum )”.

• At first glance, this may seem like a sensible idea. Teenage pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections and abortions are the highest in Western Europe . Teaching children about sex and relationships as part of the curriculum ought to help reduce the problem. But it won't and it can't. Here's why.

• Studies into the effectiveness of sex education are far from encouraging. Recent British Medical Journal studies of both sex education programmes and better access to the morning-after pill found that neither had any effect on pregnancies or abortions. A Family Education Trust report found that many areas with programmes set up by the Teenage Pregnancy Unit have actually seen rises in teen pregnancies. The much trumpeted 12% fall in under-18 pregnancy rates since 1998 is more plausibly due to population change rather than government strategy.

• There are two fundamental flaws in the way sex education is currently presented. The first flaw is that sex can be "safe". Yet any GP will confirm that condoms reduce but do not prevent the risk of STIs. Nor do they provide a 100% guarantee against pregnancy. In other words, there is no such thing as "safe sex". “Safer” maybe. But not “safe”. Trust me as a parent who has had three additional children by this means!

• Second and most importantly, the whole psychology of sex education is flawed. Because we have given in to the assumption that sex is inevitable, we are then teaching children how to say yes. But if we want to reduce incidences of sex and its consequences, we should be more interested in teaching children and young adults how to say no and why that is most often a sensible idea. The two approaches are not exclusive. It's the emphasis that is wrong.

• The consequences of a sexualized society are not just in STIs, unintended pregnancies and abortions. In the Social Justice Policy Group reports Fractured Families and Breakthrough Britain , we mentioned some of the destabilizing knock-on effects of sex and cohabitation on relationships that are not explicitly committed. The latest research is showing up important gender differences in attitudes to commitment. Men in particular who slide into a cohabiting relationship tend to be less committed even if they subsequently marry. The acceptance of casual sex and cohabitation is likely to be a direct contributor to the relentless increase in family breakdown.

• The evidence and psychology suggest that yes-based sex education is both flawed and ineffective. That doesn't invalidate the argument for raising awareness about sexual protection amongst teenagers. But it does mean the psychology of sex education needs to shift much more in favour of how to say no (and why).

• Ultimately I suspect sex education will never have the impact we either hope for or fear. The growing sexualisation of children and society is more obviously rooted in wider family and societal attitudes and norms. And that's where we should be looking for our longer-term solutions. Sex education outside the context of a wider family policy is therefore neither here nor there.

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for Dec 2007.

Nutcrackers wanted!

• I am beginning to believe that we may have found a nut that can be cracked. Our ADAPT relationship programme is beginning to have a significant impact amongst Bristol 's new parents. This article is an encouragement to those who would like to help me become nutcrackers!

• One of the great frustrations of encouraging couples to come on a marriage and relationship course is that the idea is so far out of the ordinary experience. The typical response to an invitation is “ we're OK thanks ” or “ are you saying we need it? ” In other words, people tend to think of relationship education in terms of remedial counseling for people with problems, an area that is well-known and thriving, yet out of bounds unless things are in dire straits. Whatever the reasons, even the best established preventive courses struggle to do more than scratch the surface. Nobody has cracked the nut.

• Earlier this year, as part of my family policy work, I did an impromptu survey of how much relationship support actually takes place in the UK . Based on figures from Relate and others, I estimated that some 100,000 couples attend some form of remedial couple counseling each year. Although this represents only 1 in 136 married or cohabiting couples, it's a big number alongside the 185,000 couples with children who split up each year. It's not surprising therefore that people think of remedial support and problems when they think of help with relationships.

• In sharp contrast, less than 1 in 1,200 married or cohabiting couples attend a preventive marriage or relationship course. Just 10,000 couples seek to boost their relationship, mostly via The Marriage Course. More successfully, around 1 in 13 engaged couples attend a formal marriage preparation course. The 20,000 couples who do this each year invariably attend courses provided by churches.

• Adding all of this up, a generous estimate would be that 1 in 10 couples ever get any kind of preventive or remedial relationship support at any stage of their lives. In other words, our efforts may have been high in effort but they are low in impact. And this is the frustration. The courses work. People like the courses when they do come. But they won't come in the first place … until now!

• In Bristol , we have now been running our new single session relationship programme ADAPT since summer 2006. During the last 12 month period, 580 parents – almost entirely mothers – have attended one of 46 ADAPT sessions in 20 health clinics or as part of a BCFT parenting course. As there were 5,700 births live births in Bristol during 2006, it works out that we are heading towards accessing nearly 1 in every 10 new mothers in the local area.

• Although I am really encouraged about our progress, my goal for the next year is to make sure that every health visitor, every health clinic and every parents group in Bristol knows about ADAPT and takes advantage of our free service if possible. I hope to double our rate of access to new mums to 20% or more and I also aim to reach more dads through a BBC-quality take home DVD. From this strong and established base, I plan to make ADAPT easily available for use elsewhere in the country by the end of next year.

• To do this really well, I need people and money. People-wise, I need help to market and develop ADAPT. Specifically I am looking for ordinary dynamic parents who fancy helping with organisation and running the occasional programme for a little pocket money and a lot of feelgood factor; I need health professionals who know the post-natal field to help spread the word; and I need an entrepreneurially-minded business whiz to help me plan and launch the national programme. Money-wise, I need £30,000 as a one-off project to make a fabulous film for our take home DVD. Amazingly, this is the first time I've made a public request for funds in three and a half years!

• Please call Harry or Claire on 924 1480 if you'd like to help us crack some nuts!

BCFT news for November 2007

• Well, it's been a cracking month for us. Altogether we've run 9 courses for 113 people, including a parenting course, a prison course, a pre-marriage course, ADAPT post-natal sessions in 5 different clinics and an ADAPT training evening kindly arranged by Joshua Trust in south Bristol. This means that over 800 people have attended any BCFT course in the last 12 months. Some time in January we should hit the 1000 mark for parents who have ever attended ADAPT.

• Amongst the highlights, the training evening proved very fruitful in establishing new connections with other Bristol organisations. And the prison course was possibly the best I can remember. Prison courses are always challenging but hugely rewarding. One particular couple had been really struggling to communicate in any kind of positive way. When we coached them through an exercise where they had to paraphrase what the other was saying, it was like watching the sun come out as they finally connected with one another. “This is what I want”, they both told each other.

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for Nov 2007.

Deciding, after a lifetime of sliding

• In my view one of the most exciting and practical new developments in marriage and relationship research is the influence of sliding versus deciding on commitment. The best evidence for this influence is found amongst couples during their first few years of marriage. Levels of commitment are consistently lower amongst men who move in before getting engaged – i.e. sliding . This is not the case for women regardless of when they move in, nor for men who commit first and then move in later – i.e. deciding . For men, commitment appears to require a clearly expressed decision about the future. Living together, taking out a mortgage, and even having a baby together are not enough. For women, commitment to the person they love seems much more automatic. In other words, sliding into a relationship may be enough to make women feel committed. But deciding about the future is more likely what makes men commit.

• This month I came across a couple whose story illustrated this principle beautifully. To protect their identities, I've altered names and camouflaged some details.

• When Simon and Anne met some years ago, it was love at first sight. Their relationship blossomed quickly and although they didn't move in together, they did spend a few nights together. Anne was delighted when she got pregnant because it was obvious to her that she and Simon were destined to spend the rest of their lives together.

• Alas Simon viewed the pregnancy rather differently. He had never had plans to marry Anne. Indeed, during the few months of their romance, marriage had never even crossed his mind. Although Simon somehow managed to run a modestly successful business, in his own words he was a “ commitment-phobe ” who drifted from relationship to relationship, “ from disaster to disaster ”, without ever having much of a plan of what would happen next.

• Anne was devastated to learn that Simon wouldn't move in and get married when she told him she was pregnant. Because she loved him so much and had such a clear sense of their future together, she had wrongly assumed he felt the same way about her. Anne went ahead and decided to have the baby on her own, in the naïve hope that Simon would somehow see the light and find a way to draw their separate lives together. Matters were not helped when Simon drifted back into a relationship with a former girlfriend. The result was confusion and anger.

• Things got worse. Throughout the next two years, although love and kindness were never very far away, Simon and Anne fought over access to their child. During a miraculous period of relative calm, Anne persuaded Simon to come on our BCFT relationship course to see if there could ever be hope for them. What they learned on the course affirmed what they had suspected, that they were so good for each other in many ways. But most of all they found they could relate to the sliding-deciding idea.

• During a meeting with me a few days later, Anne's warm words and body language towards Simon strongly suggested she was open enough to give him a second chance. But it was also clear that this window of opportunity wouldn't last long. Whereas the core problem for most struggling couples is usually bad attitude, their problem was all about a decision. His decision. Simon had to make a clear and unambiguous commitment to their future together. It was now or never.

• Another week later, I was absolutely thrilled to receive a letter from Simon. He told me that he and Anne had got engaged and had fixed a date for their wedding in the immediate future. After a lifetime of sliding, Simon had finally decided.

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for Oct 2007.

Is he marriageable?

• Every now and then, you just know that you've had a life changing conversation with somebody. My wife Kate had just such a conversation with a friendly young work colleague the other day.

• The girl rushed breathlessly up to Kate saying how nervous she was. She was just about to go on a second date with a new boyfriend. After listening and chatting for a while, Kate asked her, “ is he marriageable ?” The girl stopped dead in her tracks, wide-eyed and at a loss for words. The question seemed out of place, talking about marriage when they had only just met. “ What do you mean ?” she asked, “ how can you possibly tell ?” “ Well ,” said Kate, “ observe things, the way he is. Is he polite, kind, generous, encouraging, truthful? Does he apologise? Is he rude, belittling? Use your radar! ”

• “ But I don't believe in marriage ”, she recoiled. “ Why ever not ?” asked Kate gently. “ It's just a piece of paper ,” she replied. “ You want to be very careful ,” warned Kate. “ People that lose out most are those who find themselves drifting into living together with someone who may not have planned the long term future together that you have in mind. People often move in together because it's convenient. You may feel committed. But this may not be what he is thinking. You need to be sure that this guy is marriageable. If he isn't, ask yourself: what am I doing with him? ” And so the conversation continued with the girl obviously intrigued and engaged by this new way of looking at her new boyfriend.

• The question “ is he marriageable ?” is the exact question I have always encouraged my own teenage daughters to ask of their potential future boyfriends. Although they rip me to shreds about it – “ oh dad !” – they know it is the fundamental question they must ask for themselves. It doesn't mean they have to get married. It just means they won't end up wasting their time with a loser.

• Kate's conversation with her work colleague shows how a number of important threads in the latest marriage education and research can be brought together in an everyday encounter. People who marry are more likely to stay together and be happier. It's not the piece of paper, it's the attitudes that marriage represents. The decision to commit as a couple with a long-term future appears especially important to men. Drifting into a cohabiting relationship can make it hard to exit if things aren't what you'd hoped for. Men in particular are less likely to commit or sacrifice for the sake of the relationship if they haven't made a clear decision about their future. Living together is simply not enough, even if you have a mortgage and baby. Nearly one in two unmarried parents split before their child's fifth birthday.

• As well as all the excellent characteristics that Kate pointed out, I would therefore also suggest her colleague look for signs that he is both decisive and willing to give up his own interests for her sake. Reliable love requires commitment, which is all about long-term time horizon, clear decisions or intentionality, and willingness to sacrifice.

• My main suggestion for women starting out with a new boyfriend is “ SAY NO (to moving in) UNTIL HE SAYS YES (to a long-term future)”.

• There was obviously a lot more to Kate's conversation at work. But Kate knows that every time this girl looks at her new boyfriend from now on, she will be sizing him up in a completely different way. “ Oh Kate ,” she said rather sheepishly at the end of the conversation. “ I'm really nervous now. You're making me think marriage is a good idea !”

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for Sep 2007.

Strengthening families - complex but not complicated

• As I listened to panelists on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions programme discuss the dreadful spate of shootings during the summer holidays, I was very struck at their responses. Regardless of political persuasion, there was universal agreement that families and parenting were key issues. How the panelists might translate their concerned sound-bites into effective practical policy was not elaborated. To me, the discussion offered a neat snapshot of why family breakdown and its consequences have been growing relentlessly under all government for forty years. Everybody agrees that families are important and something must be done. Yet nobody has the guts to say exactly what or how. A major reason is that every well-intended proposal invariably gets narrowed to a single contentious issue, with which there are invariably unintended consequences. Anyone who dares to propose a solution thus gets their head shot off. The time is long overdue for a well-balanced package of measures.

• In July the independent policy group, of which I have been deputy chair, produced such a package of some 30 proposals to help strengthen families and reduce family breakdown and its associated consequences, such as gun crime. You can download the Breakthrough Britain report here. In equal measure I have been both delighted at the huge publicity the report generated and appalled at the lack of journalistic rigour in focusing on one particular tax proposal for married couples to the exclusion of all the other equally important policies.

• The media loves tax breaks. Tax breaks produce winners and losers and therefore the kind of heated discussion on which the media thrives. Taken out of context and in isolation as it was, our tax proposal looks and sounds ridiculous to expect couples to get and stay married for an extra £20 a week. The clearly stated purpose of the proposal is to send an unequivocal signal that government values marriage, a crucial step in reversing the long-term trend away from marriage that is the number one driver of family breakdown.

• The result of this single-issue obsession by the media was that we heard little or nothing of the other proposals, such as more resources focused on mental health in the early years of life. Well-adjusted and securely attached children are more likely to become well-adjusted adults. Proposed local one stop shops for families, a doubling in the number of health visitors, and improved mental health training programmes for professionals, would all make a huge difference in this area. Nor did we hear even a peep about the ambitious and pioneering relationship and parenting education scheme that would eventually see 800,000 families per year accessing the kind of preventive courses we run at BCFT. This wide-ranging scheme would pay for itself many times over through the subsequent reduction in costs due to family breakdown. Nor was anything written about supporting childcare by relatives as an alternative to the government-sponsored group schemes that are less helpful to subsequent child well-being. Our proposals for families with disabilities, legal issues, post-separation support, and the role of government, were all similarly sidelined.

• The media seem unable to grasp more than one issue as a time and end up confusing simplicity with simplistic. Family breakdown does not need complicated solutions but it does need complex solutions.

• May I therefore warmly invite BCFT supporters to have a look at our proposals in Breakthrough Britain , pick out one or more of the neglected areas that ignites your own passion, and write to your MP – of whatever party – to encourage them to consider adopting some of these ideas. The panelists of all parties on Any Questions were broadly able to agree on the problem. My hope is that politicians of all parties are also broadly capable of agreeing on the solutions. .

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for Jul/Aug 2007.

The future is Oklahoma!

• “ What are you going to be when you grow up ?” is a question I often ask my children. Maybe I lack either imagination or memory because I ask the question so often! The best answer, from my four year old, is “ six ”. Answers from all children are always fascinating and amusing, if occasionally unpredictable. The most common response from the younger ones is that they want to be a mummy or a daddy when they grow up. The teenagers, when pushed for more than a grunt, tend to focus on career plans. But this is social learning at its most fundamental. By seeing their parents as a bigger version of themselves, children use that knowledge to set some expectations about their own future.

• Much the same is true for adults. We are all influenced by those who have gone before us – whether at work or home, whether through behaviour, attitudes or beliefs. Mentoring, apprenticeship and discipleship all work on this principle. The same is true of organisations. If I were running a retail business, for example, I'd be eyeing up Tesco or M&S for clues. At BCFT, after five years as a small but growing charity, I am always trying to learn from the likes of Care for the Family and The Marriage Course . However although there are both successful national charities like these in the same field and successful local charities in different fields, there is no big local version of BCFT here in the UK to act as a guide, mentor and role model.

• However I can report that I have seen the future and the future is … Oklahoma ! In January I spent a few days in the United States visiting the Oklahoma Healthy Marriage Initiative (OHMI). OHMI does all the things that we do at BCFT … except bigger and better. Seeing their programmes in action on a large scale makes it much easier to visualize what our own project could look like when we really get our act together.

• In the five years that BCFT has been running, we've put over 2,000 people through various relationship courses on a budget averaging £30,000 per year. Sounds OK until we hear that over 100,000 Oklahomans have experienced relationship education in the same period, admittedly backed by £5 million of public money. In terms of population, Oklahoma is reaching about three times as many young adults as we are here in Bristol .

• Leaving aside the issue of public funding, what did I learn? Most importantly, we are pointed in the right direction. This shouldn't be too much of a surprise. The concept of Community Family Trusts in the UK was initially inspired by the church-wide initiatives of Mike McManus ' Marriage Savers in the US . His idea was that preventive programmes with a track record of success could be offered throughout the relationship life-cycle. In the UK , we chose to offer these through community access points – registrars, schools, prisons – as well as churches, because our church population is so much smaller. OHMI is essentially a large scale CFT.

• I also found it helpful to see how OHMI combines preventive education for mainstream families together with targeted programmes for vulnerable families. Courses for happily married couples sit easily alongside similar courses for unmarried couples with young babies, prisoners, parents of adopted, foster or disabled children, and single mothers who have just signed up for welfare payments. The strategies for accessing each group differ. But the relationship principles and programmes are much the same, originating from the same evidence base of what works.

• OHMI has given me confidence that a serious policy to strengthen families, backed by considerable public resources, can garner widespread political support and have a substantial impact on the community. A senior official of sceptical liberal persuasion told me that she was sold on OHMI because the programmes are based on “ healthy marriage ” (rather than just “ marriage ”), are weighted towards low income groups, and address domestic violence issues responsibly. It helped that welfare officers noticed fewer complaints from their customers after OHMI programmes were introduced.

• Understanding the big principles is one thing. But it is in the details that I can see the sorts of practices needed for BCFT to operate on a much larger scale. For example, as well as training hundreds of lay volunteers, OHMI has a dedicated team whose job is to encourage and support those volunteers so that they actually get a marriage and relationship programme up and running.

• Most importantly, it was very clear that OHMI leaders and staff try hard to practice what they preach. Their enthusiasm, generosity and graciousness were a terrific advertisement for OHMI. I hope that BCFT conveys some fraction of this spirit to those we encounter. I am hugely grateful for being allowed to watch their programmes in action. Expect cowboy hats in Bristol in the coming years …

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for Jun 2007.

Building margin into our lives

• Early last month, the Times reported a study of pedestrian walking speeds in 32 cities throughout the world. Walking speeds are supposed to be a good proxy for the pace of life more generally. The study found that walking speeds have increased 10% over the last 12 years. The author's conclusion was that technology, especially the internet and mobile phones, has made us more impatient as we try to cram more things into our lives. The pace of life has sped up with negative consequences for our stress levels, well-being and relationship quality. The findings certainly sound plausible.

• So how are you doing? Busy, I'll bet. Then you must be doing well. After all, busy-ness is a mark of a successful life. If you're not busy, then I must assume you are bored and missing out on life. Actually, I don't really want to hear that you are busy – otherwise you'll not have time to waste chatting with the likes of me!

• As we all know, relationships need time in order to thrive. Therefore busy-ness ought to be the enemy of relationships. The busier we are, the less time we have to spare. And yet we all too easily wear busy-ness as a badge of honour or achievement, as if it's odd if we're not busy.

• People often assume that I must be really busy. A few years ago, I would have agreed. My family had just moved back from Asia, we were trying to set up our new life in the UK , and I was studying for two separate full-time academic courses at the same time. After a couple of years of this, I was so burdened with my various responsibilities that I ended up having no time for anyone. One day while packing for our summer holiday, a slight change of plan caused me to crash emotionally. It was the straw that broke the camel's back and I could no longer cope

• Today, I hope I have learnt from that experience. Am I busy today? Occasionally, but by no means always. At times I do feel utterly snowed under trying to complete a national family policy, run this local charity, and do my best for my wife and six young children. But I have learnt to make space and retain spare capacity. In a big family, I have to. Just this month, the benefits of spare capacity have allowed me to spend a day visiting a friend who is bedridden after a major accident, to have a long heart-to-heart chat with a fellow Falklands helicopter veteran, to catch up with a friend who has experienced a dreadful crisis, to respond to the need to collect an ill child from school, and to attend a family funeral. Not that I'm a great paragon of virtue or anything. Many of you do the same and much more. I have just chosen to build in spare time to cope with unexpected challenges.

• How much time, patience and spare capacity do you have? Check the following list, courtesy the Times article

1. Do you seem to glance at your watch more than others?
2. When someone takes too long to get to the point, do you want to hurry them along?
3. Are you often first to finish at mealtimes?
4. When walking along a street, do you feel frustrated because you are stuck behind others?
5. Would you become irritable if you sat for an hour with nothing to do?
6. Do you walk out of restaurants or shops if you encounter a short queue?
7. If you are caught in slow-moving traffic, do you seem to get more annoyed than other drivers?

• Five or more “yes” responses mean you should take your foot off the accelerator!

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for May 2007.

The next generation of marriage and relationship education

• There is little doubt that modern marriage and relationship education programmes help couples improve the quality of their relationship as well as reduce conflict and ultimately the risk of divorce. However one persistent problem remains. The effects only ever last a few years.

• In some ways this doesn't matter. Because family breakdown is most concentrated in the few early years of marriage and parenthood, relationship courses are most ideally suited to helping couples steer a safer course through the brief periods when the waters are potentially stormiest.

• But wouldn't it be wonderful if programmes could somehow tap into the natural processes that keep marriages afloat over much longer periods of time, even a lifetime. This is the implication of a fascinating new research article from three of America 's top relationship researchers Frank Fincham, Scott Stanley and Steven Beach.

• Until recently, relationship research and educational programmes have focused heavily on conflict. The underlying assumption has been that conflict is both inevitable and the main pathway to divorce. Handle conflict better and families will be happier and more stable. To some extent this is true. Conflict is associated with poorer outcomes for both adults and their children. Parents who fight are more likely to be depressed, abusive, alcoholic, unhealthy, distressed, and dysfunctional as parents. But in every case, the relationship is a surprisingly weak one.

• Dissatisfaction with the limited explanatory power of the negative aspects of marriage has led to a greater focus on the positives. It has become increasingly clear that positive and negative behaviours are not necessarily opposites. For example, positive affection can override the negative demand/withdraw pattern that is often linked to relationship problems. We also tend to think of happy couples as mostly positive and unhappy couples as mostly negative. But there are two other important categories: ambivalent couples who are both positive and negative; indifferent couples who are not much of either.

• Researchers have been investigating the positive transformative processes that allow marriages to ride out the rough times over the much longer term: commitment , sacrifice , forgiveness and sanctification . Commitment is the internal desire to be together for the future (dedication) and the external limits this places on personal choice (constraints). Sacrifice is the extent to which individuals view the potential gain to the relationship as greater than the loss of individual freedom. The link between sacrifice and commitment is more pronounced for men than women. Forgiveness allows couples to repair breaches of one another's marital assumptions, standards, ethics or justice. And sanctification provides couples with a bigger meaning or sacred context to their marriage. Whilst religiosity generally predicts lower divorce rates, a sacred view of marriage predicts more a collaborative and satisfied relationship with less conflict in resolving disagreements.

• It is a widely held belief that unhappiness and conflict generally lead to divorce. Yet for the majority of couples, the opposite is true. Unhappiness and conflict are not necessarily permanent states. People muddle through, or self-repair, without outside help. A focus on the negative aspects of marriage has thus never adequately explained why some couples rebound from conflict and others don't. The common characteristic of all four factors outlined above – commitment , sacrifice , forgiveness and sanctification – is that they protect a marriage over time. They encourage self-regulation. Higher levels of forgiveness , for example, moderate the effects of repeated negative behaviours. Lower levels of forgiveness increase the risk that some negative incident tips an otherwise satisfactory marriage into divorce territory.

• Couples who lack these overarching methods for self-repair are more vulnerable to divorce, even if they possess good communication and problem solving skills. The more we learn about these protective factors, the more apparent it is that they must be included in the next generation of marriage and relationship education programmes. Skills alone are simply not enough. The big difficulty is that it's easier to teach a set of skills than a set of attitudes.

• One of our main aims at BCFT is to run the best possible relationship education programmes applying the latest and most compelling research findings. The current focus of all our courses is on reducing negative behaviours (STOP signs) as well as increasing positive behaviours (Love Languages). We also include a discussion of dedication in our longer programmes.

• The new research emphasizes the importance of including the overarching protective factors – commitment , sacrifice , forgiveness and sanctification (meaning) – in successful marriage and relationship programmes. This suggests the likely direction for our next generation of courses.

Reference: Fincham, F., Stanley . S., & Beach, S. (2007). Transformative processes in marriage: An analysis of emerging trends. Journal of Marriage & Family, 69, 275-292.

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for April 2007.

Relationships, labels and mental health

• A few years back, I completed a psychology degree at Bristol University . Despite being seventeen years older than almost all the other students, one of only two parents in my intake, and ten years older than my baby-faced tutor, the university generously referred to me as a “mature” student. Personally I preferred the label of “old”. Whilst “mature” presented something of an obligation to perform, “old” conveyed a more descriptive reality of the situation.
• Which leads me onto the whole subject of labels. As part of the clinical psychology unit of my degree – the study of mental disorders and their treatment – I recall reading research papers that argued against the wisdom of labeling people with their disorder in the first place. These researchers were calling for a new system of diagnosis based on symptoms. Schizophrenia illustrates one of the problems well, in that there are three separate groupings of symptoms – disorganized, delusions and hallucinations. Two people could thus be given the same diagnosis as “schrizophrenic” despite having entirely unrelated symptoms. The other problem is that the existing disorder-based diagnosis has the potential to label the person rather than their behaviour.
• All of us tend to label people in our everyday lives. Where the label is the job title, we can usually see beyond the label. When we describe somebody as a “window-cleaner” or a “bank manager”, it's generally pretty easy to think of that person as having other individual interests and characteristics. However where the label is a behaviour, a belief or a physical characteristic, it gets harder. When we describe somebody as a “burglar”, “Christian”, “skinhead”, “train-spotter”, “black” or “disabled”, it is relatively easy for automatic stereotypes to crowd out other thoughts of the individual, unless we are either very careful or enlightened
• I think the latter problem can sometimes – not always – apply to mental health diagnoses where professionals can entrench themselves as the only ones who can help and where the individual concerned can use the label to justify and entrench the disorder as an inseparable characteristic. Good examples of each of these have come up this month. I have camouflaged some of the details for obvious reasons.
• One of the inmates on a recent relationship course I ran in prison had a history of mental health problems, a situation not entirely uncommon amongst the prison population. He repeatedly told me how things were difficult because he was, amongst other things, ADHD and paranoid. I was very struck how he preceded these labels with the words “I am …” Now I am well aware that ADHD is a clearly definable cognitive problem. However paranoia is essentially an extreme version of “Thinking the worst”, one of the “STOP signs” that we teach on all BCFT courses.
• Rather than think of himself as unchangeably paranoid, I tried to encourage him to become more aware that he was “thinking the worst”. This is not about pretending that such thoughts can be suppressed. For example, if I ask you to avoid thinking about white bears for the next two minutes, I'm afraid you'll spend the rest of the day thinking about them! Trying to suppress is a poor strategy. But what he can do is become more aware of such negative thoughts and learn how to attribute his thoughts more appropriately. Thinking the worst is almost always about “me”, not “you”. As anyone who habitually thinks the worst can tell you, as I do, this is not easy. But it presents a ray of hope where a label does not.
• As my second example of the problem of mental health labels, a recent visit to a government-funded relationship organization left me in no doubt that they thought mere mortals like you and me should not be messing around with difficult relationship problems, especially where there are often accompanying mental health problems. Labelling like this, “mental health problems”, essentially removes the potential for ordinary people like you and me to make a difference. However there are mental health problems and mental health problems. Cognitive (e.g. ADHD, dyslexia, autism) and personality (e.g. schizophrenia, borderline) symptoms are way outside our realm and need to be referred. But most psycho-social disorders (e.g. depression, panic, paranoia) have a strong link with relationship problems, regardless of which came first.
• All of which leads me to encourage others who are in the business of providing relationship support – and that's ordinary friends and neighbours – not to be put off too quickly when faced with difficult “mental health” problems, nor need we acquiesce necessarily with an individual who thinks of their label as immutably part of them, nor need we back away in haste when told by a professional that we aren't equipped to help. We are human beings dealing with human beings. Of course we can help. But also remember that the ideas we teach are powerful ones precisely because relational health influences mental health, and vice versa.

 

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for March 2007.

The growing case for marriage preparation

• Ever since large scale family breakdown emerged in the 1960s, the idea that engaged couples might prepare for their marriage as well as for their wedding day has been limited to a minority of churches. Nonetheless, the argument has been a simple one. Invest a little time now in thinking about your future together and possibly save a great deal of heartache later.

• Although practitioners and church leaders have long been convinced of the benefit of marriage preparation, the range and variety of options has made courses difficult to evaluate in any meaningful way. Even if it were found that couples who complete a marriage preparation course generally had lower divorce rates, it is still not obvious that the gains are due to the course. It may be due to some other quality found more commonly amongst couples who marry in church or amongst couples who are willing to submit to such a programme. The consequence has been that the wider community has remained sceptical or ignorant of marriage preparation.

• In recent years, organisations such as BCFT have attempted to apply research principles in marriage preparation courses for couples getting married in the wider community. This is important for three reasons. Firstly, two thirds of UK couples get married through civil ceremonies. Secondly, the heaviest concentration of divorce – one third of all divorces – takes place in the early years of marriage. Thirdly, a majority of the increase in divorce rates since the 1960s has come from couples getting divorced in these first few years. Ultimately if we can persuade most engaged couples to do marriage preparation course, we ought to be able to make a significant impact on divorce rates.

• But the question remains: does marriage preparation work?

• Three years ago, researchers Jason Carroll and William Doherty looked at the best studies of marriage preparation to date. They could find only seven studies that included sufficient participants, a comparison group, follow-up a year or more later, and the use of recognized measures. They concluded that “ premarital prevention programs are generally effective in producing significant immediate gains in communication processes, conflict management skills, and overall relationship quality, and that these gains appear to hold for at least 6 months to 3 years .” In other words, marriage preparation helps improve relationship quality. They were more sanguine about whether marriage preparation reduces divorce, pointing out that “ the argument for the ability of premarital education to prevent divorce currently rests primarily on indirect evidence, such as proven effectiveness in improving marital relationships in areas such as communication and conflict skills, which may improve the odds of a satisfying and stable relationship .”

• In the absence of conclusive gold-standard research, policy-makers have tended to dismiss the viability of marriage preparation as a strategy for reducing divorce and family breakdown. However, despite a frustrating lack of progress in this area, there are signs that the glass can now be seen as half full rather than half empty. Almost all of these developments are taking place in the US .

• Firstly, new US federal and state funding for “healthy marriage initiatives” is being accompanied by lots of new research programmes to find out whether or not the money has been well spent. Second, several new large scale longitudinal studies are getting underway that will specifically address difficult research problems with these programmes.

• The new study I have described for this month's research article is a prime example of the new wave of research running alongside the “healthy marriage initiatives”. Amongst 2,500 married couples in the southern US, divorce rates were found to be 28% lower during the first five years of marriage amongst those who did any kind of serious marriage preparation. Because of its cross-sectional nature, this particular study can't show whether marriage preparation is the cause of stronger marriages. Others studies have shown this. But this study addresses two different limitations of marriage preparation research. First, it shows that couples who complete any kind of well-constructed marriage preparation course appear to have better marriage outcomes. Second, it shows that these advantages hold true irrespective of couples race, income or education.

• The case for marriage preparation is thus growing steadily and we can expect to see further evidence emerge in the coming decade.

• Where to find a marriage preparation course in the UK

  • In Bristol , BCFT's state-of-the-art marriage preparation course “INSIGHT” runs most months on a Saturday. Click here for details and application.
  • Elsewhere, I highly recommend The Marriage Preparation Course. See www.themarriagecourse.org for details.
  • Other courses can be found in the weddings section of the excellent website www.2-in-2-1.co.uk
  • If you'd like to be involved in working with your local civil registrars through the National Couple Support Network, contact katharine.hill@cff.org.uk

BCFT FEBRUARY NEWS

• We ran five relationship education courses in February for 73 people – including three peri-natal ADAPT programmes, one CONNECT mentor training, and a shortened marriage preparation session from Listening Loving Laughing. We also concluded our first two parenting courses of the year.

• Media-wise, I participated in a lunchtime discussion of marriage on BBC Radio Five Live for National Marriage Week. I also expressed my dissatisfaction (!) in local radio and newspapers at the ill-considered stunt by GWR FM to arrange a divorce on air. My comments even made the Sun.

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for February 2007.

Family breakdown in a socially mobile world

• Ah, the end of January! The year is well and truly underway. The unfulfilled resolutions have been conveniently forgotten. But before our thoughts turn to spring time – assuming we even get a winter this year – may I cast your minds back to new year's eve.

• Kate and I toasted our new year at a wedding party of a very old friend of mine. Actually it was the celebration of his wedding rather than the actual ceremony. With nobody likely to want to look after our six kids on new year's eve, we duly abandoned them at home in the vain hope that social services would find out and take them off our hands for the night. We also imported four more kids for the evening for the sheer entertainment value. So, leaving instructions with our three year old son as to how to take charge of six teenagers and his three other siblings, we closed our eyes and set off across country for the party.

• Now the party itself isn't the point of the story, although it was a very good party. I wanted to highlight the complexity of my friend's family life. I've camouflaged personal details for the sake of my friendship!

• My friend has young children by a former marriage. He is English but lives overseas with the children in their mother's home country. The divorce sounded rough to me. An acrimonious legal dispute left him with overall custody of the children but under the condition that they remained within a certain distance of their mother. His new wife is English. They would prefer to build their new life as a stepfamily in the UK but cannot do so because of the terms of the court order. He has no intention of depriving his children of access to their mother and would ensure they made regular visits. But the situation is hardly ideal. A few days after the party was over, he flew back overseas with his children. His new wife remains here in England . Their future will be decided by a family court.

• If there is a best part, it is the black humour. As he explained his situation, my friend reassured me that all would be well. The first year of married life is supposed to be the most difficult, he explained. So they are avoiding it altogether.

• Resolving the situation may be beyond the wisdom of Solomon. There is no magic bullet. My friend can work in either country. But if the children continue to live overseas, my friend's new wife must sacrifice her career and social network in the UK . If they return to the UK , the children will inevitably have less contact with their mother. Choose solution 1: the new marriage suffers and the children suffer. Choose solution 2: the children suffer and the marriage suffers. Whatever conclusion they reach, they will probably muddle through like most people do. But somebody in the equation will have to make real sacrifices to make this new family work. The complex and conflicting demands of stepfamily relationships are multiplied in this case.

• One of my pet bug bears in life is the phrase “blended family”, a term bandied around by those who wish to normalize the complexity of family breakdown and stepfamily formation. To the child or children, a step-family may be anything but blended. It is a cobbled together collection of three or more families. There is the original idealized nuclear family that no longer exists. Despite the best efforts of both parents and step-parents, providing great warmth and love, the child may forever crave their original and unobtainable biological family. Then there are the new step-families of each parent, step-siblings and half-siblings, confused loyalties and identities.

• This is not supposed to be a story without hope. Many step families muddle through. Most children of stepfamilies do fine. I was brought up in a stepfamily and look at me! (OK, bad example). But stepfamilies generally – biological parents, step-parents and children – face special challenges and risks. Family breakdown is more common in stepfamilies for good reasons. But much remains avoidable.

• BCFT relationship and parenting courses can provide practical relationship and parenting skills through our courses. We can also link stepfamilies together. If you've survived a few years as a stepfamily, we can help you share the benefit of your experience as mentors to new stepfamilies starting out. Whether you appreciate it or not, your experience is hugely valuable. We'd especially like to hear from you.

• A final word for the curious. After the wedding party, we returned safely to the bombsite that was formerly our house. Although the teenagers stayed up after us until 5 am, they cleared up the mess pretty well. Our three year old slept soundly through his parental responsibilities. They're good kids.

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for January 2007.

WHY POLLY TOYNBEE IS WRONG: BOTH MARRIAGE AND COHABITATION CHANGE THE WAY WE THINK AND BEHAVE

• Last month the Guardian social affairs writer Polly Toynbee declared frostily that marriage is no social panacea. She was writing about the much-publicised interim report on family breakdown submitted to the Tories. As a member of the independent group that wrote the report, I agree. Our report makes no such claim. However her opinion that marriage and cohabitation don't matter is not supported by the social science evidence. Cohabiting parents, rich and poor alike, are far more likely to split up and lead their families into poverty. Selection effects – social or personal background factors – do not explain this adequately.

• This reluctance to accept evidence needs to be challenged. In no other area of life do overwhelming benefits and protections get so lightly dismissed. For example, we don't dismiss the effectiveness of anti-depressant treatment because it only affects the kind of people who get depressed. We don't dismiss the benefits of exercise because it only affects the kind of people who take exercise. We conclude cause and effect because the beneficial behaviour precedes the beneficial outcome, after excluding the effects of baseline factors.

• And so it is with marriage and cohabitation. Sceptics are right to argue that family structure cannot be tested exactly like a medicine. No experiment can randomly assign people to marry or cohabit in order to find out who does best. We can therefore never rule out selection effects entirely. But there are many studies that suggest family structure matters above and beyond selection effects. Here are three.

• First, family structure affects behaviour. It used to be widely believed that the type of person who cohabited was different from those who waited until marriage. Yet couples who married in the 1980s/90s without cohabiting beforehand were found to have exactly the same advantage in relationship quality over those who had cohabited as did couples who married in the1960s/70s. In other words the growing popularity and acceptance of cohabitation hasn't changed its well-documented negative association with subsequent relationship satisfaction one jot.

• Second, family structure affects well-being. Comparing like with like, rates of depression reduce significantly amongst people who get married but not amongst those who cohabit. Selection differences between the groups do not explain this phenomenon. Depression doesn't seem to affect the odds of getting married or living together in the first place.

• Third, family structure affects stability. My own analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study data on 15,000 mothers with three year old children, published in September, found that cohabiting couples were more than twice as likely to have split up compared to married couples, even after excluding the selection effects of age, income, education, ethnic group, and receipt of benefits. Something about marriage and cohabitation matters a great deal.

• In the above cases, it could still be argued there is some unmeasured third factor, such as personality, that explains everything. Leaving aside the studies that show personality has minimal impact on relationship quality at the beginning and almost none after a few years, there are good reasons why it is thought that marriage and cohabitation make people behave differently.

• Ultimately they can be summed up in one word. Attitude. Couples who get married generally make a clear decision about their future together as an “us”. Couples who cohabit are more likely to slide into a relationship as “you” and “me”. One third of cohabiting couples can't pin down their moving in date to within three months.

• Far from being a good testing ground for a relationship, cohabitation makes it more difficult to leave an unsuitable partner at an early stage. Inertia is one of the current explanations for the relationship quality gap. The arrival of a baby forces couples to think about their expectations of one another. Whereas stability increases amongst married parents, it reduces dramatically amongst unmarried parents. Furthermore, the longer couples cohabit, the less they value marriage and the more they tolerate divorce. So not only do couples start their marriage or cohabitation with different attitudes to their partnership, but these differences in attitudes become more entrenched over time.

• Perhaps not surprisingly, there are also behavioural differences between married and cohabiting couples that reflect these attitudes. Cohabiting couples tend to communicate less well, are more likely to have separate rather than joint bank accounts, and tend to share household roles equally rather than divide them up as do married couples. There are always exceptions to these general rules. But they reflect what is happening on average. It is not yet clear whether these behaviours accrue to the type of the people or relationship. But if attitudes change as a result of cohabitation, it is plausible that behaviours do too.

• Even if marriage matters, is Polly Toynbee right that nothing can be done in any case? No. If government policy can contribute to social trends in family structure, then it can also contribute to reversing those trends. Contribute, note, not cause. As for exactly how we suggest policy can encourage greater stability, she will have to wait until our final report next June. The only clue I will give is that there is life beyond tax breaks.

BCFT DECEMBER NEWS

• In 2006, BCFT ran 38 courses for 530 people and gave 72 talks for a further 849 people. Our work now divides roughly into thirds between pre-marriage, peri-natal, and parenting & prison (no relationship!). Next year, we hope and expect that the peri-natal programme ADAPT will become over half of our work. The BCFT website also received over 17,000 visitors in 2006, averaging 47 visitors per day. Harry Benson's research paper on relationship education was downloaded 1,700 times during the year and his new paper on family breakdown over 2,000 times in just four months. So people are keen to read about relationship research findings!

• The big excitement of the month was the publication of the interim report “ Fractured families ”, written by Samantha Callan of Care for the Family , Harry Benson of BCFT, and a number of other experts in child psychology, family law, economics, disabilities, housing – including Dave Percival of www.2-in-2-1.co.uk (I highly recommend his weekly newsletter on marriage and family). The paper received a load of media coverage, including the article to which I have responded above. After being reluctantly forced to turn down interviews with BBC Radio 4's World at One and Today because of a media embargo, I did finally do various interviews with BBC Radio Five Live, BBC News 24, BBC Radio Bristol, and the Evening Post. For a sample of the wider national media coverage, see www.povertydebate.com under the comments for Dec 14 and Dec 11, from where you can also download any or all of the Social Justice Policy Group reports.

Return to list of BCFT monthly newsletters

Return to list of BCFT monthly research reviews

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for December 2006.

COPING WITH CREVASSES: THE UPS AND DOWNS OF A "STABLE" RELATIONSHIP

• Marriages work in cycles. The virtuous cycle looks like this: I'm nice to you; you're nice back to me; I now want to be nice to you; and so on. Positive feeds on positive. The positive cycle usually ends through neglect or forgetfulness. The fire's burning pretty well and we enjoy the heat. But then we forget to keep feeding the fire with fuel. Imperceptibly, it starts to burn down.

• The vicious cycle looks like this: I'm not nice to you; you're not nice back to me; I now don't want to be nice to you; and so on. Negative feeds on negative. The negative cycle usually ends because one person makes a determined effort to get the fire going again. Of course it's more difficult. But eventually the fire catches light and burns brightly again.

• The idea of normal relationship cycles is really important for anyone who desires strong marriages and great relationships. The politically correct like to talk to us about the benefits of a “stable relationship”. The concept is nonsense. Relationships must necessarily go virtuously up or viciously down. What they cannot do is remain stable – i.e. stand still.

• I was reminded of this uncomfortable truth just a few weeks ago. Not for the first time, my own marriage fell into what I call a “crevasse”. We have these ghastly moments from time to time. Things look pretty bleak. Our friendship has gone astray. Neither of us are feeling valued. The busyness of life has allowed us to drift apart. We're no longer connected. And of course I've forgotten to practice what I preach.

• All of a sudden, the little irritations, annoyances or arguments seem to take on disproportionate significance. This is the time when leaving the cap off the toothpaste tube is a deliberate act of war. Chewing too loud is an offensive habit. As for the increasingly obvious differences in our personalities, well, maybe we are utterly incompatible – and have always been so. Our differences may seem brilliantly complementary in the good times. But they make us horribly incompatible as we fall into our crevasse. Our cycle hits rock bottom.

• And yet, I made a promise many years ago. This is the time of “poorer, sickness, worse”. Despite the enormity of the task, despite the misery of the situation, one of us has to choose to light the fire again.

• Weeks on, we've reconnected and are back in the top half of the cycle once again. We went away to a hotel for a night, away from our various working roles and our six children. We remembered that we actually quite like each other. Life is good.

• I'd like to think that one day there will be no more crevasses. Alas, the odds are that our cycle will repeat itself. It starts with a high, as best friends, showing how much we care for one another. We make time for one another because we know it's good for us. Making time is easy when we're getting on well. But then the discipline flags and we drift. At first we barely notice. Then we forget to make time. We forget to connect. It's not a deliberate thing. It's an omission. Subconsciously, we now begin to avoid time together because we know we will have to do things or confront issues that aren't so easy now – like apologies, forgiveness, compliments, affirmation, having fun. As the positives fade, the negatives start to gain ground. Then comes the crevasse.

• Even if the cycle is likely to repeat itself for us sooner or later – and we're probably safe for six to eighteen months or so – maybe this is a good time for you to think where you are on your cycle. Do something about it now. Feed the fire of your marriage regularly. Regular time and regular reconnection are the starting points.

BCFT NOVEMBER NEWS

• An exciting month for us. “ADAPT” is underway at last. It's been three years since I applied unsuccessfully for government funding to introduce relationship skills into the ante-natal system. Given that a quarter of all new parents will split up before their child's fifth birthday, there is both urgency and potential to make a significant difference to huge number of families in Bristol . Finally, this month, we presented our ADAPT seminar to the health visitors of Bristol Primary Care Trust. Feedback was fantastic and we hope to have many courses running in Bristol over the next six months. Around 260 people have experienced ADAPT in the last year, around half of all those doing BCFT courses. Next year, I hope and expect it will be nearer 1,000.

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for November 2006.

SEVEN SECRETS OF A HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL CHRISTMAS

• How we deal with Christmas can have huge repercussions for our relationships. Christmas can be either a piece of cake or a cold turkey.

• I know of one family that holds a mandatory amnesty every year in early January. All that has been said in the heat, whirl, anger or blur of Christmas excess has to be forgiven and not brought up again in future arguments

• Yet with a little planning, forethought and a positive attitude, Christmas can be thoroughly enjoyed in the spirit with which it is intended. So here are Harry's top tips for a great Christmas. Although the article was originally published two years ago, the principles remain the same every year

• Click here for the full article

BCFT OCTOBER NEWS

• The media tried (and failed) to whip up a storm this month when the Church of England came out in support of the Law Commission's proposed new legal rights for cohabiting couples. At first glance, their position appears perfectly reasonable. The new proposals will undoubtedly right some grave injustices. However, as discussed in previous BCFT newsletters, I believe they will do far more harm than good in the long run. There are better solutions: the best solution costs just £43.50 and involves two visits to the civil registrar. My letter to the Times on this subject was followed by a thoroughly amicable debate on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme and a subsequent article in the Telegraph . Thank you to those of you who replied to me with your own views. This is not an easy subject. However, other than from those directly involved with its authorship, I am struck that I have yet to receive a single response in support of the official church position.

 

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for October 2006.

EXPLODING THE MYTH THAT ALL COUPLES ARE EQUAL

• For some years, I've been increasingly dismayed at the government's sidelining of marriage in various aspects of policy. The key issue is the message that government sends. Both Tory and Labour governments saw fit to treat married and unmarried couples alike whether paying tax or receiving benefits. Unmarried couples are often described as “ living together as if married ”. The major exception was the famous tax break for married couples. Under the Tories, this was allowed to be eaten away by inflation. Under Labour, it was removed altogether except for the oldest couples. The term “marital status” was even removed from government forms in 2003.

• The clear message from government is that marriage doesn't matter.

• Today, the fiscal distinctions between married and unmarried families generally concern the future, not the present – when couples separate, grow old or die. Most notably, married couples retain certain tax advantages regarding inheritance and pensions. The law is also far clearer towards the division of spoils when married couples split.

• Whether or not there is merit in providing tax breaks for married couples – and there are arguments for and against – the signal given by these government policies is that it matters not whether couples marry or not. The government treats couples the same, whether married or living together “as if married”.

• The final straw for me was the abolition of the term “marital status” from government forms. My colleague Dave Percival and I spotted this discrete announcement buried in an obscure document summarizing responses to the consultation on civil partnerships three years ago. There was no public discussion of this decision. Its “announcement” appeared to come across as an afterthought. If marriage doesn't matter that much, then nobody will mind. Subsequent family research commissioned by government departments has ceased to distinguish between married and unmarried families. Families are either “couple families” or “lone parent families”

• And yet ultimately it is the nation's children who will mind. As readers of this newsletter will know, there are serious family journals that frequently publish studies on the differences in outcomes due to marital status. A healthy debate rages as to whether it is the nature of marriage itself that causes families to benefit or whether it is some unmeasured feature of the types of people who get married that cause them to do better. Either way, it is rarely if ever the case that differences can be accounted for entirely by background factors such as income and education.

• My new study was funded and produced independently through BCFT although published through David Cameron's Social Justice Policy Group. In collaboration with Stephen McKay of Bristol University , one of the leading family statisticians in the country, we looked at the Millennium Cohort Study's 15,000 mothers of three year old children. The study is intended to highlight the absurdity of abolishing marital status and pretending that all couples are equal. As it turns out, unmarried couples are anything but “living together as if married”. Marital status is in fact the single biggest predictor of whether couples stay together or separate in those early years of parenthood. Mothers' age, income, education, ethnic group and welfare status all matter. But marital status matters most. The findings are discussed in more detail in our research section.

• Marriage has been a political hot potato for far too long. Few politicians or journalists yet seem willing to get to grips with whether public policy should be encouraging couples to be married before they have children. Part of the problem is the self-fulfilling dilemma of lack of research.

• My study is the largest scale study of family breakdown in the UK to date. It has sparked interest and debate already – see the Telegraph article, editorial and debate , BBC news item, and a welcome response from Labour minister John Hutton . There is now no excuse for a new generation of researchers not exploring what it is that makes married couples do better.

BCFT SEPTEMBER NEWS

• September has been dominated by the launch of my new paper and another front page hit, with which I have obviously been very pleased! As well as the Telegraph front page and BBC news story, there were follow-up pieces in the Sunday Times and a number of local TV, radio and newspaper features. The paper was discussed subsequently on the Today programme by Iain Duncan-Smith and John Hutton. I also made a subsequent related appearance on BBC News 24 regarding the new Childrens Society consultation on childhood.

• It's worth emphasising yet again that this is an independent study. In submitting it to the Tory policy group, it is also publicly available to other parties, whom I hope will engage with and make use of the study. I am extremely grateful to Steve McKay at Bristol University for his extraordinary expertise with the underlying statistical analysis, the trustees of BCFT for the required funding , academics Samantha Callan and Bob Rowthorn for their comments on the early drafts, and the Tory Social Justice Policy Group for publicising the paper.

 

 

Welcome to the BCFT e-newsletter for September 2006.

EQUAL RIGHTS FOR COHABITING COUPLES?

• If you thought the legal issues surrounding marriage and divorce were tricky, try getting to grips with the legal issues surrounding cohabitation. This is what the Law Commission have bravely attempted to do in their consultation paper “ Cohabitation: the financial consequences of relationship breakdown (PDF) ”

• The essential legal difficulty facing unmarried couples who separate or die is that their partnership has no legal status. Unlike legally married couples who can expect some sort of equitable division of spoils, largely irrespective of who was the breadwinner and who owns the assets, unmarried couples enjoy no such equitable rights.

• The most extreme example of this iniquity is that faced by a couple with children who separate after many years together. The mother may have sacrificed a promising career to bring up her children at home whilst trusting her unmarried co-parent with the role of breadwinner and asset owner. Under current law, whilst the mother can claim child support and possible occupancy of the family home from the father, she can only do this for the benefit of the children until they are aged sixteen. Despite her considerable non-financial contribution to the family, she walks away with little or no share of the family assets for her own benefit.

• The law commission's proposed scheme is based on economic advantage and disadvantage at the point of separation. In the case above, neither parent has been especially economically advantaged by the contribution of the other. The mother provided childcare and homemaking. The father provided income and accommodation. However the mother has been economically disadvantaged by their joint decision that she give up work to stay at home. The proposed scheme would produce a fairer settlement from the father to the mother.

• The consultation paper goes to great lengths to explain its purpose to clarify existing law and introduce a greater degree of fairness toward unmarried couples. What it is not trying to do is introduce some version of automatic marriage, where cohabiting couples automatically acquire the same rights as married couples under certain qualifying conditions related to time and children.

• In my view, the authors have applied a great deal of the wisdom of Solomon to an issue that badly needs wisdom. They have done a fabulous job in walking the tightrope between reducing iniquities on the one hand and not devaluing marriage on the other, given current social policy. Indeed they have been admirably clear that their role relates to issues of law and not social policy.

• The law commission proposal definitely brings the law more into line with current social policy which largely treats married and unmarried couples in similar ways. Unmarried couples are often considered to be “living together as if married”.

• However I do not believe law and social policy can be separated so cleanly and surgically as lawyers would like. The two go together. I am also concerned that even if the jurisdiction of the proposals can be limited to the most obviously unjust cases now, I find it hard to believe that case law will not pare away these limits in the future. In other words, the new rights represent the thin end of the wedge.

• For years I have been highlighting research showing categorically that family outcomes are so much better within married families than unmarried families. Early in September, I shall be publicising my new research paper which is the largest scale UK study of family breakdown to date. Data analysis in the paper was conducted for me by one of Bri