Research papers, reviews and statistics from BCFT's Harry Benson.

What does the latest research say about relationships? We've done the hard work of delving into the complicated academic stuff! If you want to know whether: marriage preparation reduces divorce for engaged couples; listening skills are effective; domestic violence is as prevalent as claimed; childcare is harmful; divorce rates are going up or not; trainers need to be professionals; religion influences marriage; cohabitation is a good test of a relationship; and much much more .... Click here to find out!

JUL 07 Relationship education in the UK A new paper written by BCFT's Harry Benson outlines a radical proposal to run relationship and parenting courses for 800,000 families per year. As deputy chairman and co-author of the family breakdown section of the report "Breakthrough Britain", Harry's special supplement is part of a much wider series of proposals aimed at strengthening families and reducing family breakdown.

Photo: Harry Benson with top US marriage researchers Dr Scott Stanley (left) and Dr Howard Markman (right) of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver, Jan 2007. Note the caption above the white board!

DEC 06 Fractured families (2 MB pdf) Family breakdown lies at the core of most social problems, including poverty. In many cases, social problems and family breakdown feed on each other. This interim report by the Social Justice Policy Group, led by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan-Smith, focuses on the state of Britain's families, and the causes and consequences of family breakdown. The final report, due in June 2007, will propose policy solutions. The report was co-written by BCFT's Harry Benson.

SEP 06 Family breakdown in the UK (pdf) Official policy to abolish "marital status" and disregard marriage in government-sponsored research is incompatible with the claim that every child matters, according to a new study by BCFT's Harry Benson. "Marital status” is in fact the single most important factor predicting whether couples with young children stay together or not. Based on up-to-date Millenium Cohort Study data on 15,000 mothers with three year old children, this is the largest scale primary study of family breakdown yet conducted in the UK.

FEB 05 Family interventions that work (pdf) Children do best when parents stay together and don't fight as a couple, and use both warmth and structure as parents. A handful of studies show how marriage policy, relationship education and parenting programmes can strengthen families in each of these areas. Policy makers must now act.

APR 06 Surprising family trends Do marriages still last a lifetime? Is divorce getting worse? What about unmarried families? Click on the link above to see four charts of family trends in Britain that just might surprise you.

The public benefits of marriage (pdf) It's often wrongly claimed that married people are only happier, healthier and wealthier than the unmarried because they start out that way. The research evidence shows that marriage contributes causally to both benefits and protections. We neglect marriage at our peril.

Research on marriage education (pdf) Marriage education is most effective if we apply three key principles: a public policy on marriage; widespread access to relationship education; and the social support of friends, family or mentors.

 

BCFT RESEARCH REVIEWS

MAR 08 LESS time together = happier marriage?

FEB 08 Is domestic violence as prevalent as we are told?

JAN 08 Religion and marriage

DEC 07 Negative and positive forgiveness

NOV 07 Traditional couples have lower divorce rates

OCT 07 Relationship behaviour and childhood attachment

SEP 07 The limited benefits of listening skills

JUL 07 State sponsored parenting: Value for money or Rip-off?

JUN 07 Do trainers need to be professionals to be skilled?

MAY 07 Childcare: Good or bad?

APR 07 Can culture make cohabitation OK?

MAR 07 Does marriage preparation work?

FEB 07 Holding hands makes you feel safer

JAN 07 Capitalisation: Rejoice with those who rejoice!

DEC 06 Why are cohabiting couples so unstable?

NOV 06 Across the world, women are more demanding than men!

OCT 06 Living together "As if married"?

SEP 06 Unchanging divorce rates

JUL 06 Equal marriages are not made in heaven

JUN 06 Similar religious beliefs are good for your marriage

MAY 06 The importance of involving fathers

APR 06 Surprising family trends

MAR 06 Is the rising trend amongst births outside marriage coming to an end?

FEB 06 Do you influence who your spouse votes for?

JAN 06 Is cohabitation a stepping stone to wedded bliss?

DEC 05 Does divorce make people happier?

NOV 05 Why cohabitation is bad for your marriage

OCT 05 An intriguing new theory on commitment

SEP 05 The importance of both positive and realistic expectations about marriage

JUL 05 Marriage education works for rich and poor, black and white

JUN 05 The meaning of cohabitation is crucial to future relationship success

MAY 05 Men & women are not so different in the way they view their marriage

APR 05 Marriage is declining slowly, not fast

APR 05 The big problem is no longer divorce but the collapse of unmarried families

MAR 05 Divorce affects the education and relationships of unborn grandchildren

JAN 05 Pre-school is good – unless you're a toddler or stuck there all day

DEC 04 The importance of positive affect in marriage

NOV 04 “Community Marriage Policies” have reduced divorce rates

OCT 04 A relationship formula can predict marriage quality 13 years later

SEP 04 Therapists are not as value-free as they sometimes claim

JUL 04 Compatibility is not that important

JUN 04 Most newlyweds fight physically!

MAY 04 Yes, you can "have it all"

APR 04 Does divorce make people happy?

MAR 04 Can I tell if they are a perfect couple?

FEB 04 Joint INCOMES can be BAD for your marriage

JAN 04 Joint ACCOUNTS can be GOOD for your marriage

DEC 03 Hard evidence that marriage (but not cohabitation) improves wellbeing

DEC 03 How to buy the best insurance policy against divorce

NOV 03 The effect of conflict on children of divorce

OCT 03 Family breakdown is rising but divorce is not to blame

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MAR 08 LESS time together = happier marriage?

• Yes, it's absolutely true – but only for new parents! Spending less time together makes married life happier . Parents who showed the biggest reduction in leisure time together after the baby's birth had the happiest marriages, according to a new study in the February issue of Journal of Marriage and Family.

• Of course the finding is also utterly misleading, as the study authors explain. Shared time together reduces for almost all couples following childbirth. Those with the best quality marriages in early parenthood also spent much more time together during pregnancy. So although they showed the steepest declines, they were still spending more together than other parents once the baby was born. It's a bit of a cheat. But this is why you have to be careful when interpreting statistics!

• The much more interesting finding – now I've caught your attention! – is that different types of leisure time during pregnancy impact the quality of the marriage a year later in different ways for men and women. Wives reported happier marriages after childbirth, with more love and less conflict, if they spent more shared leisure time with their spouse during pregnancy. Husbands reported happier marriages, with less conflict although not necessarily more love, if they spent less independent leisure time during pregnancy.

• How I read this is that time together as a couple is especially important for women. Less time on their own keeps men out of trouble with their wives.

• Reading between the lines a bit, this latter finding seems to fit with studies I've previously discussed ( 1 , 2 ) that show how men tend to give up their own interests only if they are fully committed. Men who sacrifice their own interests and time for the sake of the relationship tend to be more committed. Men who aren't willing to sacrifice in this way, willingly, are bound to end up in trouble with their missus!

• So the message for new parents who want a happy marriage is this. Make sure both of you make time for fun together. Time for fun on your own or with friends is fine. But husbands in particular need to make sure they are not overdoing it

Reference: Claxton, A. & Perry-Jenkins, M. (2008) No fun anymore: Leisure and marital quality across the transition to parenthood. Journal of marriage and family, 70, 28-43.

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FEB 08 IS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AS PREVALENT AS CLAIMED?

• A senior figure responsible for developing and implementing prison rehabilitation programmes warned me recently that relationship education is potentially dangerous because of the increased risk of domestic violence amongst ill-suited couples. When UK national surveys report that one in four women experience domestic violence during their lifetime, we need to be much more wary of things going wrong. But this argument is little more than scaremongering. Here's why.

• One possible definition of domestic violence goes something like this. Domestic violence is a pattern of coercive behaviour in which one person attempts to control another through threats or actual use of physical violence, sexual assault, verbal and psychological abuse, and/or economic coercion . Let me make it crystal clear that relationship education is utterly inappropriate where domestic violence involves men controlling women. But it is far from clear that this kind of domestic violence is anywhere near as widespread as claimed.

• During the last decade, a new line of research has begun to distinguish categories of domestic violence. Michael Johnson of Pennsylvania State University describes Situational Couple Violence where either men or women escalate a conflict into a physical fight. Intimate terrorism involves the exercise of power and control, mostly by men over women, usually with more serious physical and psychological consequences. When we think of domestic violence, most of us will be thinking more of intimate terrorism.

• However most research studies and policymakers in the UK and US fail to make such distinction. As Johnson points out, the consequence is that different types of survey produce wildly different results. National surveys, such as the British Crime Survey (BCS), find high levels of lifetime prevalence – one in four women and one in six men – because they take a very broad measure of domestic violence that includes mistreatment and threats. Localised surveys, conducted via shelters or hospitals or police, find those who have sought help, which overwhelmingly involves women who have experienced intimate terrorism . Victims of situational couple violence are far less likely to seek or need help.

• Nicola Graham-Kevan of the University of Central Lancashire has estimated that intimate terrorism, and other categories involving control, comprised 23% of those reporting domestic violence in a UK general sample and 88% of those in a UK shelter sample.

• The one in four women figure from the 2001 BCS represents an absolute worst case scenario. Over half these cases are described as domestic violence yet do not fit anything resembling the definition described above. One in nine women experienced actual serious threats and force of the kind that might have involved control. Graham-Kevan's estimates suggest that women's lifetime experience of intimate terrorism could even be as low as one in twenty . The vast majority have experienced some form of situational couple violence that involves less control or none at all.

• A great deal of otherwise excellent research continues to be spoilt by a sloppy and biased approach to domestic violence. The study of teenagers I have written about in this newsletter is an excellent example. Having asked participants whether they use slaps or shoves during an argument, the authors then describe this factor as a measure of violence . These acts of physical aggression are a million miles from the controlling violence of intimate terrorism .

• It is important to acknowledge that some proportion of situational couple violence , which accounts for three quarters of violent incidents affecting women and almost all incidents affecting men, can be both dangerous and evolve into intimate terrorism. Many couples however will see situational couple violence as thoroughly nasty incidents that are best left forgotten but are not expected to happen again.

• Whereas relationship education would be highly inappropriate for cases of intimate terrorism, it is highly appropriate for cases of situational couple violence. Academic evidence shows that relationship education consistently reduces conflict. I have yet to hear any official body or any of the thousands of people attending BCFT (or any other) courses complain that relationship education has increased conflict.

• Influential studies, such as the British Crime Survey, do not distinguish situational couple violence from intimate terrorism (although they do distinguish degree and frequency). If domestic violence involving control is nowhere near as prevalent as claimed, there will be less need for scaremongering and more chance of setting policies appropriate to these different categories

Reference: Johnson, M. (2005) Domestic violence: It’s not about gender – or is it? Journal of marriage and family, 67, 1126-1130

Reference: Graham-Kevan, N. & Archer, J. (2004) Using Johnson’s domestic violence typology to classify men and women in a non-selected sample. Unpublished manuscript, University of Central Lancashire.

Reference: Walby, S. & Allen, J. (2004). Domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking: Findings from the British Crime Survey. Home Office Research Study 276.

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JAN 08 RELIGION AND MARRIAGE

• If religion is the truth it is claimed to be, people who are religious ought to have better marriages. Research studies, mostly from the US , demonstrate that this is the case. But the effect is not nearly as striking as some might expect, hope or fear. Broad measures of religiosity appear to account for a mere 1% to 4% of how well people do in their marriage. So, to start the year, I wanted to highlight a great study that sheds light on this thorny topic. It's not a new study but it's very insightful and thought-provoking. Does religion matter in marriage?

• The 1999 study in the Journal of Family Psychology by Annette Mahoney and colleagues at Bowling Green State University , Ohio , looked at a community sample of 97 couples reflecting a broad range of religious beliefs. Couples completed a 30-minute questionnaire which asked how they viewed their marriage, how they handled problems, their frequency of conflict, their religiosity (church attendance, prayer and spirituality) and homogamy (whether individual or as a couple), and how they thought religious beliefs influenced their marriage directly. The findings are striking.

• The authors started by taking into account the influence of husband's education, a particularly strong predictor of marital outcomes, and indirect religious variables – factors such as church attendance that do not have an obvious bearing on marriage. They found that religiousness, as expressed by these indirect variables, accounted for just 4% of wives overall happiness with their marriage and 6% of the extent to which they thought marriage brought them personal benefits. For husbands, these overall influences were even less apparent, as they were for both spouses across a range of more specific measures of marriage behaviour – such as aggression and collaboration.

• However direct variables, the extent to which spouses considered their marriage as sacred or God-inspired, explained a great deal about the quality of marriages. Direct variables accounted for almost half of both wives (43%) and husbands (48%) overall happiness with their marriage. What this means is that to a considerable extent the meaning couples attach to their marriage reflects its quality and vice versa. The same direct variables also accounted for an additional 5% to 15% of a range of more specific marriage behaviours – such as conflict, collaboration, avoidance, aggression.

• So what this study really shows is that it's not religion that matters. It's how you apply it.

Reference: Mahoney, A., Pargament, K.I., Jewell, T., Swank, A.B., Scott, E., Emery, E., & Rye, M. (1999). Marriage and the spiritual realm: The role of proximal and distal religious constructs in marital functioning. Journal of Family Psychology, 13, 321-338.

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DEC 07 NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE FORGIVENESS

• When couples argue with one another, issues often get left unresolved. Forgiveness is one way in which couples prevent these unresolved issues from intruding upon the future relationship. Researchers now think of forgiveness in two main ways. Negative forgiveness means removing the negative motivation for revenge or justice. Positive forgiveness means introducing the positive motivation towards benevolence. Some might regard these two aspects of forgiveness as similar to the concepts of mercy (letting go of the hurt) and grace (wishing each other well).

• Previous research suggests that forgiveness is related to conflict resolution in very gender specific ways. At a given point in time, couples handle conflict better when wives are more benevolent and when men are less unforgiving. In other words, graceful women and merciful men are good news. What remains unclear is the direction of cause and effect. Is it the act of forgiveness that encourages healthy resolution or does healthy resolution make it easier to forgive?

• A new study by Frank Fincham and colleagues in the Journal of Family Psychology interviewed a sample of 96 couples twice. In the initial interview, each partner was asked about a recent issue that had hurt them or made them angry. In that interview and again a year later, they were asked about the state of their marriage and how they handled conflict.

• The authors found that when wives reported higher levels of benevolence – positive forgiveness – in the initial interview, their husbands reported lower levels of conflict one year later. This finding held regardless of the initial levels of marital happiness, conflict and the severity of the issue. Negative forgiveness by husbands appeared not to have a similarly unique impact on wives one year later.

• This study is by no means definitive. The authors acknowledge the difficulty of separating out all the different aspects of forgiveness, hurt and conflict resolution. But this study adds to the evidence that forgiveness, in its positive and negative forms, is prime material for relationship education programmes because of its powerful and unique influence in the way couples relate to one another.

Reference: Fincham, F., Beach, S., & Davila, J. (2007) Longitudinal relationship between forgiveness and conflict resolution in marriage. Journal of Family Psychology, 21, 542-545.

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NOV 07 TRADITIONAL COUPLES HAVE LOWER DIVORCE RATES

• A huge new study into how married couples allocate their time shows that the probability of divorce is especially reduced amongst wives who spend more time in household work. The study authors at the University of Missouri describe these politically unfashionable findings as “ striking ”.

• The US-based Panel Study of Income Dynamics interviewed 12,000 couples on several occasions between 1985 and 1992. During this period, around 3% of the couples divorced. The authors were thus able to identify factors associated with the risk of divorce, in particular the way in which both husbands and wives allocate their time to work in the labour market and at home.

• Some of the findings are predictable but nonetheless important. More time at work for either husband or wife means less time available for household chores. Higher wages for either husband or wife means lower divorce risk. Other findings are less obvious. Better educated husbands work longer but don't necessarily do less at home. Better educated wives do fewer household chores but don't necessarily spend longer at work.

• What the study is not saying is that men should work and women should stay at home. For example, it may be that stay-at-home wives stay married because they have less income and fewer options to escape. Maybe they are happy. Maybe they are miserable. We don't know. Nor can the study show that divorce rates would reduce if wives stayed at home or, for example, people were better paid. This would need a different kind of study more akin to social experiment.

• What the study does highlight is that difference, rather than equality, can be a good thing.

Reference: Weagley, R., Chan, M-L., & Yan, J. (2007) Married couples time allocation decisions and marital stability. Journal of Family Economic Issues, 28, 507-525.

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OCT 07 RELATIONSHIP BEHAVIOUR AND CHILDHOOD ATTACHMENT

• Personally I'm not much of a fan of Freud but lots of people are! For 100 years, those who study the human mind and behaviour have been profoundly influenced by his work. One of his more compelling ideas was that our drives and desires are more or less set through our earliest childhood experiences. How we think about ourselves and our relationships with others is thus determined in the first few months of a baby's life. The modern version of this theory proposes that young children who become insecurely attached to their main parent are more likely to experience emotional, relational and mental health problems.

• A new study attempted to find out how this early attachment influences the way we relate as young adults. The study, reported in the 2007 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, followed 78 individuals from age 1 to age 20-23. Participants were those who had an ongoing couple relationship and were a subset of a much larger study.

• The study provides good evidence that infant attachment behaviour predicts childhood friendships in primary school, which in turn predict teenage security at age 16, and thence early adult couple relationship style and quality. Each of these factors accounts for between 7% and 18% of our behaviour in the next age group, which is reasonable but hardly unexpected! The way we think and behave today is bound to share similarities with the way we thought and behaved a few years earlier. However although infant attachment was found to correlate positively with various aspects of adult relationship behaviour, the link was weak and only accounted for 4% of behaviour at best.

• This study affirms that attachment matters. However it is important to put things into perspective. Firstly, our early childhood experience is less important than our immediate past in influencing how we think and behave in relationships today. Secondly, over 80% of the explanation for our relationship behaviour as young adults has nothing to do with how we related previously as a teenager. Over 96% of the explanation has nothing to do with how we were nurtured as a young child.

• So if we enjoy looking to our past for clues to why we think or behave the way we do, look to the immediate past than our childhood! Or don't bother at all. Other factors are far more important.

Reference: Simpson, J., Collins, W., Tran, S., & Haydon, K. (2007). Attachment and the experience and expression of emotions in romantic relationships: a developmental perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 355-367

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SEP 07 THE LIMITED BENEFITS OF LISTENING SKILLS

• For many years, there has been a debate between top US marriage researchers as to whether communication skills are either essential fundamentals for a good marriage or a complete waste of time. In the blue corner stands the Denver team of Howard Markman and Scott Stanley, authors of the highly regarded PREP relationship education programme that we used for a while here at BCFT. At the heart of PREP is the famed and much copied Speaker/Listener communication technique. In the red corner stands the Seattle team of John Gottman, who argues that Speaker/Listener and other active listening skills are almost never used by couples in real life. While accepting that Speaker/Listener can reduce negative behaviours when discussing issues outside of the marriage, Gottman claims the technique requires “mental gymnastics” in order to show empathy when discussing problems within the marriage.

• My own view has been to treat Speaker/Listener with scepticism. I am well aware that it can reduce conflict very effectively when used well, which is all the PREP authors claim. My experience as an educator is that participants find the technique hard to learn and apply in practice. My experience as a husband is that I never use Speaker/Listener in its entirety, although I do use the paraphrase component very occasionally and with considerable caution. Although programme participants often vote Speaker/Listener the most useful PREP tool, I am rather more convinced that the programme's successful track record is due to the balance of positive and negative attitudes and behaviours. PREP and Gottman both apply a similar approach here and this is the central theme also applied in our own BCFT-developed courses, Listening Loving Laughing and ADAPT

• A fascinating new study of Speaker/Listener reported in the August edition of Journal of Marriage and Family provides a little more clarity to this debate. 30 couples were invited to an introductory session and two subsequent training sessions in which to learn and apply the technique. Using a complex and highly technical methodology, changes in couple behaviour were observed and recorded before and after the training. To test Gottman's claim that Speaker/Listener effectiveness depends on the subject matter, half the couples discussed a serious issue within their marriage and half discussed an issue outside their marriage.

• The study's main findings were that Speaker/Listener helped reduce negative behaviours but did not affect positive behaviours, much as forecast by the PREP team. Gottman's critique was undermined in that observed outcomes were similar regardless of subject under discussion. Moreover, the monitoring of heart rates did not suggest inner turmoil amongst couples using the Speaker/Listener technique to discuss an emotionally charged issue. However despite repeated training and practice, couples departed from the technique nearly half of the time when subsequently discussing their own difficult issues.

• In summary, use of Speaker/Listener can definitely help couples avoid conflict on difficult issues, but it does not appear to draw couples closer together and is hard to apply with any consistency. I suspect the advocates of Speaker/Listener find it easy to use and benefit a great deal. The problem is the rest of us who don't. .

Reference: Cornelius, T. & Alessi, G. (2007) Behavioral and physiological components of communication training: Does the topic affect outcome? Journal of Marriage and Family, 69, 608-620.

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JUL07 STATE-SPONSORED PARENTING CLASSES: VALUE FOR MONEY OR RIP-OFF?

• Last month I discussed how a parenting programme for parents of children at risk of conduct disorder has been shown to depend very much for its success on the skill level of the trainers. Better skills equals better outcomes. Two new studies in the March issue of the British Medical Journal look at how the same 12 session programme, Webster Stratton Incredible Years (WSIY), has been used effectively by Sure Start staff in Wales . The first study shows that the programme leads to improvement on a range of parenting measures, assessed both by self-report from parents and observations in the home. The second study looks at cost-effectiveness. It's the cost-effectiveness study that I want to focus on.

• WSIY is clearly a very good programme. Indeed last month I investigated the possibility of running it within BCFT because of its strong research support. The two problems I immediately encountered are that programme start-up costs are expensive for a voluntary group and that the programme requires a considerable ongoing commitment to supervision. Based on course content alone, it's not entirely obvious how WSIY differs from much cheaper and easy-to-run off-the-shelf parenting programmes, such as the Family Caring Trust programmes we use.

• After all, parenting research has one big robust finding – that authoritative parenting produces consistently the best outcomes. Authoritative parenting is all about the mix of love and boundaries (also known as yes and no, grace and truth, gentle and firm). The big principle of parenting is thus incredibly straightforward. It's how we put it into practice that is difficult. This empirical evidence fits well with real-life experience.

• Here's what Sure Start spend. The BMJ study found that each parenting course cost a stunning £15,468. After removing start-up costs of £2,704, that works out at £12,763 for a course, or £1,595 per child for a course of 8 parents. The study concluded that these costs are “ modest ” and represent “ good value for money ”.

• Here's what BCFT spend. During 2006-7, we ran 6 parenting courses for 45 parents costing us a total of £1,541. This amounts to £256 for a course, or £36.50 per child for a course of 8 parents. To make a fairer comparison with Surestart, we should quadruple these costs to reflect double the length of course and double the trainers. An equivalent BCFT course would therefore cost £1,027 for a course or £146 per child.

• Here's the rub. The public sector (i.e. the taxpayer) is thus paying 11 times as much as the voluntary sector for a parenting course. Admittedly Surestart is dealing exclusively with a more challenging group of parents whereas we deal with this group as part of the mainstream. Nonetheless, given that the big principle of parenting is the same for all parents, is WSIY really worth 11 times the cost?

Hutchings, J., Bywater, T., Daley, D., Gardner, F., Whitaker, C., Jones, K., Eames, C., & Edwards, R. (2007). Parenting intervention in Sure Start services for children at risk of developing conduct disorder: pragmatic randomised controlled trial. British Medical Journal, 334, 678-678

Edwards, R. Ceilleachair, A., Bywater, T., Hughes, D., & Hutchings, J. (2007). Parenting programme for parents of children at risk of developing conduct disorder: cost effectiveness analysis. British Medical Journal, 334, 682-682

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JUN 07 DO TRAINERS NEED TO BE PROFESSIONALS TO BE SKILLED?

• An issue close to my heart is the increasing professionalisation of relationship and parenting education. If I have a concern about the UK government's welcome new parenting initiatives, it is that most of the input is coming from professionals rather than from the voluntary sector. Some of those advising government, perhaps more used to remedial rather than preventive courses, openly suggest that ordinary lay educators with a minimum of training are not suitable as parenting trainers. Thus much of the voluntary sector is disenfranchised with a single stroke of a haughty pen.

• Nonetheless those of us in the voluntary sector need to take note of a new study that shows the effectiveness of parenting courses depends on the skill of the trainer. Last September's study by Stephen Scott and colleagues at Kings College London followed 13 trainers as they ran parenting courses for 100 children at risk for conduct disorder. This kind of clinical course is clearly more demanding than the more usual community courses run by the voluntary sector. But the principles are likely to be the same. (Curiously, throughout the study, trainers are referred to as “ therapists ”, a term more commonly associated with professionals, supervision, and one-to-one work.)

• The study's main finding was that parenting outcomes improved with higher levels of trainer skills. Measures of trainer skills included highlighting the positives , encouraging participation , reviewing homework and praising achievement , summarizing main points , use of vignettes and role play , and parents use of skills . Most voluntary sector trainers will recognize the validity of these measures.

• However, skill levels were also appreciably higher if the trainers were either experienced in mental health, accredited mentors, trained as a nurse, or had more than 6 months experience running courses. The study authors suggest that both training and regular supervision is what makes skilled trainers. I'm not convinced. The superiority of both nurses and experience in particular suggest that those with better small group management and/or people skills make better trainers.

• Trainers undoubtedly need a minimum level of group management and people skills. But do they need to be professionalized as well?.

Reference: Scott, S., Carby, A, & Rendu, A. (2006) Impact of therapist skill on effectiveness of parenting groups for child antisocial behavior. Unpublished manuscript: Kings College London.

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MAY 07 CHILDCARE: GOOD OR BAD?

• I hope it's fair to say that there are two main planks to current UK government family policy: the reduction of child poverty through tax credits (i.e. negative tax) for low-income families; and provision of affordable childcare to encourage parents into work. The Childcare Act 2006 has paved the way for 3,500 Children's Centres to spearhead affordable and accessible group day-care. Children's centres are the logical follow-on from the Surestart centres that were initially aimed at deprived communities. As Children's centres increasingly become pre-schools for babies and very young children, it might be presumed that this huge political and social initiative is well-grounded in positive findings from developmental research. In fact the research evidence suggests the benefits of group child care are mixed at best and damaging at worst

• In a previous newsletter, I highlighted the findings of the biggest UK study into the effects of childcare. The “Effective Provision of Pre-School Education“ (EPPE) study followed 3000 children from age 3 to 7. Children did better in primary school if they had experienced less than five hours of childcare weekly. However childcare for the under twos, especially if more than ten hours per week, negated this advantage and was also associated with slight increases in anti-social behaviour. Better quality childcare reduced bad behaviour but did not eliminate it.

• A new report on the biggest US study of childcare “NICHD ECCRN” (don't ask!), following 1,300 children through to their 12 th birthday, shows that good quality childcare predicts better children's vocabulary but that group childcare predicts more behavioural problems. Both effects are relatively modest and “non-clinical”. Given that the children were aged 12 for this report, and childcare was a distant memory, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise to learn that quality of parenting was a more important factor for subsequent learning and behaviour.

• Previous findings from this study had already shown that quality , quantity and type of childcare all have different effects on children. Quality boosts academic performance but does not affect behaviour. Quantity , and increases in quantity , boosts problem behaviour but does not affect academic performance. Amongst types , group childcare in particular boosts academic performance but also boosts problem behaviour.

• But not all positive and negative “effects” of childcare wear off over time. An unexpected earlier finding has been that “effects” that had disappeared by age 5 had reappeared again at age 8. This new report, published in the March/April 2007 issue of Child Development, showed that problem behaviours linked with more experience of group childcare persisted all the way to age 12.

• So what sort of advice should parents be receiving? First, and most importantly, children do best when they are given good quality parenting. Second, childcare can be good for children, provided it's only a few hours a week and especially if the children are looked after by relatives. Third, group childcare in particular is linked to modest but persistent behavioural problems, especially where nursery hours are long, the quality is poor, and the child is under two. Fourth, if all else fails, take refuge in step one.

• In conclusion, group childcare appears to be more about improving economics than on improving child outcomes. The effects of childcare are both mixed and modest. Ultimately, good quality parenting is what matters most. BCFT's summer term parenting courses start in May.

Reference: Belsky, J., Vandell, D., Burchinal, M., Clarke-Stewart, A., McCartney, K., & Tresch Owen, M. (2007). Are there long-term effects of early child care? Child Development, 78, 681-701.

 

 

APR 07 CAN CULTURE MAKE COHABITATION OK?

• For many years, researchers have known that living together before marriage generally increases the subsequent risk of divorce. More recently, this finding has been shown to apply more robustly to couples who cohabit before engagement rather than before marriage. In other words, living together when engaged is OK. Living together without a plan to marry is risky.
• In previous articles, I've discussed how selection factors – e.g. income, parental divorce – don't fully explain this phenomenon. The most plausible explanation for the cohabitation effect is that a sub-group of men “slide” into cohabitation and marriage without ever making a clear and deliberative decision to commit. The added inertia effect of living together means that it is then harder to leave a lower quality relationship. These relationships, even if they turn into a marriage, are then the ones at highest risk.
• However … here's where things are never as simple as one might like! A colleague of mine sent me a study that appears to challenge this consensus. A 2004 article by Michael Svarer in the Journal of Human resources found that Danish couples who marry directly have higher divorce rates than those who cohabit and then marry. By adding in the time spent cohabiting, he found that divorce risk appears to be more related to time together than marital status. In support of this, he shows some additional data from a UN survey of twenty countries – mostly Europe plus Canada and New Zealand . In about half of the countries, divorce rates are higher amongst those who marry directly. In the other half they are lower. Essentially he is saying that cohabitation is OK if the culture says it's OK.
• I've fiddled around with his data to see if there is any way of highlighting cultural differences geographically. Unfortunately it's not obvious. In Scandinavia for example, cohabiting seems to reduce the risk of divorce in the first 10 years of marriage for Denmark and Norway but not for Sweden and Finland . Cohabitees do a bit worse in the first five years in Finland but much worse in the second five years in Sweden . Make sense of that if you can! There are other differences between countries within the first five years of marriage. Amongst European countries, premarital cohabitation is good news in West Germany but not East Germany . Its good news in Belgium and Austria but not France and Netherlands . Elsewhere, it's good news in New Zealand but not in Canada . In this study there are no UK or US figures. However the Canada figures suggest that pre-marital and pre-engagement cohabitation is bad news in the US as well – which is where most of the research on this subject is done.
• So does this mean that cohabitation can be good news if the culture makes it good news? The unequivocal answer remains no.
• When we look at the risk of divorce or separation between married and cohabiting parents , the figures show a strong consensus against cohabitation. Cohabitation may or may not strengthen a relationship if it turns into a marriage. Outcomes seem to vary from country to country. However when a baby is born, cohabitation never strengthens parenthood. Kathleen Kiernan's work shows that break-up rates amongst parents who are cohabiting when their child is born are universally higher across nine countries in Europe , averaging nearly 4 times the risk over the first 5 years of a child's life. Of most relevance to us in the UK , my own study based on the Millennium Cohort Study data of 15,000 mothers with three year olds showed that cohabitees were more than twice as likely to split up regardless of other factors.

Reference: Svarer, M. (2004) Is your love in vain? Another look at premarital cohabitation and divorce. Journal of Human Resources, 39, 523-535.

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MAR 07 DOES MARRIAGE PREPARATION WORK?

• Couples who complete some form of pre-marriage education have higher levels of satisfaction and commitment, and lower levels of divorce and conflict, even after discounting factors that correlate with both divorce and pre-marriage education. These are the findings from a large scale US study reported in the March 2006 issue of Journal of Family Psychology. The study surveyed 2,500 adults, mainly in Oklahoma , who were either married or had been married. The odds of divorce were 31% lower overall, and 28% lower during the first five years of marriage, amongst those who had experienced marriage preparation compared to those who had not.

• Some critics claim that the negative association between marriage preparation and divorce is the result of some other unmeasured factor – e.g. personality or social attitudes – that predispose individuals towards both. This study showed that marriage preparation predicted significantly lower divorce risk, even after adjusting statistically for unobserved variables that could have produced a spurious association.

• The study also found that the nature of the setting – religious or civil marriage – did not matter. However longer courses were associated with better outcomes. Optimum course length was 10 hours for reducing conflict and 20 hours for improving marital satisfaction. Beyond this, courses had little additional impact.

• Importantly, the study showed that couples benefited regardless of ethnic group or income, although participation rates varied. Divorce rates were lower amongst the better educated couples who completed a course. There was no evidence of adverse effects amongst any couples.

• I estimate that around 7% of UK couples complete some form of marriage preparation. Yet in the US , pre-marriage education is remarkably commonplace. In this sample, take-up was 44% amongst couples who married in the 1990s compared to 7% amongst couples who married in the 1930s. Overall, 31% of the couples surveyed had experienced marriage preparation. Those who got married in church – 78% in this study, compared to 32% in the UK – were very much more likely to have experienced marriage preparation. The authors suggest that lower take-up amongst black and poorer families more likely reflects lack of access rather than lack of interest.

• On its own, this cross-sectional study does not allow a clear conclusion about cause and effect. However it adds to a growing body of longitudinal studies showing that the best programmes do have a substantial impact on the stability and quality of married life. A review of 11 experimental studies (Carroll & Doherty, 2003) showed that couples who complete particular pre-marriage programmes show consistent improvements in satisfaction and reduction in conflict for several years later.

• Previous studies have looked at the effects of single programmes. This study broadens the finding – that divorce rates are one third lower amongst couples who completed a pre-marriage course – to other marriage preparation courses.

Reference: Stanley, S., Amato, P., Johnson, C., & Markman, H. (2006) Premarital education, marital quality, and marital stability: Findings from a large, random household survey. Journal of Family Psychology, 20, 117-126.

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FEB07 HOLDING HANDS MAKES YOU FEEL SAFER

• Back in the 1960s, a psychologist called Milgram ran an infamous experiment showing how ordinary decent people could be persuaded to follow orders to mistreat their fellow man. The fellow man in Milgram's study was in fact an actor who pretended to receive increasingly dangerous electric shocks. The experiments caused a sensation. Even today, the mere mention of electric shock is often associated with Milgram, even though his shocks were fake.

• So I simply had to read about a new study that used real electric shocks to see if hand-holding could make the threat of a shock seem less scary. The study by James Coan and colleagues at the University of Virginia is reported in the December 2006 issue of Psychological Science.

• Sixteen happily married wives were somehow persuaded to hold their husbands hand, a strangers hand or no hand at all while threatened with an imminent electric shock. The study doesn't record whether the wives were quite so happily married afterwards! Each was presented with a series of X or O images. The Xs warned of a 20% chance of possible shock a few seconds later. The Os gave them the all clear. During each sequence, MRI scans recorded actual brain activity while the wives recorded their own perception of how unpleasant it all felt. Altogether, each wife received two actual shocks to the ankle area.

• The results showed that holding hands, especially with the husband, reduced both subjective feeling of unpleasantness and actual level of threat-related activity in the brain. There was some evidence that these benefits were most pronounced amongst those most happily married.

• The study is interesting because it demonstrates the reassuring power of touch, especially with somebody you love and trust. Although personal experience may suggest that touch can be generally reassuring, it's not clear whether the benefits found in this study also accrue to less happily married women or to men.

• One throwaway line in the description of the study design made me chuckle. There was almost no correlation between husband and wife perceptions of happiness. Perhaps, for wives, the prospect of electric shocks may be one thing. For husbands, the prospect of dealing with an electrocuted wife may be quite another!

Reference: Coan, J., Schaefer, H., & Davidson, R. (2006). Lending a hand – Social regulation of the neural response to threat. Psychological Science, 17, 1032-1039.

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JAN 07 CAPITALISATION: REJOICE WITH THOSE WHO REJOICE!

• Much recent research has focused on how negative and positive behaviours are both important to relationship success and failure. But they are also quite different factors. At BCFT, we teach “STOP signs” as ways to identify and reduce specific negative behaviours and “Love languages” as ways to identify and increase specific positive behaviours. As a general rule, negative behaviours are better predictors of couple stability – whether we stay together. Positive behaviours are better predictors of couple satisfaction – how happy we are.

• Previous research has tended to view a positive response to a negative event as social support . A positive response to a positive event is known as capitalisation . Most research has focused on the former and overlooked the latter.

• New research is also showing that the way we respond to one another's positive or negative events may also have different effects on our relationships. A study by Shelley Gable and others at UCLA, published in the latest Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, looked at how 79 engaged couples responded to each other's discussion. Couples were invited to talk to each other about both a positive event and a negative event. Actual responses were coded by recorded observation. Perceived responses were reported by each person at the time and again two months later.

• The new study found that responses to the positive event discussion were consistently more important predictors of relationship satisfaction than responses to the negative event discussion. For men, the perceived response was more important. For women, the actual observed response was more important. In other words, couples feel better about each other and their relationship if their spouse/partner responds well to their good news (or if they think that's what has happened!) This is what capitalisation is all about.

• As with all research into relationships, there are strengths and limitations to this study on its own. Couples were observed once and then interviewed again two months later. 4 of the 79 couples broke up during this time, 34 of the 75 couples provided follow-up information from both partners, and a further 20 individual partners also provided follow-up information. The obvious strength is that an observation study gives a more objective and finely-grained assessment of the subtle relationship behaviours of which couples may not be consciously aware. The limitation is that these were all engaged couples, the follow-up time period was very short, and too few couples broke up to tell us much about stability. Therefore it's not clear whether the findings apply equally to couples at other stages of relationship and over longer periods of time.

• Nevertheless, the study offers the interesting suggestion that the way we respond when our spouse/partner reports good news may be more important than how we respond when the news is bad. So when your spouse/partner tells you some good news, rejoice with them!

Reference: Gable, S., Gonzaga, G., & Strachman, A. (2006). Will you be there for me when things go right? Supportive responses to positive event disclosures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 904-917.

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DEC 06 WHY ARE COHABITING COUPLES SO UNSTABLE?

• One of most robust yet least well-known findings in social science is that couples who live together before deciding to marry are more likely to split up or have future marital problems. Some of this due to selection: for example, poorer couples are both more likely to cohabit but then also more likely to split up. However it is increasingly recognized that the experience of cohabitation itself also contributes to future instability: one example of this is that the gap in relationship quality between married couples who did and did not cohabit remains the same despite today's widespread experience and acceptability of cohabitation. My recent study of family breakdown in the UK highlights the instability of cohabiting couples, even after taking age, income, education, ethnic group and benefits receipt into account.

• I've mentioned commitment theory many times before in our website. A new paper by Scott Stanley and others, published in the October issue of Family Relations, elaborates on how commitment theory provides a compelling explanation for why cohabitation is not all it's cut out to be. A whole new generation of research is likely to emerge from this perspective.

• Stanley points out that many or most couples tend to slide into cohabitation and then get stuck in a less than ideal relationship by default. Many couples admit that they can't remember when their “cohabitation” started. A recent study shows how one third of couples couldn't agree on their start date to within three months. We notice this at BCFT when couples fill in their pre-marriage FOCCUS questionnaires. Couples frequently give wildly different estimates for how long they have been “courting”.

• The lack of clarity over when the relationship started is also reflected in the view that men and women see commitment in different ways. A flow of new studies are beginning to show how men tend to have a lower sense of commitment and willingness to sacrifice, especially if they have slid into cohabitation rather than made a decision.

• This theory challenges a number of widely held views: that cohabitation is a clearly definable state rather than a variable feast; that cohabitation is an alternative to marriage when it is more often an alternative to being single; and that cohabitation is a good way to test a relationship. Perhaps the most important observation from this report is how cohabitation makes it harder for couples to exit from a less than ideal relationship. Simply talking about expectations would achieve the same goal without the additional risk – a day on BCFT's LLL course for example!

Reference: Stanley, S., Rhoades, G., & Markman, H. (2006). Sliding versus deciding: Inertia and the pre-marital cohabitation effect. Family relations, 55, 499-509.

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NOV 06 AROUND THE WORLD, WOMEN ARE MORE DEMANDING THAN MEN!

• For many years, it has been known that the way we do relationships is linked to how our relationships turn out. The ratio of positive to negative interactions is one example of a relationship pattern. The so called “demand/withdraw” pattern is another. In demand/withdraw, one spouse tends to be critical and demanding when discussing a relationship problem. The other tends to be defensive and withdrawn. Research in the US has consistently shown that the demand/withdraw pattern is linked with ailing marriages, over and above that suggested by other positive and negative patterns.

• The demand/withdraw pattern is also consistently gender-based. As one leading researcher states, “Men tend to withdraw from conflict, whereas women tend to engage.” One study suggested that men are withdrawers in about 60% of couples, and women in about 40% of couples. Some of this involves overlap where both spouses withdraw.

• A variety of explanations account for this phenomenon. Men are more physiologically aroused during domestic conflict and withdraw in order to reduce the arousal. Women contribute more to childcare and housework and are therefore more likely to press for greater involvement. Women may also be seeking greater closeness from their relationship than men. The pattern of wife demand and husband withdraw is far more apparent when discussing wife issues compared to the husband issues.

• A new study by Andrew Christensen and international researchers in the November issue of Journal of Marriage and Family looked at how demand/withdraw pattern varied amongst 340 couples in the US , Italy , Brazil and Taiwan . These countries reflect a broad variety of cultural and religious differences.

• The results suggest that demand/withdraw may be a universal relationship pattern across cultures. One spouse seeks a change in the relationship whereas the other spouse is happier with the status quo. Although withdrawal was as common amongst women as men, the study found that in all four countries women were more demanding than men. The authors suggest this may be because women want more help with housework and childcare, for which they tend to shoulder more responsibility. Although this study didn't look at these factors, it did look at closeness. An imbalance in desire for closeness was linked to greater use of the demand/withdraw pattern. Somewhat curiously, there was no evidence that the person who wanted greater closeness was more likely to be the demander.

• The message for those who want to make their marriage or relationship succeed is to be aware that demand/withdraw is a sign of imbalance. One spouse wants change more than the other. Persistent use of demand/withdraw will eventually lead to relationship problems. Talk to each other about what you want and need and respond accordingly!

• So do women really need to be more demanding than men? Or should men perhaps contribute a little more at home? (signed, a guilty husband!)

Reference: Christensen, A. et al (2006) Cross-cultural consistency of the demand/withdraw interaction pattern in couples. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 1029-1044

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OCT 06 LIVING TOGETHER "AS IF MARRIED"?

• Harry Benson's new study of family breakdown (available for download here ) is based on data from the Millennium Cohort Study of 15,000 mothers with three year old children. All of the mothers gave birth between mid 2000 and early 2002. Information was gathered in two waves – when the child was 9 months and again at 3 years. The size of the sample makes this the largest survey of family breakdown yet conducted in the UK .

• The main finding of the study is that married parents were much less likely to split up compared to cohabiting parents or any other category of parent. In absolute terms, 32% of unmarried couples split up compared to 6% of married couples. Unmarried couples comprised mothers who described themselves earlier as “cohabiting” or “closely involved”. Within three years, 20% of the “cohabiting” couples had split compared to 76% of the “closely involved” couples. So compared to married couples, cohabiting couples were 3.5 times more likely to split whereas unmarried couples as a whole were 5.5 times more likely to split.

• These numbers confirm that three quarters of family breakdown amongst parents with young children involves the separation of unmarried couples.

• The study also sets out to establish whether income and other factors are the real culprits behind family breakdown, not whether couples are married or not, just as many politicians and commentators often assume. Regression analysis of married and cohabiting couples – that allows each factor to be analysed independently of the others – found that age, income, education, ethnic group, benefits receipt all made independent contributions to the risk of family breakdown.

• For example, mothers in their 20s were twice as likely to split as mothers in their 30s, all other factors being equal. Mothers with no qualifications were 82% more likely to split compared to mothers with NVQ level 4 or equivalent,. Black mothers were twice as likely, and Pakistani mothers less likely, to split compared to white mothers. Birth order, whether the baby was the first or subsequent, did not appear to increase the odds of family breakdown.

• However the headline finding was that marital status topped all of these factors in terms of importance. Cohabiting mothers were more than twice as likely to split compared to married mothers, even after all these other factors had been taken into account. There is clearly therefore a functional difference that increases the vulnerability of cohabiting couples and stability of married couples that cannot be explained by socio-economic background alone.

• Of particular note is that the poorest 20% of married couples did better than all but the richest 20% of cohabiting couples. This finding illustrates how policy-makers, cushioned by wealth, may be misled by their relatively positive exposure to cohabitation which is wholly unrepresentative of most people's reality.

• Whether the marriage/cohabitation effect is about the type of people or the type of relationship they choose is perhaps a moot point. There is evidence that both explanations have validity. The main policy outcome of this study is to show that it is no longer tenable to claim that cohabiting couples live together “as if married”.

• Government policy and research must therefore distinguish family structure by marital status. How it does that, of course, is the next issue.

Reference: Benson, H. (2006) The conflation of marriage and cohabitation in government statistics – a denial of difference rendered untenable by an analysis of outcomes. Bristol Community Family Trust.

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SEP 06 UNCHANGING DIVORCE RATES

• Readers of Britain's national newspapers will be familiar with frequent comments about rising divorce rates. Readers of this newsletter will know that these comments are ill-informed. Divorce rates have changed little in the past 20-25 years, fluctuating between 12 and 14 divorces per thousand married couples per year.

• However, there has been a small possibility that divorce rates were beginning to increase again. In 2003 and 2004, divorce rates were 14.0 and 14.1 per thousand respectively. Could it be that divorce rates were about to edge upwards into new territory?

• The answer is no, based on figures from the first nine months of 2005. Divorce rates have dropped back down again into the familiar range. When the full year figures are released, most likely in September, the rate should be around 13.2 per thousand couples.

• Doubtless the media will over-exaggerate once again and shout about “falling divorce rates”. They will be wrong again. As the chart below shows, divorce rates remain largely unchanged.

• You heard it here first!

  .

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JUL 06 EQUAL MARRIAGES ARE NOT MADE IN HEAVEN

• Modern ideology suggests that traditional roles in marriage are no longer the recipe for a happy marriage. Husbands and wives are supposed to take equal responsibility for both breadwinning and home-making.

• However a fascinating new study from Bradford Wilcox and Stephen Nock in the March issue of the journal Social Forces suggests this egalitarian approach is not producing marriages made in heaven. In contrast, the traditional approach still works better. Most important of all is how wives are treated by their husbands.

• Wilcox and Nock used a sample of 5,000 couples from the US National Survey of Families and Households taken in 1994. There will always be a question as to whether findings like these apply equally to today's families in the UK . Nonetheless they are interesting because of the considerable degree of overlap in other US and UK marriage research.

• What they found:

  Wives who expect and experience “companionate” marriage, with equal roles and responsibilities, are less happy than their peers.

  Wives who expect and experience “institutional” marriage, with traditional roles and responsibilities, are happier than their peers. This is especially true when husbands share their beliefs and expectations.

  Wives who expect and experience “equitable” marriage, in particular a fair division of household labour, are also happier. Perhaps surprisingly, wives who don't expect fairness but whose husbands contribute more in the home are less happy.

  Wives whose husbands show affection and understanding are happier. This is by far the most significant predictor of wives happiness.

• These findings suggest that the most important factor for a happy marriage is the level of affection and understanding shown by husbands to their wives. Expectations and reality of how marriage ought to work are still significant but less so.

• Notwithstanding this, the modern ideal of gender equality in a marriage – shared responsibilities for both work and home – does not seem to make for a happy marriage. In fact, marriages tend to be less happy where wives earn more of the income and husbands do more in the home. In contrast a traditional approach to gender roles – husband responsible for bread-winning, wife responsible for home – seems to lead to happier marriages. As does an equitable approach based on a fair division of household labour

• But the biggest secret of a happy marriage? Husbands, love your wives. It's not rocket science, is it!

Reference: Wilcox, B. & Nock, S. (2006). What's love got to do with it? Equality, equity, commitment and women's marital quality. Socila Forces, 84, 1321-1345

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JUN 06 SIMILAR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS ARE GOOD FOR YOUR MARRIAGE

• For 50 years it's been known that couples who have similar religious beliefs and participate jointly in their religious practices tend to do better in their marriage. It's not how religious you are that appears to matter. It's the degree of similarity or “homogamy”.

• And yet during this time English-speaking countries in particular have experienced big changes in social, family and gender norms and behaviours. Family structures have changed. Household roles have changed. Work habits have changed. In spite of all this, the positive association between religious homogamy and marital satisfaction appears to remain robust.

• A new study by Scott Myers in the May issue of Journal of Marriage and Family asks whether the association remains as strong even amongst a younger generation arguably less influenced by traditional roles and habits.

• The study used a panel survey that followed 2,000 American families from 1980 to 1997 (incidentally the same survey used by Paul Amato to show how divorce following low conflict marriages tends to affect children especially badly). Although the overall levels of marriage quality and religious homogamy remained largely unchanged, the link between the two weakened significantly amongst the younger generation. This change appears to be caused by a shift in influence and priority away from church and towards work and family.

• Whilst UK and US family trends are generally fairly similar, there are still big differences in religious attendance and beliefs. However the broad thrust of the study is likely to apply to UK families because it is the similarity of beliefs, rather than their scale, that matters.

• The message for young couples remains simple. Marry somebody who has similar beliefs. Mixed faith marriages tend to be associated with less gender segregated household roles but higher levels of domestic violence. Having similar beliefs makes marriages happier.

Reference: Myers, S. (2006). Religious homogamy and marital quality: historical and generational patterns, 1980-1997. Journal of Marriage & Family, 68, 292-304

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MAY 06 THE IMPORTANCE OF INVOLVING FATHERS

• Teenagers who live with their married biological parents show fewer behavioural problems and a stronger sense of well-being than teenagers in any other family type – whether cohabiting, stepfamily or single parent. However a fascinating new study of 2,700 ten to fourteen year olds by Marcia Carlson in the February issue of Journal of Marriage and Family suggests that much of the differences in externalised and internalised behaviours can be accounted for by the level of father involvement.

• Previous studies have shown that the parental resources of time and money are both linked to children's future outcomes. One explanation for why children tend to do worse in lone parent families relates to the absence of resources. Lone mothers have fewer resources. Non-resident fathers contribute fewer resources. Parenting style, also linked to child outcomes, is less effective. Father involvement is therefore bound to be an important issue.

• Because the study is cross-sectional, i.e. based on a one time survey, it is not possible to conclude causal links. Do well-behaved and emotionally secure children get their fathers more involved or do more involved fathers encourage better behaviour and security in their children? We can't be sure.

• What is clear from this study is that the greater level of father involvement the more likely children do well. This is important because other studies have shown that better behaved children are less likely to experience future educational or mental health problems.

• This study is also helpful in showing the relationship between family structure and father involvement. Although family structure appears to have a significant effect on children's behaviour, father involvement – but not mother involvement – accounts for much of these differences. Father involvement not only mediates the effects of family structure but also has a direct impact on its own. The study found no differences between the effect on boys or girls. However the same amount of father involvement had more effect on children who live with their fathers than with children who do not. Only a small (10-18%) minority of non-resident fathers show high levels of involvement. Part of the negative impact of divorce on children may therefore be explained by a reduced level father involvement that is also less effective.

• BCFT's ADAPT programme already focuses on father involvement because of the established link with relationship quality, parenting quality and post-natal depression shown by Cowan and Cowan in their excellent qualitative study “Becoming Parents”.

• Father involvement is now known to be a major factor in explaining why married families do better than others. The message to relationship educators of this quantitative study is to focus on improving father involvement, regardless of family structure.

Reference: Carlson, M. (2006) Family structure, father involvement, and adolescent behaviour outcomes. Journal of Marriage & Family, 68, 137-154.

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APR 06 SOME SURPRISING TRENDS IN MARRIAGE, DIVORCE AND FAMILY BREAKDOWN

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MAR 06 IS THE RISING TREND IN BIRTHS OUTSIDE MARRIAGE COMING TO AN END?

• In recent weeks there has been a flurry of media articles about the rising incidence of births to unmarried parents. In particular, the Telegraph cited new research claiming such births will be the majority by 2012.

• The issue is important because unmarried families are much more likely to split up than equivalent married families, with consequences for both adults and children. The rising trend away from marriage is closely associated with rising family breakdown. One year ago, BCFT research published in The Times revealed how three quarters of all family breakdown affecting young children now involves unmarried parents.

• As the subject is so salient at present, I thought I'd highlight some preliminary analysis that I've been working on. My tentative conclusion is that although the problem is serious, as yet wholly unaddressed by policymakers, there is a strong possibility it may not get much worse than it already is.

• A couple of years ago I noticed there was a remarkably close correlation between divorces and births outside marriage. From 1900 to the present day, the correlation is astonishingly near perfect when divorces are mapped onto births outside marriage sixteen years later. Far from continuing its upward trend, my model predicts that incidence of births to unmarried parents has now almost peaked.

• Three questions immediately arise from this finding. Is there a plausible mechanism for why an increase in parental divorce should lead to an increase in unmarried childbirth in the first place? Is there a plausible explanation for why people might have babies sixteen years after their parents divorce? And even if there is such a link, what about the knock-on effect of the increase in family breakdown amongst unmarried parents? This may create a second generation of children who choose not to marry not accounted for in my model.

• It is well known that parental divorce increases the likelihood that their children cohabit rather than marry. So there is at least a potential explanatory mechanism. However explaining why it takes sixteen years is still not entirely clear to me. The average couple divorce after around 10 years. This number has remained almost unchanged since the 1960s. Suppose they had their average child after two years of marriage, then she would be aged 24 sixteen years after the divorce. This explanation may sound plausible but requires further investigation and corroboration.

• Where I have moved the story on is by including in the data on family breakdown my estimates of separated cohabiting parents of young children. To my astonishment, the model retains an extraordinary degree of accuracy. Also the second wave created by the breakdown of unmarried families is not nearly as bad as I expected. Using family breakdown data alone, my model predicts births outside marriage within 10% for every period of 10 years since 1960 to the present day. In fact, it predicts births outside marriage since 1990 to within 5% accuracy.

• If the model continues to work – and it has with remarkable accuracy for forty years – births outside marriage will rise from 42% now, peak at around 48% in a few years time, and then fluctuate in the mid-40s for the next decade. In other words, the upward trend is nearly at an end. Births outside marriage may never exceed 50% at all.

• So what? If correct, this means the situation is not going to get much worse as has been widely predicted. But nor is it going to get any better until 2020 unless policymakers act and/or people change their behaviour. Whilst I ponder what to do with this finding, I'd be grateful for any comments or thoughts you may have!

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FEB 06 DO YOU INFLUENCE WHO YOUR SPOUSE VOTES FOR?

• A fascinating new study in the February issue of Journal of Marriage and Family has looked at how spouses or partners influence each others political voting patterns. Previous research has suggested that husbands voting patterns are not influenced by their wives although wives are influenced by their husbands. This complex and detailed study suggests this is not quite right.

• Authors Man Yee Kan of Essex University and Anthony Heath of Oxford University started with the premise that there may be similarities between the ways couples manage their household roles and the way they vote. Individual attitudes and behaviour in both areas depend on the same extent of influence by their spouse.

• A range of economic theories compete for possible explanations as to why spouses might influence one another. Do spouse voting patterns follow the money? According to this theory, maximising family income is key. So if the husband is the breadwinner, the wife may vote to maximise the husband's earning potential. Or do spouses maximise their own individual self-interests? In this case, spouses may vote independently of each other. Do families compensate for role-reversal in one area by being more traditional in another? Here, if the wife earns the money, she may vote according to her husband's economic interests even if she has a better job. Or do spouses influence each other depending on their priorities? If home is top priority, a wife may be influenced by her husband. If work is top priority, she will vote independently.

• Man and Heath compared voting intentions of 2800 British couples who were married or cohabiting just prior to the 1992 election (won by the Tories, seemingly a very long time ago!) All of the theories above bar the first gained limited support. They found that couples do generally influence one another's voting patterns to some degree. Although this finding is in sharp contrast to previous research, it may not come as such a surprise to aficionados of common sense!

• However there was one intriguing exception. Men tended to vote independently when their wives were the main breadwinners. Other research shows that, in a similar situation, men also have a similarly “independent” approach to housework. Interestingly, the same is not true for wives. One possible explanation might be that husbands secretly resent being usurped from their traditional role as provider, leading to reduced contribution to the housework and independent voting habits.

• While individual choice is still the predominant factor, spouses also influence each other's voting patterns so that they become more like-minded over time. But there's plenty of fun to be had explaining the anomaly of why dependent men, but not women, act so independently.

Reference: Man, Y.K. & Heath, A. (2006) The political values and choices of husbands and wives. Journal of Marriage & Family, 68, 70-86 .

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JAN 06 IS COHABITATION A STEPPING STONE TO MARITAL BLISS?

• A simple cross-sectional survey is useful in order to find out whether two factors are linked. But it says nothing about whether or not one factor causes the other. Whenever social scientists want to find out whether an outcome occurs because of the influence of a certain factor, they use longitudinal or panel studies.

• From longitudinal studies, for example, it is possible to compare a group of people who marry with a group of people who don't marry. After taking into account baseline differences between these two groups before any of them get married – such as education, income, age, health and other background factors – it is possible to see whether marriage has any unique effect on health or well-being or whatever.

• Paul Amato at Pennsylvania State University has been following 2,000 US families for over 20 years, interviewing them extensively every four or five years. The key research finding about the effects of both conflict and divorce on children's wellbeing is one of many that derive largely from this excellent panel study. See BCFT research summary for further info.

• Although it is well-known that married people tend to be happier than the unmarried, researchers Claire Kamp Dush and Paul Amato wanted to use this panel study to find out whether couples moving in together were on a stepping stone towards marital bliss. They propose that commitment is a continuum, whereby people in more committed relationships experience greater levels of subjective well-being.

• From the families in the study, the authors looked at 691 young adults who had participated in 1992 and/or 1997 interviews. Of these 426 participated in both surveys.

• A cross-sectional survey of the larger group suggested that there is indeed a continuum of happiness related to degree of commitment. Married people tend to be happier than cohabiting people, who in turn tend to be happier than dating and single people. However this finding alone does not tell us whether degree of commitment is cause or outcome of being happy.

• By using the longitudinal element of the study, Kamp Dush and Amato showed that happiness in the first survey had an unexpected influence on whether couples cohabit or marry later on. Unhappier people were actually more likely to begin cohabiting or get married in the first place! And happiness appeared to have no influence on whether couples subsequently split up. This means that the continuum of happiness cannot be explained away as a selection effect. So it's not true that married people are only happier than anyone else because they start out that way. Quite the reverse in fact!

• However the researchers also found that going up a level of commitment increased subjective well-being. Those who dated then moved in together did well. Those who cohabited and then got married did well. These gains in happiness occurred regardless of the starting level of the relationship.

• There are of course some flaws in this study. Time spent together was not taken into account. Because cohabiting relationships are inherently unstable, it is possible that cohabiting couples are at peak happiness whereas married couples are not. The benefit of cohabiting would therefore be overstated and the benefit of being married understated. It is difficult to draw general conclusions because the sample was young and there were relatively few cohabitees. The study also ignores the well-known negative influence of cohabiting on subsequent marriage. Happiness is a bit of a sideshow when it comes to the much more important issue of whether people split up or not.

• Nonetheless, on a purely subjective level, this study shows that moving in together makes you feel OK. But getting married makes you feel great! The more you commit, the better you feel.

Reference: Kamp Dush, C. & Amato, P. (2005) Consequences of relationship status and quality for subjective well-being. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 22, 607-627.

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DEC 05 DOES DIVORCE MAKE PEOPLE HAPPIER?

• Although it is well known that married people are generally happier than divorced people, it does not necessarily follow that divorce itself makes people unhappy. Indeed an economist would argue that couples must presume divorce will make them happier. In order to justify divorce, the perceived benefits of ending a marriage must outweigh the costs of divorce.

• Economist Andrew Oswald of Warwick University has become celebrated for his studies of happiness. In a paper due to be published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, and published online in October 2005 , Jonathan Gardner and Andrew Oswald studied the effect of divorce on happiness using data from the British Household Panel Survey. 430 people out of 10,000 surveyed had experienced divorce or marital separation during the previous 10 years. By comparing measures of happiness in the years before and after the divorce, the study was able to look at the impact of divorce on happiness.

• Their findings show a significant gap in levels of happiness between those headed for divorce one or two years later and those who remain married. During the year of the divorce itself, the unhappiness gap reaches its peak, narrowing again during the subsequent two years.

• As secondary findings, divorcees with children experience greater unhappiness both before and after divorce compared to divorcees without children. And divorcees who remarry become happier than those who remain single – curiously though, only during the first year following divorce but not the second.

• This study, probably the best of its kind to date, is presented as evidence that divorce makes people happy. Doubtless this will be the media headline when the study is published formally. What the study does show is that divorcees recover from the immediate trauma of divorce but still do not generally escape the levels of unhappiness experienced during their marriage. Divorce does not make people happy. It makes them less unhappy. As with much of social science, the reality is rather less sensational than the media would like it to be.

• Of course, the whole study of divorce and happiness is a moot point from the perspective of a child in any case. Booth & Amato's 2001 20-year study of 2,000 American families remains the best study of the effects of parental behaviour on children. They showed that conflict, not happiness, is what counts. Children do well either within a low-conflict marriage or after a high conflict divorce. Children do badly either within a high-conflict marriage or after a low-conflict divorce.

• Happiness might matter a lot to adults. But, to children, happiness is a red herring!

Gardner, J. & Oswald, A. (in press) Do divorcing couples become happier by breaking up? Journal of the Royal Statistical Society

 

NOV 05 WHY COHABITATION IS BAD FOR YOUR MARRIAGE

• For the vast majority of couples, living together either before or instead of marriage has now become the socially accepted norm. In fact many couples view living together as a good way to test their relationship before they get married.

• Paradoxically, it has long been clear to social scientists that couples who live together before marriage tend to experience lower relationship quality and higher break-up rates when they do eventually marry. Even for those familiar with this finding, it has been difficult to explain – let alone convince – couples of the untrendy merit of living separately until they make an express commitment.

• Whilst a great deal of research now shows that both selection effect (riskier couples tend to cohabit) and relationship effect (the experience of cohabitation makes the relationship riskier) play a part, a new explanation for why the phenomenon occurs at all may be at hand.  Scott Stanley at the University of Denver suggests the answer may be found in commitment theory.

• Commitment theory proposes two types of commitment. Dedication is the internal force that draws people together. Dedication involves a sense of couple identity or we-ness and a sense of long-term future together, a prioritisation of the relationship and a willingness to sacrifice other choices. Constraints are the external forces that increase the cost of leaving. Constraints involve external factors that see two people as a couple, such as children, family, financial commitments, house, friends, family, being married, and lack of alternatives.

• The big secret to a successful marriage or relationship is to build and sustain high levels of dedication . When dedication is high, constraints feel positive. When dedication is low, constraints feel negative. “ I feel trapped ” is the common refrain of those who feel penned in by their constraints.

• Stanley 's “ inertia hypothesis ”, presented in a February 2005 paper , suggests that couples who move in together increase their constraints without a concurrent increase in dedication. Riskier couples might choose to split up if they court without living together. However by cohabiting, the same riskier couples reduce their available alternatives and make it more difficult to leave the relationship. Through inertia, they then slide into a lower quality and possibly doomed marriage.

• The inertia hypothesis thus provides a plausible explanation for why cohabiting couples face increased risks to both satisfaction and stability when they do marry. It could be because the choice to cohabit simply makes it harder for riskier couples to leave.

Stanley, S. Line, G. & Markman, H. (2005) The inertia hypothesis: Sliding vs deciding in the development of risk for couples in marriage. Paper presented at the Cohabitation: Advancing research and theory conference. Bowling Green , OH .

 

OCT 05 AN INTRIGUING NEW THEORY OF COMMITMENT

• Scott Stanley at University of Denver has put together a fantastic and very readable paper on how men and women tend to see commitment differently. The November 2004 paper provides tremendous insight into state-of-the-art thinking and research on commitment.

• In simple terms, his theory is that most women commit when they move in with a man whereas most men commit when they decide to marry.

• In Stanley's words, “ Attachment triggers committed and sacrificial behavior in women whereas a decision to be committed triggers committed and sacrificial behavior in men. In other words, women begin to give their best to men when they are strongly attached. However men may be less inclined to give fully of themselves to women unless they have decided that a particular woman is their future. This theory could therefore explain…

  1. Why men seem to resist marriage more than women, even though there is growing evidence that they see the importance of marriage, in some ways, more than women.
  2. Why commitment levels for men are very strongly associated with attitudes about sacrificing, but much less so for women.
  3. Why some, but not all, couples who cohabit prior to marriage are at greater risk, and contain men who score lower than other men on measures of dedication to their mates.
  4. Why male behavior reflecting responsibility in their lives and toward their wives grows when they marry .”

Stanley , S. (2002) What is it with men and commitment anyway? Keynote address to the 6 th annual Smartmarriages conference. Washington DC

 

SEP 05 THE IMPORTANCE OF REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

• Is it better to expect the best of your marriage and be occasionally disappointed or expect the worst and be occasionally delighted? As a convinced optimist and former pessimist, I sit firmly in the optimist camp. Expect the best and you will achieve more, even if you have to bear the pain of failure occasionally. Studies have for years affirmed the better outcomes in life that tend to be achieved by optimists.

• A study by James McNulty and Benjamin Karney in the 2004 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology adds some important qualifications to this. They recruited 82 newlywed couples in the Florida area and followed them over the first 4 years of marriage. Couples completed questionnaires every six months and were also videoed twice during the period.

• It is well established that marital satisfaction levels tend to decline in these first few years of marriage. The couples who did best in this study – i.e. whose satisfaction declined least – were those who started their married life with both less positive observed behaviours and expectations or more positive behaviours and expectations. Those who did worst were those who started off with more positive observed behaviours and less positive expectations or vice versa.

• In other words, for marriages that start off functioning well, positive expectations are helpful. For marriages that start off functioning less well, positive expectations are not helpful.

• The message is clear. It's good to have positive expectations but you must also have the skills necessary to achieve those expectations. The ideal is to be both positive and realistic.

• Do a BCFT course and you can achieve both!

McNulty, J. & Karney, B. (2004) Positive expectations in the early years of marriage: Should couples expect the best or brace for the worst? Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 86, 729-743.

 

JUL 05 MARRIAGE EDUCATION IN THE ARMY

• The aim of marriage and relationship education is to improve the quality of relationships over time. A handful of recent studies have demonstrated this convincingly. However the limitation is that most studies have been conducted amongst predominantly white, middle class, newlywed couples. 

• A new study by Scott Stanley and others, published in the June issue of Family Process, looked at how 335 couples in the US Army benefited from the PREP marriage education programme. This study is important because the sample comprised a much more diversified group of couples. Typical income was below average, half of the sample was non-white, all ranks were represented from private to colonel, and almost all couples were married.

• The couples received two days of relationship education delivered by Army chaplains – not professionals. Couples reported that their relationship quality, risk of destructive behaviour, ability to deal with conflict, and level of confidence had all improved significantly as a result of the programme. Gender, ethnicity or income made no difference to the assessment. In other words, the programme benefited men and women, black and white, rich and poor alike.

• There are limitations to this study. There was no control group. The one month follow-up study didn't work because too few couples participated (the study was disrupted by 9/11). The Army chaplains were not assessed on their training delivery. The sample may not generalise to a wider population. And assessment was self-report only, whereas observation has been shown to be a far more reliable measure.

• Despite all this, couples reported bigger improvements in their relationship indicators than is normally the case on studies of newlyweds. This is good news for courses aimed at married couples rather than newlyweds. A good programme should have more benefit to married couples than to pre-married couples who are more positive to start with.

• It's also good news for courses aimed at non-white, non-middle class, non-newlywed couples. Those of us who run programmes in prison know that relationship education does transfer to different populations. This study is a step in the right direction of providing hard evidence.

Stanley , S. et al (2005). Dissemination and evaluation of marriage education in the army. Family Process, 44, 187-201

 

JUN 05 IT'S NOT WHAT YOU DO BUT THE WAY THAT YOU DO IT

• Its long been known that living together before marriage makes marriages more likely to fail. The debate has largely focused on whether the reason is selection – the type of people who cohabit are more likely to divorce – or causal – the experience of cohabitation causes people to behave differently and make divorce more likely.

• But an intriguing new study by Julie Phillips and Megan Sweeney in the May issue of Journal of Marriage and Family suggests that much depends on the meaning and structure of cohabitation. To demonstrate this, they looked at how the factors influencing future marriage prospects of 4,500 American women spanning several different ethnic groups.

• The study found that premarital cohabitation raises the risk of divorce during the first 10 years of marriage by 50% amongst white women. Yet amongst black and Hispanic women, premarital cohabitation has a benign influence, if any, on their future marriage.

• The study is important because it is amongst the first to highlight ethnic differences in the factors effecting marriage prospects. As other examples of these differences, Hispanic brides who marry as teenagers appear to do especially well and black brides who marry while pregnant are at especially high risk.

• The authors plausibly suggest these group differences arise because of the way cohabitation tends to be viewed within each ethnic group. Amongst whites, cohabitation is more often seen as a trial marriage intended to test the water. Higher divorce rates could then be due to the experience of living together itself increasing barriers to exit, reducing available alternatives, and thus leading more unsatisfactory relationships into marriage. Amongst blacks and Hispanics, cohabitation is seen more as a precursor to or substitute for marriage. In either case, the experience of cohabitation would then be expected to have less impact on the subsequent marriage.

Phillips, J. & Sweeney, M. (2005) Premarital cohabitation and marital disruption amo