Saving Marriage Culture One Marriage at a Time: Rationalizing the Marriage and Relationship Education Movement

• In Event: 527 - Regular Session. Qualitative Methodology

Abstract

Drawing on our respective multi-year ethnographic studies of the American marriage and relationship education (MRE) movement, we find that interpersonal and institutional models of marriage infuse marriage politics in contradictory ways that undermine the goals of both movement and policy efforts to address various social problems associated with family instability. We analyze three empirical moves that the movement utilizes to rationalize MRE as a non-partisan, non-ideological solution to various social problems related to family formation: 1) teaching evidence-based relational knowledge to address the deinstitutionalization of marriage; 2) framing individual responsibility in family-formation decisions as a learned capacity for rational emotional experiences; and 3) emphasizing the purported taxpayer savings associated with MRE. We argue that these rationalization strategies point to a larger disconnect in the movement between the institutional framing of marital breakdown as a society-wide problem that demands collective and communal responses and the individualistic framing of the solution that promotes investing public resources in skills-based approaches to improving interpersonal couple dynamics. This contradiction helps explain why MRE has not been able to address the larger problems it claims to, such as poverty, despite the fact that some programs are helpful for enhancing individuals’ and couples’ skills and relationship quality.

Authors

• Orit Avishai, Fordham University

• Jennifer Randles, California State University-Fresno