Laissez faire attitude towards divorce

Item from the Smart Marriages Archive, reproduced in the Divorce Statistics Collectio n

February 15, 1999

Are there still people who doubt that good marriages help to produce
strong families, successful children and nurturing communities? Or who
disbelieve the converse: that failed (or never-undertaken) marriages can
lead to weak and economically stressed families, troubled children and
shaky communities?

And yet as George Gallup Jr. noted the other day, marriage continues in
decline. "If divorce were a physical disease," he said, "we'd declare a
national emergency."

So what accounts for our laissez-faire attitude toward divorce? At least
two things, I think. The first is that we haven't learned how to talk
about the problems resulting from too-easy divorce without implying that
we'd like to turn back the clock on advances in women's rights. The
second is our belief that divorce, like marriage, is such an intensely
private matter that the wider society can do nothing about it.

That second notion, at least, is under challenge, thanks to a fledgling
national program called Marriage Savers, which helps local churches
organize to create a "community marriage policy" that includes intensive
premarital training.

The results sound almost too good to believe. According to Michael
McManus, president and co-chair (with his wife Harriet) of the
Potomac-based Marriage Savers, the divorce rate in Modesto, Calif., which
adopted the first community marriage policy, fell by 35 percent between
1986 and 1997 -- while the national divorce rate was dropping by just 1.3
percent. In just two years of the program, the Kansas suburbs of Kansas
City showed a decline from 1,530 divorces to 1,001 -- 35 percent fewer.

Not all the numbers McManus cited at a press conference last week were
that dramatic. Eau Claire, Wis., saw a drop from 366 divorces in 1996 to
341 in 1997 -- just 6.9 percent -- and Columbus, Ga., reported a mere 5.7
percent drop in that same period.

The keystone of the Marriage Savers approach is the use of mentors --
generally older couples from the congregation with perhaps 30 years of
marriage under their belts -- who spend as much as four months counseling
engaged couples on every aspect of marriage.

"Except for the Catholic Church, which was the first to require six
months of marriage preparation, and a few scattered congregations, when
it comes to marriage, the church has pretty much just been a blessing
machine," McManus said. "Couples tell the minister they'd like to be
married in his church -- maybe just because they'd like some nice
pictures for the wedding album -- and the minister gives them what I call
a marriage chat, and that's it."

Still, that compares with the national decline in the divorce rate of 1.3
percent over the dozen years.2 Unless the minister is in one of the 100
places where the Community Marriage Policy pact has been adopted
(Culpeper becomes the 100th today) -- almost all of them small or midsize
towns. In that case what the couple gets is a carefully crafted
questionnaire. The couple are sent to separate rooms and asked to answer
questions dealing with everything from money decisions to the frequency
with which the prospective spouse uses the "silent treatment." The scores
are discussed in detail with specially trained mentoring couples.

Often the exercise helps individuals to see their flaws more clearly --
the tendency to nag, or to put "issues" ahead of the relationship. And
about a 10th of the time, the couple will decide they're not right for
each other -- quite likely saving a future divorce.

One recent innovation of Marriage Savers is to find mentors whose
experiences match the peculiar needs of the engaged couple -- for
instance second-marriage couples might be assigned to couples who are
remarrying after a divorce; couples who have been involved with
stepchildren might counsel engaged couples facing the same prospect. The
result can be better and more practical advice than a cleric or other
trained generalist could offer.

The program does two things that I consider vital when it comes to
helping marriages to work: It stresses the spiritual importance of
commitment, and it offers time-tested how-tos.

As Harriet McManus put it: "Before you tie the knot, let us show you the
ropes."

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