Mandated Marriage preparation in the Catholic Church

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

In my thesis research (The Effects of Mandated Marriage Preparation on
Dyadic Adjustment) I have found that engaged couples' desire to attend
mandated marriage preparation in the Catholic Church has NO significant
effect on what couples get out of the marriage preparation program!

I surveyed 50 couples in 10 churches in 4 different states. Almost half
were
participating in Catholic marriage preparation willingly and the other
half
indicated that they were primarily there because it was required to be
married in the Church. Regardless, couples who did not want to be there
at pretest got just as much out of the program as couples who would have
attended even if the program were not mandated (as measured by the R-DAS
and MAP). In fact, a significant number of participants changed their
minds about marriage preparation during the course of the program.

So, the research suggesting that mandating marriage preparation causes a
hostile
"backlash" does not seem supported in this case. My findings are also
in contrast to studies that found that perceived effectiveness of
marriage preparation is related to degree of voluntariness. This is
more research supporting mandated (or strongly encouraged)
marriage preparation.

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