Letter to the Editor of the NY Times

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

October 20, 1998

Letter to the Editor, New York Times

Regardless of what is going on in Denver, I can tell Dr. Markman that in
Florida it is not accurate, as he puts it, that "There are plenty of
community or religious settings for learning relationship skills." If
that were the case we
would not have worked so hard to draft and pass legislation to provide
skill-based marriage education to all the students of our state.

Though many might say "that home, church and community organizations are
the places to talk about marriage, not the public schools," one does not
preclude the other. Without question we have an epidemic of family
breakdown and need to talk
about the problem and the solutions at home, church, in community
organizations as well as in our schools.

We all want our high schools to prepare our children for the future, and
for the eventual world of work. Now, we must recognize the need to
prepare our children for the role of parenting and living in families.
Skill-based relationship education will have positive impact on both work
and family matters.

Further, as I understand the research of Dr. Markman and his colleagues,
simply talking about marriage is not the answer. The marital research
shows that what differentiates the marriages that succeed from those that
fail are skills and that these skills can be taught. The most important
skills, as I understand the research, are those for handling the
predictable disagreements that are a normal part of every marriage. It
is upon this research that the Florida Marriage Preparation and
Preservation bill is based and upon which we base our hope.

Senator Tom Rossin and I, as moderate Democrats, were proud to work with
Representative Steve Wise, a conservative Republican, and Representative
Evelyn Lynn, a moderate Republican, to produce this common sense approach
to helping young people develop skills that will benefit all aspects of
their lives.

Rep. Elaine Bloom

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