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PART I: INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND
Family structure in the United States changed rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century. The two-parent family norm has been increasingly replaced by a wide variety of family forms. In 2001, 69 percent of children lived in two-parent families, down from 77 percent in 1980 (Federal Interagency on Child and Family Statistics, 2002). Divorce is common. About half of all recent first marriages are expected to end in divorce (Ooms, 2002). One-third of all births are out-of-wedlock. And couples opting to cohabitate rather than marry have become an increasingly common phenomenon. Forty percent of non-marital births occur within cohabiting unions rather than marriages (Bumpass & Lu, 2000).
The decline of marriage has been particularly evident in poor communities. A recent report using data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) found that first marriages are more likely to disrupt in communities with higher male unemployment, lower median family income, higher poverty and higher receipt of welfare. Similarly, remarriage is less likely for divorced women who live in these communities (Bramlett and Mosher, 2002).
There are different theories for why these patterns occur in low-income communities. For African-American women, researchers point to three threats that reduce the pool of “ marriageable men ”: high unemployment, incarceration, and death rates for African-American men (Wilson, 1996; Western and McLanahan, 2000; South and Lloyd, 1992). Some also suggest that welfare programs provide a disincentive for women to marry. These theories contend that a mother may derive more benefits from collecting welfare than marrying a man with a low-paying job (Becker 1991).
A vast accumulation of research suggests that children do not fare as well in these alternative family structure forms as children living with two married biological parents. Studies have demonstrated that children growing up in single-parent families experience worse outcomes than children growing up in two-parent families (Acs & Nelson, 2001; Amato & Keith, 1991; McLanahan & Sandefeur, 1994; Wu & Martinson, 1993). Research has also shown that divorce can have negative effects on children’s well-being (Amato, 1993; Amato & Keith, 1991; Chase-Lansdale, Cherlin, & Kiernan, 1995; Chase-Lansdale & Hetherington, 1990). Even when parents remarry, a synthesis of the research suggests that this does not appear to improve outcomes (Amato, 1993).
CURRENT PROJECT
In this societal context, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) included four purposes, three of which were related to marriage and family formation: states were urged to promote marriage, reduce out-of-wedlock childbearing, and encourage and support two-parent families (P.L. 104-193). This legislation made welfare, now Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), money available to states to develop programs to encourage marriage among low-income families. The current administration seeks to implement interventions that strengthen healthy marriages with the hope of ultimately improving child well-being; in so doing, it has proposed an increase in the amount of TANF funding available for programs to support healthy marriages. Some states and providers are poised to develop and provide these services with the reauthorization of PRWORA on the horizon this year.
As efforts to implement marriage programs move forward, policymakers and program developers need information about the types of services and programs that currently exist, how they operate in a variety of settings, and how other providers might implement them in the future. To address these needs, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) built a long-term, large-scale research agenda to approach these questions from several angles. It has undertaken a variety of projects that utilize various approaches toward marriage promotion and assess different populations. Specifically, the Building Strong Families (BSF) project will assess whether interventions targeted at unwed couples around the time of a child’s birth can help couples achieve a healthy marriage, and in turn positively affect the development of the child. The Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) project will examine whether and how marriage programs for low-income married couples can improve couple relationships and child well-being. The Community Healthy Marriage Initiative (CHMI) evaluation project will examine how community-level initiatives can provide support for marriage and affect attitudes regarding marriage across entire communities.
As part of this agenda, in September of 2002, ACF contracted with the Urban Institute to explore service delivery settings and evaluation design options to strengthen and promote healthy marriages. This project commissioned a team of researchers to characterize the programmatic and research landscape of marriage interventions and provide ACF with an assessment of potential evaluation issues to consider when planning larger scale evaluations. The project was focused primarily on the context in which interventions take place and less on the interventions themselves. For example, how are programs implemented within different settings and how does the setting affect funding, staffing, service delivery, and client recruitment and retention? ACF also aimed to understand more about ways in which marriage interventions might serve low-income couples and particular issues surrounding program implementation to reach and serve this population.
The project was designed to collect information on the range of programs currently available to strengthen healthy marriages. We considered both current and “potential” programs, defined as programs that currently serve a population of interest but do not offer marriage services. We conducted a total of 58 telephone discussions with current and potential program providers and visited five geographic areas with multiple programs. Through theses calls and visits, we examined the service delivery setting, specifically the types of services provided, target groups served, the size of the program, funding mechanisms, and collaborating organizations. We also convened a meeting in Washington, D.C. of key stakeholders in the field of marriage programming and service delivery. The meeting brought together experts on both different types of settings in which programs operate as well as experts on particular interventions, minority populations, and program evaluation.
Prior to our discussions with providers, we developed a diagram to organize our understanding of the different aspects of the programs we would study (see figure 1). We define a “marriage program” as including several components: environment, setting, intervention, and clients. The environment includes all federal, state and local policies, public and private initiatives, funding streams that could support a marriage program, and the cultural and socio-political climate. The setting is the physical location where the program is delivered and generally where the program operates. The client population includes the person(s) the program is serving. The intervention is a treatment involving some face-to-face interaction with the client population. We excluded models that include solely a media campaign, video or book, or Internet training program. The intervention includes topics or subject areas, such as communication, problem solving, or expectations. The intervention is delivered using a particular format, which includes the method (didactic or interactive), group size (individual, couple or group), and dosage (number of hours spent receiving treatment). The goals of some interventions may be solely focused on marriages or relationships, while others may have several goals, one of which is to support healthy marriages or relationships.
[D] |
We selected programs to contact to attain sufficient variation in setting type and, to a lesser extent, to ensure that we had feasible geographical clustering to allow for site visits. We identified seven setting types of interest: public health, mental health, community centers, social service, education, religious, and in-home settings. Table 1 provides definitions of the setting types and the number of programs we called and visited from each category.
Upon completion of our discussions with providers, we coded our notes using the Nudist software for qualitative data analysis. After having attained sufficient inter-rater reliability, two researchers coded the notes. We coded findings on key issues related to environment, setting, intervention, and clients. Using the software, we then produced a compilation of notes on those particular topics. We analyzed these compilations for this report.
It is important to note that while we talked with a wide variety of program providers, there is no reliable estimation of the universe of marriage programs or service delivery settings in the United States; therefore, our sample is not necessarily representative, nor was it randomly selected from a set universe of programs. Furthermore, there is some degree of self-selection among our sample. People who spoke with us did so on their own time and without compensation; those without any thoughts about the programming (both positive or negative) might be underrepresented in our sample, as they would have less incentive to share their time with us.
| Setting | Definition | Examples | Calls | Visits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public Health | Place where health care services are offered | hospital, crisis pregnancy clinic, community health center | 5 | 1 |
| Mental Health | Place where mental health services are offered | therapist office, community mental health center | 12 | 4 |
| Community Centers | Place where community-organized, non-health specific services are provided, or where community members gather | YMCA, family support center, parenting education program | 14 | 9 |
| Social Service | Place where government-run, non-health specific services are provided | TANF office, mediation program, child welfare agency | 9 | 5 |
| Education | Place where educational services are provided | Head Start, school, college, extension | 9 | >4 |
| Religious | Place where religious services are provided | church, temple | 12 | 4 |
| In-Home | Services are delivered in the client’s home | home-visiting, mentoring | 2 | 1 |
| TOTAL * | 63 | 28 | ||
| * Programs may be classified as being in more than one setting type; as a result, the total in the ”call” column is greater than 58. (back) |
In our search for programs, we identified many programs providing services specific to supporting healthy marriages. We also identified many programs focused on general couple relationships in addition to, or in place of, marriage. For simplicity, we use the term “marriage program” throughout this report. Yet to accurately portray the programs we encountered, this term should be read to include all couple relationship and marriage services.
REPORT FORMAT
This report offers a preliminary picture of the key components of programs that currently exist to strengthen marriages and how these components interact to create choices for policymakers and providers interested in implementing these programs in the future. We begin with an overview of the landscape of marriage programming, exploring some of the key features of the field. This view of the field’s breadth, the most comprehensive to date, can be used to inform the choices and strategies of policymakers, practitioners, and other interested parties. Moreover, it conceptualizes the characteristics, approaches, and context of programs around the country, and in so doing, provides a language for helping programs articulate where they fall on a variety of continua.
We then look at the most systematic intersections of some of these components and the tensions that they can create for program providers. The salient interactions that we observed were often three- or four-dimensional, drawing upon various characteristics of a program to arrive at a unique outcome.
We next describe some of the key opportunities and challenges policymakers and program planners might encounter when attempting to expand or implement future marriage programs. Given ACF’s specific interest in the provision of marriage services to low-income couples, we pay particular attention to the ways in which these opportunities and challenges may be heightened or lessened when offering these programs to this population.
Finally, we conclude with a preliminary assessment of potential issues in the evaluation of marriage programs. As efforts to implement these programs move forward, evaluators of marriage programs will seek to identify the types of settings and with which populations relationship and marriage education programs will be most effective. This last section draws on the knowledge gained in our program investigation to highlight some of the key challenges future evaluators might encounter.
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