Running Head: MARRIAGE PREPARATION AS DIVORCE PREVENTION

MARRIAGE PREPARATION 1

Running Head: MARRIAGE PREPARATION AS DIVORCE PREVENTION

Marriage Preparation as Divorce Prevention:

Background, Benefits, and Limitations

Monica L. Moore

University of Evansville
Abstract

Divorce is a significant concern due to the detrimental effects it is proven to have on the psychological and physical health of many couples and their children. Unfortunately, the efficacy of interventions for currently married, distressed couples is questionable, both due to underlying societal influences on marriage and to methodological difficulties in evaluating the therapies, themselves. However, studies of couples have found specific relationship qualities that predict the likelihood of future divorce, and these discoveries can inform and strengthen marriage interventions. This paper presents a review of the current literature surrounding divorce and marriage intervention: the impact of divorce on individual and family health, the nature of the divorce process, psychosocial causes of divorce, and marriage interventions, with an emphasis on marriage-preparation programs and implications for future research.

Table of Contents

1. Abstract2

1. Table of Contents3

1. Why is divorce a concern?
2. Effects of divorce4
3. Divorce process6

1. What causes divorce?
2. Trends in marriage and divorce: The view from sociology7
3. Causes and correlates of divorce: The view from psychology8

1. What has been done to inhibit divorce?
2. Towards marriage intervention13
3. Efficacy of marriage intervention15

1. What does the future hold for divorce prevention?
2. Rationale for and limitations of prevention18
3. Specific premarital programs20

1. Conclusions25

1. References27

Marriage Preparation as Divorce Prevention:Background, Benefits, and Limitations

Why is Divorce a Concern?

Effects of Divorce

The negative impact of divorce can be broken down into two main components: First, divorce brings to an end the positive effects of marriage on the lives of adults and children. Secondly, divorce is usually evidence of marital distress, and marital conflict, compounded by the social and emotional upheaval of the divorce process, has negative effects on the psychological and physiological functioning of the whole family.

To address the first component, a significant body of research has documented the benefits of marriage. The positive effects of marriage are thought to stem from the emotional, social, and physical intimacy of the secure spousal relationship. An extensive literature review by Coombs (1991, Abstract) found that “the evidence is consistent with the protection/support hypothesis that a marital partner who provides companionship and psychic aid buffers the individual against physical and emotional pathology.” Married people are at less risk for specific disorders such as alcoholism, as well as having lower overall mortality rates and higher levels of personal happiness, although the benefits of marriage seem to be more significant for men than for women (Coombs, 1991).

Healthy, supportive marriages promote personal health and well-being. Conflicted marriages have the opposite effect, increasing a person’s risk of physical and psychological dysfunction. Distressed marriages are correlated with increased incidence of “specific illnesses such as cancer, cardiac disease and chronic pain (see Schmaling & Sher, 1997)” (Fincham & Beech, 1999, p. 49). Conflict and divorce also have many psychological effects on couples. Research indicates that women suffer more psychological harm than men, possibly due to the increased burdens of singleness and childrearing.

The detrimental effects of conflict and divorce on children continue to be a subject of scrutiny. Guttmann (1993) provided insight into the divorce experience of children compared to that of adults:

For adults, divorce can be viewed as a crisis that starts with marital disharmony and, over the course of time, approaches a potential resolution. For children, divorce represents a traumatic transition from life with both parents to the condition of living with only one, attended by the intermediate stages of personal imbalance, confusion, and disorganization (p. 157-8).

Studies show that divorce comes as a shock to many children, even in households suffering from obvious marital distress (Guttmann, 1993). Despite the admitted surprise of children at the decision to divorce, the dysfunction within pre-divorce homes has been correlated with increased stress and cardiac response to emotions and decreased self-control of emotional responses in children before any divorce has taken place (Gottman, 1994). The factors most predictive of a child’s response to divorce are the nature of family life before the divorce, the adjustment of the parent retaining custody after the divorce, and the level of development the child has reached (Guttmann, 1993).

Overall, marriage problems and divorce have been correlated with higher levels of childhood “depression, withdrawal, poor social competence, health problems, poor academic performance, and a variety of conduct-related difficulties” (Gottman, 1998, p. 170). Unfortunately, the research on individual outcomes is plagued by conflicting reports and confounding variables (Guttmann, 1993). At the societal level, however, the negative impact of divorce on family economic status is clear. Nearly three-fourths of the $200 billion spent annually on welfare is distributed to homes headed by single parents, and eighty percent of children living below the poverty line in the U.S. are the offspring of unmarried or divorced parents (Fagan, Patterson, Rector, 2002). Some research has also indicated that children of divorce are more likely to divorce, themselves, though definitive evidence has yet to be presented (Gottman, 1998; Guttmann, 1993; Teachman, 2002).

The Divorce Process

In 1986, McIsaac conceptualized the divorce process as a series of three levels: psychological, social, and legal (Donohue, 1991, p. 12-3). Kressel and Deutsch (1977) had earlier described divorce as a developmental process consisting of predecision, decision, mourning, and re-equilibrium stages (Guttmann, 1993). During the first stages of both of these models, the emotional ties of the marriage relationship come undone in the minds of one or both partners. This mental distancing culminates in the decision to divorce and the taking of social and legal steps necessary to fulfill that decision, including physical separation of the spouses (Donohue, 1991). The mourning period begins with this physical separation and continues for an average period of one-and-one-half to two years (Guttmann, 1993). The mourning period is the most emotionally and psychologically threatening phase to both adults and children, highlighting an important consideration for clinicians: Parents undergoing divorce may be the least able to provide care and support for their children at the very time their children most need them. Also notable from a clinical standpoint is the 18 to 24-month time period: Significant disturbances during this time are normal, while continued disturbances may be cause for concern. The re-equilibrium stage is reached with varying degrees of success by individual spouses and children (Guttmann, 1993).

What Causes Divorce?

Trends in Marriage and Divorce: The View from Sociology

Anecdotal estimates hold that “between 50% and 67% of first marriages end in divorce” (Gottman, 1998, Abstract). Current projective statistics, however, suggest a divorce rate of only 40-45% for new marriages, with remarriages being in the upper end of that range (Whitehead & Popenoe, 2001). Historically, divorce rates rose throughout the 1960s and 70s, finally leveling off in the 1980s (Whitehead, 1996, p. 8). More important than the numbers, however, are the changes in family structure those numbers represent.

Whereas just a few decades ago, a key purpose of marriage was to have children, marriage and parenthood are increasingly seen as separate pursuits. Whitehead sees this as just one piece of evidence for Alice S. Rossi’s observation that “Westerners are shifting from a concern for their children’s futures to a self-orientation that gives priority to individuals’ desires rather than to the needs of spouses and children” (Whitehead, 1996, p. 4). Marriage and parenthood are now seen as personal goals to be achieved or as media for self-expression. This development is concerning because over time, American families have also devolved from extended kin networks to individual couples with children, making those children “dependent on the permanence and stability of marital bonds” (p. 7), and therefore at risk.

Divorce has changed both parent-child relationships and the structure of the family. According to Robert S. Weiss, though divorce is often seen as a way to put an end to conflict and thereby benefit the family system, divorce commonly has the opposite effect, creating more conflict and incapacitating the spousal check-and-balance system of effective parenting (p. 216). Citing data on self-reported happiness of divorcing couples, sociologist Maggie Gallagher related that, “the greatest drop in happiness has occurred among married women in their childbearing years,” the very population to whom divorce is often meant to provide relief (1996, p. 238).

The June 2001 report from the National Marriage Project contained the results of a Gallup poll of 20-29 year olds commissioned to measure young adults’ views of marriage. Some of the results are quite encouraging from the standpoint of decreasing divorce. For example, a 1994 survey of the general population found that only 15% or respondents would remain married out of concern for the children of that union. This report found, however, that 40% of young adults would stay married in that situation (Whitehead & Popenoe, 2001, p.16). Unfortunately, the results also indicate patterns of belief about cohabitation that are reason for concern. Research has shown that cohabitation does not improve one’s likelihood of staying married to one’s partner; in fact, cohabitation may even increase the risk of later divorce by decreasing commitment to the relationship (p. 24). Of the young adults surveyed by the National Marriage Project, however, 62% believed cohabitation is effective divorce prevention, and 43% claimed they “would only marry someone if he or she agreed to live together with you first, so that you could find out whether or not you really get along” (p. 10). These misinformed attempts at divorce prevention point towards a significant need for increased public awareness of marital risk factors.

Causes and Correlates of Divorce: The View from Psychology

Three theoretical models are commonly used to explain the causes of divorce: enduring dynamics, disillusionment, and emergent-distress. The enduring dynamics model places the blame for failed marriages on characteristics of the couples’ relationships continuing from their initial stages of attraction and engagement (Huston, Neihuis, & Smith, 2001). The disillusionment and emergent-distress models suggest that newlyweds’ “idealistic notions become more realistic over time,” resulting in a decline in positivity (disillusionment) or an increase in negativity (emergent-distress) (Kurdeck, 2002, p. 4-5).

Huston et al. (2001) and Kurdeck (2002) assessed the appropriateness of these three models in explaining marital dissolution over time. Huston et al. found that disillusionment explains divorce, while enduring dynamics from the beginning of the relationship predict the early timing of divorce or the continuing level of “marital happiness” a couple may experience. Their study cited important differences in the patterns of change in early versus later-divorcing couples. The “early exiters” (divorced after two-six years) showed larger decreases in positive and larger increases in negative appraisals of marriage over the first two years than did couples who remained married. “Delayed-action divorcers” also experienced decreases in positive aspects of marriage during their newlywed periods, but without the increases in negative aspects; hence, the decision to divorce came after a longer period of time. Although Huston et al. therefore advise that “researchers need to expand their theoretical vision beyond the emergent-distress model, with its focus on conflict and negativity” (2001, p. 118), the differences between early and later divorcers could be the result of simple differences in the speed of disillusionment or of a combination of disillusionment and emergent-distress: The decline in positivity could create vulnerability in the couple to increases in negative emotion and behavior.

The findings of Kurdeck (2002) indicated just such a combination of models. To improve the representative status of previous studies, Kurdeck’s research sample included second marriages and also assessed couples annually over an eight-year period. These considerations strengthen his study because 46% of current newlyweds have been previously married, seven years is the median time for divorce, and statistics show “about 30% of divorces occurring within the first four years of marriage (Clark, 1995a)” (as cited in Kurdeck, 2002, p. 163). An additional strength of the study was that time before physical separation of the couple was measured, rather than the length of time before the conclusion of legal divorce proceedings (Kurdeck, 2002). Physical separation, to review, marks the second level of the divorce process, in which partners actually make social moves to distance themselves; before this step, the divorce is solely cognitive (Donohue, 1991).

In his study, Kurdeck assessed 522 couples by mail-in surveys of four personal marital satisfaction measures: love (sexual desire), like (friendship), trust (surety in the relationship), and psychological distress (p. 165-6). Each partner was instructed to complete his or her survey without consulting his or her spouse. The marital satisfaction variables were examined both as yearly ratings and as overall marriage trajectories for each couple in order to test the “fit” of each marriage dissolution model. Kurdeck’s results showed that both the disillusionment and the enduring dynamics models were required to explain the variability in timing of separation and continuing level of marital satisfaction; “both initial levels and change in how spouses appraise their partners (i.e., love, liking, and trust) are critical in understanding long-term marital outcomes” (2002, p. 177).

Taking a more exclusive stance, Gottman and Levenson (2002) conducted an in-depth investigation of only the enduring dynamics model. Research had indicated that divorces occur in two distinct time brackets, early or later, so the goal of this study was to assess two hypothetical models for the differences in timing of divorce. The first was an “ailing marriage” model in which placement on a continuum of marriage dissatisfaction predicts divorce (the lower the satisfaction, the sooner the divorce). The second model suggested that two different interaction characteristics predicted earlier or later divorce; couples with a “high level of expressiveness” divorce early, while couples with an “absence of affect” divorce later (Gottman & Levenson, 2002, p. 84).

The fourteen-year longitudinal study ran post hoc analyses on data from 79 Indiana couples collected since 1983. Upon entering the study, the mean marriage length for the couples was five years, and the sample contained a full range of “marital satisfaction” ratings, making it a fairly representative sample. Each couple first gave an oral account of the course of their relationship through courtship and marriage. The couples each then participated in three videotaped discussions, one on that day’s happenings, one on a topic upon which they typically disagreed, and one on a positive subject. During the discussions, bodily measures of heart rate, electrical conductance of the skin (the measure of arousal used by polygraph tests to indicate deceit), and overall movement were taken. At the four-year follow-up session, couples took assessments of relationship happiness and stability. For the next ten years, the researchers attained annual updates of whether or not the couples had divorced (Gottman & Levenson, 2002).

The videotaped disagreement was analyzed using the Ekman and Friesen Emotion Facial Expression Coding System (EMFACS), tallying the number of facial expressions during each couple’s discussion. Along with the daily events discussion, the disagreement discussion was analyzed for verbal and nonverbal displays of specific affects. The oral history interview was analyzed for characteristics indicative of the total negative or positive outlook of each relationship.

At the end of the 14-year period, 21 of the 79 couples had divorced, one set of divorces occurring after 8-9 years of marriage, and another set occurring after 15-16 years. The characteristics of the terminated marriages gave no significant support to the ailing marriage hypothesis regarding relationship satisfaction levels. Instead, communication patterns supported the second hypothesis, with specific patterns predicting earlier or later divorce. According to Gottman and Levenson, “The data may be suggesting two dysfunctional adaptations to marital issues, one that is dysregulated by escalating negativity, and the other that is dysregulated by having no affect” (2002, p. 92). These results support Gottman’s previous research on the patterns of behavior and communication that characterize failing marriages, including “criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stone-walling,” his “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” (1998, p. 184). Other traits he emphasized in a review of the literature are entrapping, extended sequences of negative displays and responses between spouses (negative affect reciprocity), interchanges in which the wife makes demands and the husband retreats, and a high ratio of negative to positive verbal and nonverbal behavior (Gottman, 1998, p. 85), all of which are correlated with levels of physical arousal, suggesting underlying biological processes are also at work in distressed couples.

Marriage research has tested many other hypothetical causes of divorce. For example, the issues about which couples argue have been thought to reflect divorce potential. To test this assumption, a recent study by Stanley, Markman, and Whitton (2002) hypothesized that couples who named finances as their number one topic of disagreement would not differ significantly from couples who listed other specific topics. The researchers interviewed 908 engaged, married, or cohabiting participants and found that money and children were the top two subjects of disagreement for first and second marriages, respectively. Disproving Stanley et al.’s conflict content hypothesis, couples who reported money as their top disagreement did experience fewer positive interchanges and did display a greater trend towards unhappiness that those who reported other subjects of conflict. Stanley et al. also hypothesized that commitment levels would predict divorce. This hypothesis was proven true for both males and females; higher commitment levels in married participants were correlated with fewer thoughts of divorce or of marriage as a restrictive arrangement.