In the last two years, Oklahoma has turned itself into a petri dish for an array of social programs aimed at getting people married and keeping them that way. Most Oklahomans welcome the help. Conservative and God-fearing, the state has the second highest divorce rate in the nation. Many blame the decline of holy matrimony for high levels of child poverty and unemployment. So in the spring of ‘00, when Gov. Frank Keating proposed using surplus welfare money to cut the divorce rate, he was hailed by some social critics and policymakers as a visionary. Other states, including Arizona, Maryland, Florida and Wisconsin, soon kicked off similar programs. Last month the Bush administration proposed setting aside $100 million in federal welfare funds for state-run programs that support marriage.
Oklahoma provides a preview of how that money might be spent. A few months after Keating made his proposal, the state hired a pair of “marriage ambassadors,” two evangelical-Christian marriage counselors and authors named Les and Leslie Parrott, and paid them $250,000 a year to give “relationship rallies” on campuses around the state, meet with ministers and set up a research project. Last September the state spent $16,000 flying in pro-marriage speakers from around the country for a two-day conference. It also began training counselors and educators to offer a workshop called Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP), a kind of drivers’ ed for people who want to get and stay wedded. The 12-hour program tries to teach couples how to talk and fight more effectively. Last month the state began offering PREP in schools and community centers. The programs are open to the public, but the state encourages welfare recipients to take them by tying attendance to their monthly benefits. “What’s happening in Oklahoma is a very interesting and thoughtful approach to supporting marriage,” says Dr. Wade Horn, now Bush’s assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, who served as an adviser on the Oklahoma project. “I’ll be interested to see the results.”
Results, however, are hard to come by. Just who is being helped by the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative seems to depend on whom you ask. Some critics call it social engineering and complain that the government has no business mediating between a husband and a wife. Others worry about having Christian evangelists administer public programs–no matter how secular their approach–and say local clergy can do the job free. “Everyone’s for stronger marriages,” says Oklahoma state Sen. Kevin Easley. “But we’re taking money from poor people and wasting it on a bunch of back-patting, feel-good stuff.” Social scientists say there is scant evidence to show that PREP slows divorce rates at all. And some, like eminent marriage researcher John Gott-man, calls PREP a poor substitute for meaningful couples therapy. “A large percentage of people who come to these programs are dealing with violence, trauma, extramarital affairs and depression,” says Gottman. “For them, PREP can be damaging.”
Back in Caddo County, the PREP instructor uses an overhead projector to review the patterns in relationships–such as escalation, avoidance, invalidation–that can ignite arguments. During class participation the lone married couple in the group, Marcus and Dinah Kaulaity, take turns holding a yellow-and-white card known as “the floor.” They discuss, without arguing, the issue of Marcus’s forgetting to bring his cup into the kitchen. Afterward the Kaulaitys, happily married for 15 years, pronounce the class “informative.” Meichelle Jackson isn’t so sure. She wants to learn how to have a stable relationship, but conflict-resolution techniques, she says, don’t stand a chance when your boyfriend’s holding a 12-gauge under your chin. Maybe it would work for the “right people,” she says wistfully. But not with any of the men she’s known so far.
