Can a class encourage couples to marry?

Last November, Melinda Barton was ready to call it quits. She and her husband, Ben, were having difficulties less than a year after saying "I do," and she was leaning toward getting a divorce.

She thought they had tried everything to reduce conflict and make their marriage better. But after taking a course aimed at helping couples communicate more effectively, she's had a change of heart. Now she's confident that she and her husband, parents of a 9-month-old daughter, can work things out.

"We're so much happier," says Mrs. Barton, who lives in Yukon, a suburb of Oklahoma City. "We wouldn't have made it, I can almost guarantee you, without this course."

What the Bartons are learning could soon be spreading to cities and hamlets across the United States, as the White House plans to lobby Congress to approve a roughly $1.5 billion marriage-promotion package. The proposal hopes to reduce the welfare rolls by offering voluntary training to help people get and stay hitched. Not only would the institution of marriage be strengthened, the argument goes, but so would the prospects for children living in poverty.

While critics and proponents debate the plan's merits, grass-roots efforts and those by individual states to strengthen marriage have already sprung up across the country in the past five years, in part to help combat high divorce rates. National figures on divorce haven't been calculated in recent years, but the commonly held projection for new marriages is that about 1 in 2 will end in divorce.

Attendees give the courses a variety of grades - with some saying they come away with better problem-solving skills and the ability to resolve arguments more constructively. The feedback helps answer the $1.5 billion question - Do these courses make a difference in marriages? - and suggests that a national plan will need to adapt to the diversity that exists among welfare clients and couples in general.

Take Letisha Ulibarri of Flagstaff, Ariz. She knows how important marriage is. But even when she and her longtime boyfriend - both in their early 20s - were expecting a baby and receiving pressure from family members to marry, the couple resisted. After the birth of their son two years ago, they learned problem-solving techniques by attending a course called Couples Skills for Parents, sponsored by Strong Families Flagstaff.

"It helped both of us," says Ms. Ulibarri, explaining that her boyfriend was initially reluctant to attend. "I had to push him a little. But that class didn't make us rush. We both realize that it's still going to take a lot of time and work. We still may not get married."

That reluctance is echoed among some women on welfare. Their opinions about marriage vary from concern that it will reduce their benefits to a hesitation to leave their survival in the hands of a man. The national mood among this diverse group is perhaps reflected in a 2002 study conducted by researchers at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Among the Grand Rapids welfare recipients surveyed (most of whom were women),24 percent said marriage is not at all important to their situation. Twenty-six percent said that marriage was "absolutely essential" to their situation. The remaining 50 percent fell somewhere in the middle.

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