For the past 14 years, the Federal government’s Healthy Marriage Initiative has sought to encourage marriage by helping couples develop relationship skills. While the program may have good intentions, in new research Jennifer M. Randles finds that many of the program’s components reinforce gender stereotypes about how men and women communicate and ignore how gender inequalities can influence power imbalances within relationships

Randles, Jennifer M.

LSE Research Online

10/17/2016Government marriage education programs do little to addressgender inequalitiesblogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2016/10/17/government-marriage-education-programs-do-little-to-address-gender-inequalities/For the past 14 years, the Federal government’s Healthy Marriage Initiative has sought toencourage marriage by helping couples develop relationship skills. While the program may havegood intentions, in new research Jennifer M. Randles finds that many of the program’scomponents reinforce gender stereotypes about how men and women communicate and ignorehow gender inequalities can influence power imbalances within relationships. Since 2002, federal and state governments in the United States have spent over $1 billion fromtheir welfare budgets on marriage and relationship education programs through the HealthyMarriage Initiative. This federal policy seeks to encourage marriage and the many social and economic benefits thegovernment claims are associated with it—less poverty and domestic violence, better physical and mental health,higher academic achievement—by helping couples develop relationship skills focused on improving communicationand resolving conflict. The federal agency in charge of overseeing healthy marriage funding recommends thatcurricula used in marriage education programs address how couples think about gender, specifically their beliefsabout differences between men and woman and what they expect spouses to do based on gender. Many marriageeducation curricula address these topics because gendered expectations often influence how couples experiencemarriage and what they commonly argue about, namely housework, childcare, and earning money.To understand how marriage education programs funded by the government teach about gender, communication,and power within marriage, I analyzed twenty curricula approved for use in healthy marriage programs andparticipated in a training session, workshop, or class for eighteen of these same curricula. I specifically wanted toknow if and how the curricula reinforced or challenged stereotypes of gender responsibilities—such as the beliefsthat women should be caretakers and men should be family breadwinners—and whether the programs taughtcouples about how social inequalities between women and men shape couples’ abilities to share power and familylabor.I found that some programs assumed men and women are fundamentally different in how they think, feel, andcommunicate, and recommended that couples use relationship skills to overcome these differences. For example,the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program, the most commonly used marriage education curriculum inhealthy marriage programs, noted that men are more likely to pull away when couples argue, while women want totalk through disagreements. In discussing how women and men often act differently in romantic relationships, thesecurricula did not acknowledge how men’s greater power outside marriage often gives them more power to withdrawfrom conflict within it. Many of the other programs similarly presumed that heterosexual relationship dilemmas andromantic conflict arise from oppositional gendered communication styles. Numerous trainers described women asintuitive feelers who problem-solve through continuous talk, in contrast to men as rational thinkers who prefer tohandle intimate challenges through direct action. Instructors explained that men tend to be emotionally stunted, lessknowledgeable about emotions, and more likely to appreciate skills-based communication strategies that do notentail talking ad nauseam about feelings. The implication was that women have less power to pursue change inmarriage, not because of institutionalized gender inequalities, but because they use the wrong talk-focusedapproach when initiating conversations about change.Other programs, however, taught couples to question the belief that men and women are fundamentally differentand to avoid gender stereotypes in expectations of how their spouses should think and act. The African AmericanRelationships, Marriages, and Families curricula emphasized that gender stereotypes can be harmful to1/3relationships and that couples should learn to be flexible when dividing work and care responsibilities. Anotherprogram, The Third Option, taught couples that they should “redefine the power struggle” within marriage byprioritizing cooperation over competition, as in a doubles game of tennis where spouses are on the same team.Other curricula even explicitly addressed patriarchy and problems that result from gendered power in relationships,namely domestic violence more commonly perpetrated by men against women. The Together We Can curriculumtaught participants how to differentiate between controlling, abusive relationships and safe relationships wherepartners share power. By focusing on fairness, equality, and shared power, many of the curricula provided limitedtools for challenging gender difference and power within marriage by teaching couples strategies that privilegeindividual abilities, inclinations, and availability regardless of gender. By offering couples a conceptual framework ofmarital behavior focused on fairness and equality, these programs also challenged the presumed naturalness andlegitimacy of male authority and privilege within heterosexual relationships.Nevertheless, the strategies for verbal negotiation taught by these programs did not address how genderinequalities—such as women’s overall lower pay—often create a power imbalance between husbands and wivestilted in favor of men, even when couples share egalitarian gender views. Gendered power exists in the broadersociety through unequal opportunities for women and men—or what sociologists call institutionalized genderinequalities—not just between two people in a couple. Government-sponsored marriage and relationship educationprograms therefore have contradictory implications for promoting greater gender equality. They encourage couplesto question how narrow ideas of gender “roles” shape marital conflict and unhappiness. Yet, they are funded withmoney diverted from welfare programs that primarily support single mothers and children, while they teach thatgender is a set of individual inclinations to be discussed and negotiated rather than a relationship of powerconnected to larger systems of inequality and state action.As a case of what I call interpersonal gender interventions, healthy marriage programs focus on teaching individualsthat gender equality primarily lies in developing and negotiating more egalitarian gender attitudes. Yet, interventionsthat promote ideas about equality will have limited utility if individuals learn to develop more egalitarian beliefs in theabsence of institutional changes that enable them to act on these values. Policies need to do more than helpcouples redefine the marital power struggle through relationship skills; they must promote equitable access toeducation, employment, and stable earnings that allow partners to create fair, safe, and loving relationships. Onlythen will partners have truly equal power to express, pursue, and achieve their interests within marriage and familyrelationships.2/3This research was part of a larger project for which I observed over 500 hours of healthy marriage classes andinterviewed low-income parents who took them to understand how relationship policy addresses inequality. Thebook based on this project, Proposing Prosperity: Marriage Education Policy and Inequality in America (ColumbiaUniversity Press, 2017), takes the reader inside the marriage education classroom to show how healthy marriageclasses teach about what I call skilled love as the essential link among marriage, financial stability, and upwardmobility. Central to this message is the assumption that upward economic mobility is teachable and that romanticcompetence, well-informed intimate choices, and marriage can help disadvantaged families overcome financialconstraints and deprivation.However, the low-income couples I interviewed believed that marriage represents the culmination of prosperity, nota means to attain it. Couples told me they could neither afford nor prioritize marriage until they were more financiallystable. Though parents frequently challenged instructors’ claims that marriage could help them, their children, andtheir finances, parents did find the classes useful. While couples’ economic challenges made it hard to practice theskills, participants experienced the classes as a rare opportunity to communicate free of the material constraints thatshaped their daily lives and romantic relationships. Hearing other low-income couples talk about their challengeswith love and money normalized parents’ intimate struggles and allowed them to better understand how relationshipconflict and unfulfilled hopes for marriage are shaped by poverty.This suggests that any policy with the goal of promoting family stability and equality must contend with the intimateinequalities that lead to curtailed commitments. It is misguided for policy to focus on teaching couples tocommunicate and budget more effectively without also addressing the outdated gender ideologies and growingeconomic disparities that can undermine their romantic relationships. A version of this piece originally appeared at the Gender & Society blog and is based on ‘Redefining the MaritalPower Struggle through Relationship Skills’, in Gender & Society. Readers may also be interested in JenniferRandles’ new book: Proposing Prosperity? Marriage Education Policy and Inequality in America.Featured image credit: Thomas Johansen (Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0)Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor ofthe London School of Economics. Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/2dVJj6n_______________________________About the authorJennifer M. Randles – California State UniversityJennifer M. Randles is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at California StateUniversity, Fresno. Her research explores how inequalities affect American family life and howpolicies address family-formation trends. CC BY-NC 3.0 2015 LSE USAPP3/3

Government marriage education programs do little to address gender inequalities

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