Colorado pre-marriage counseling proposal

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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/21/colorado-proposal-would-require-pre-marriage-education-classes/?intcmp=latestnews

Just saw this today. Personally, I'm in favor of it. I'm disturbed by the fact that marriage is treated so casually. Most people it seems have no clue what they're signing up for when they get married or lack a realistic model for how married life is conducted.

Marriage, in my view, is an arrangement for two people who love each other, support each other, start a family, and act towards mutual social and economic benefits--all among other things, of course, and I believe most marrieds fail to carefully define the exact structure of the relationship, hence the prevalence of marriages falling apart.

If love is ALL you have, you have NOTHING to base the relationship on. My rationale for this statement is "romantic love" is a momentary conceit, and if there is nothing else binding the arrangement for mutual benefit, it's nothing more than a worthless piece of paper.

And yet dissolutions of marriage turn into ugly courtroom theater in which nobody really wins and the couple has to HAS to abide by court rulings on things like property division, child custody, etc. All of which are tremendous inconveniences and hardships on the separating parties.

ALL of this can be avoided if marrieds have a clear understanding of what they're getting into and are HELD to their arrangement.

Moreover, and I speak from experience here, mentoring and support for newly-marrieds vaporizes after the wedding day, and things like in-laws and finances too often act as divisional forces that ultimately dissolve the partnership rather than sustaining or encouraging it to flourish. While I'm PROUD of my marriage/family arrangement, I consider myself EXTREMELY fortunate. Even we could have benefited from continuing support at times to help strengthen our union. In other words, when you get married, you have to learn for yourself what that means. Nobody tells you. Receiving outside support would enhance the relationship and avoid the complications that arise when the relationship would otherwise fall apart.

Normally I'd reserve this kind of thing for PPR. But, L&D, what say you? Mandatory marriage education classes…positive thing, or should the state stay the heck out of complex family dynamics? Or is state intervention into our love lives something we've sadly had coming, since we obviously can't handle such things ourselves, and we end up doing each other and our children more harm than good?

Thoughts?

Divorce has a large emotional and financial cost (especially when children are involved), and it seems prudent to attempt education to reduce the risk.

I think efforts to minimize the burden (financial and emotional) on the individuals and on the legal system would be best spent on creation of pre-nuptials. It seems like a waste to see both sides spend large amounts of money to "lawyer-up" to get the better share of the debt/asset allocation.

My first thought was that this smells of church interference. Sure enough, it's being sponsored by a fundie Christian outfit.

So, marriage is about raising children. What if you are gay? Trans? Beyond childbearing years? Sterile? Just don't want to have kids?

By this logic, you shouldn't get married, and I'm pretty sure there will be plenty of church counselling groups set up just to "help" such poor benighted souls. /sarcasm

I'm guessing such counselling will cost money (hey, this is the US, after all, land of free enterprise). What happens if you are poor?

If two (or, for all I care, more) consenting adults want to make a public statement of their love and commitment to each other by getting married, I see no reason to put barriers in the way.

If they are that worried about solo child rearing they might want to think about some proper sex education instead.

Still, this whole thread is OT, but I thought I should throw in a dissenting view. This looks more like it's about social control by a bunch of religious fundamentalists protecting their narrow view of the "sanctity of marriage" than anything else.

I agree, but there is a problem with pre-nups. Pre-nups impose conditions on the marriage contract. A lifetime contract can't have such conditions, otherwise there's no point in entering into it. For a marriage to be a permanent arrangement, the conditions for the relationship have to be worked out prior to the union. The RELATIONSHIP, not the marriage. The marriage is a mere formalization of the pre-existing relationship. If the conditions cannot be met in any permanent manner, it can easily be dissolved amicably before marriage and before the couple accumulates joint asset or brings children into the union.

The pre-nup spells out how a contract can be BROKEN. If you put those kinds of terms on it, what was the point of getting married? It's also hedging bets, and shows the partner that there is no lasting trust.

The only time I'd insist on a pre-nup would be if I were an elderly person marrying a younger lady and didn't want my new wife to have any claims to any assets I already promised to my children from a previous marriage. She shouldn't be entitled to the benefits that were built on a previous partnership, and I don't want to take a risk on a gold-digger at that age. Right now I got jack and have no problem with any of MY wealth being HER wealth, since we're in this together, "better or worse," and all that. That's not something I could share with someone should something tragic happen.

But you're right…pre-nups for a number people probably have become a necessary evil.

I'll just pretend this is PPR rather than L&D. It really is a PPR post although I understand your reasons for putting it here.

It's true people have no clue what they're signing up for. Whether or not they have a realistic model for how married life is conducted depends to a great extent on their parents. Parents will be the inevitabl;e model, for better or worse

Nevertheless I don't support this measure because I don't think it in any way gives people a clue for what they are signing up for nor do I think it will have any impact on divorce likelihood. My husband and I did pre-marriage classes via the Catholic Church. The Church puts their own spin on it but even if you stripped out all the religion, it is no preparation whatsoever. To their credit, they hit the hot topics and required us to discuss them with our intended spouse: how do you intend to discipline your children? do you intend for the wife to work after children? how will you handle money? They weren't giving us positions on those topics. They were putting couples in a position to see if there were any major values discrepancies between us that would cause problems later on. A couple that has wildly differing ideas on working mothers is bound for trouble after children are born.

Even so, it didn't prepare us. We were clueless going in despite these classes, despite good parental models on both sides. Yes we are still married. I don't credit the classes with that.




Yes. And the classes I attended did work hard to get couples to define the structure of the relationship by having us discuss hot topics that often cause problems (money,kids) to see if our values were aligned with each other. But even when values are aligned at the beginning, people still get divorced.



agreed



agreed



Classes can't give you a clear understanding. You get a slight hint of understanding by living together first but I doubt the State wants to mandate that. And even then it doesn't seem to help the divorce rate. Probably because kids are what really makes things different. No class can help with that. And what do you mean by HELD to their arrangement? Do you think divorces should be harder to get.


What mentoring and support is there prior? I got the classes (Pre Cana) from the Church but they hardly count as mentoring and support. They were just a hoop to jump through.

Exactly. Nobody tells you because they don't know. They know how their marriage works (our pre-cana was done by married couples) and they can tell you and hope that generalizing works, but each marriage is individual. How one couple's works has no bearings on another couple's.


Marriage counseling when there is trouble brewing would be support. But marriage counseling is not what they are proposing. They are proposing pre-marriage classes, as though classes could prepare you.



These classes could take the one good thing from pre-cana: having couples discuss hot topics to see if their values align- and it still wouldn't matter. Expecting a 10 hour pre-marriage class to prepare you for marriage is like expecting a 10 hour first aid class to prepare you for being a battle medic. There is just no way to really get it until you are actually in it.

I found it quite interesting that they thought the once-divorced should have a 20 hour class prior to second marriage and the twice divorced should have a 30 hour class before 3rd marriage. That shows me what a joke these classes would be: worse than pre-cana (which did have its' good points). You can make the argument that never-marrieds don't understand what they are getting into. You can't make that argument for the divorced people. Adding 10 hours of class time per marriage just makes it seem punitive rather than educational.

And what would they be teaching, anyway? I made the assumption that it would be pre-cana stripped of religion. But that's just my assumption. The article doesn't give even a hint.

I think it would just be a money-maker for somebody or other. It would have no effect whatsoever on the divorce rate.

edited to add: I second Niall's post. Pre-Cana in the Catholic Church was pretty much mostly about children. Major differences about how to raise children can be a problem and theioretically pre-cana would reveal those differences. But would a couple decide not to get married if there was some sort of pre-wedding class revelation about irreconciliable differences to come? Hmm. They might. But the handful of couples who would decide not to go through with it don't justify the classes. You could mandate that a couple fill out a questionnaire about child- rearing to find that out (but don't, that wasn't a serious suggestion). But a class implies that values will be transmitted. The Pre-Cana certainly did attempt to transmit values to us, mainly about "accpeting whatever children God sends you". They are a Church. It's their job. But the State, not so much.

And then there is the matter of couples who aren't going to have kids. How about mandating they live together first? Living together teaches you how to live with the other person in every way except child rearing. (Not a serious suggestion, but if the goal is to show people what it's like to be married, living together comes closer to that goal than classes.)