Grants/10 Great Dates/Gender Wars -8/04

[Smart Marriages ®]

subject: Grants/10 Great Dates/Gender Wars -8/04


- MANY THANKS TO GRANT REVIEW APPLICANTS
- 10 GREAT DATES IMPLEMENTATION
- MARRIAGE SAVERS RECEIVES GRANT
- THE GENDER WARS

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- MANY THANKS TO GRANT REVIEW APPLICANTS
> Many thanks to the many people who responded to our request for grant
> reviewers for "Demonstration Projects in Post Adoption Services and Marriage
> Education." If you have not already been contacted by someone from The Dixon
> Group (our contractor for the review) it means that we have confirmed enough
> people for the upcoming review. If you responded to our request and supplied
> a resume, your name will be added to our database of reviewers for future
> reference. Thank you, again, for your overwhelming support.
> Bill Coffin, HHS

######################

- 10 GREAT DATES IMPLEMENTATION
I clipped this email which is part of an ongoing discussion on the Catholic
Marriage list serve about teaching the Arp's 10 Great Dates program. It
offers nice detail and ideas for those trying to implement the program in a
congregation or community. - diane

> Hi, Charles,
> I am offering 10 Great Dates on the parish level. I am launching it on Sept.
> 11 (which is a date everyone remembers) after the 5:00 p.m. Mass.
> (Actual start time: 6:30 p.m.) Over 35 couples have signed up already and
> calls keep coming into the office. Payment is due by August 27.
>
> The nursery has employed 7 workers for the ten weeks (The workers are trained
> in CPR and the Ethics in Ministry course required by all persons who care for
> children and vulnerable adults in our diocese.) They are paid amounts varying
> from $7 - $8 per hour depending on experience. Our nursery is in compliance
> with state guidelines regarding caretaker-child ratios, based on ages of the
> children. The nursery is painted pristine white and the toys are
> disinfected after each nursery event. Because of this, people trust the
> nursery. The nursery for 10 Great Dates is filled and couples registering at
> this late date must get their own childcare. Some couples are going to share
> babysitting with another couple, dividing up the 10 dates.
>
> FEES:
> $15 for the program, including materials which include the workbook from
> Zondervan
> nursery payment in one block sum for the entire 10 weeks (non-refundable) as
> follows:
> $50 for one child,
> $65 for two
> $75 for three. Costs of babysitting in the area for a two hour segment by
> unskilled teens is over $20 for one child and higher for more than one child
> so our amount is very low per date and the couples view this as a deal. The
> administrative reality of trying to book workers and babysitting one week at
> a time was more than my office could handle and the lump payment makes it a
> firm commitment to the couples. They know up-front that the fee is
> non-refundable, even when they can't make the date.
>
> ADDITIONAL FEE:
> We are charging a fine to people who come later than 9:00 p.m. to pick up
> their children on the date night. Our nursery workers have to get home to
> sleep in order to be available for their Sunday Mass Nursery commitment.
>
> THE ACTUAL DATE:
> We are contacting local restaurants to provide two-for-one coupons for meals.
> The proprietors are very excited to help us and in fact three or more
> restaurants are having the coupons printed just for us. I have over 12
> restaurants helping so far and am trying more. You see, the total number of
> possible dinners at this point is 350 meals. I am also contacting lessor
> priced restaurants because 10 meals out could get to be very expensive.
> Additionally, the people have received a list of walking trails in the area
> and also the idea to create a "bed and breakfast" type atmosphere at home with
> candlelight dinner and champagne on ice at home to help lesson the cost of the
> actual dates.
>
> The Arps, the authors of the program, do warn that this program is not for
> troubled marriages, so I have printed up a sheet with referrals to diocesan
> approved Marriage and Family Counselors to hand out at the orientation night.
>
> I am shocked at the enthusiasm. People come up to me every day here at the
> church and make a point of telling me how very excited they are about
> beginning this program.
>
> Evaluations:
> I'll do an evaluation early (at week 2) and then one at the end of the
> program. I am going to keep attendance records in order to gauge sustain
> ability of the interest and perhaps tweak it for next season. This parish is
> a very young parish - we baptize 120 infants per year.
> Terri Moser
> Director of Family Life
> St. Catherine of Siena Parish
> Austin, Texas
> Terri.Moser at Stcatherine-austin.org

For more information about how to implement a 10 Great Dates Program, order
workshop tape #754-215 from 800-241-7785 and, as a bonus, you'll also learn
about the Arp's Second Half of Marriage Program. Both,
teach-right-out-of-the-box programs. - diane

> #754-215
> 10 Great Dates & Second Half of Marriage
> Claudia & David, MSW
> Teach two proven programs in your church and community. 10 Great Dates brings
> couples of all ages in the door and Second Half of Marriage helps empty
> nesters reinvent their relationship!

#####################
- MARRIAGE SAVERS RECEIVES GRANT

> Dear Diane,
> I am pleased to report that Marriage Savers has been awarded our first federal
> grant. It is a modest but very welcome one of $50,000 which will enable us to
> build capacity in two respects:
>
> 1. We will adapt our marriage preparation approach to couples having babies
> out of wedlock. We believe that unwed couples should be offered a premarital
> inventory to help them take an objective look at their relationship, and
> identify issues that need to be discussed to improve the quality of the
> relationship so that they might consider marriage. We will also teach couples
> skills of communication and conflict resolution, help them to prepare a
> budget, and deal with issues that may have arisen due to cohabitation, for
> example. This grant will enable us to work with the TANF (welfare) agnecy in
> Springfield, OH and with Head Start in Austin, two quite different public
> agencies which have access to unwed parents.
>
> We will train these public employees to bring up the "M" word and give couples
> a choice of how they'd like to enrich their relationship. If they are members
> of a church and would like to meet with an older couple at the church, we will
> train the Mentor Couples. If they are not religious, we would train the
> TANF/Head Start staff to administer trhe inventory and various exercises. We
> already have a secular version of our "Mentors' Guide to FOCCUS," which we
> call a "Facilitator's Guide to FOCCUS. It removes all Scripture and religious
> references. It is already being used in Richmond, VA and Springfield, OH.
>
> 2. The grant also provides partial funding to hire a Chief Operating Officer.
> His first task would be to help us apply for more major grants in the future.
> With private funds, he will also provide management to Marriage Savers.
>
> Today is also the day I wrote my 1,200th weekly Ethics & Religion column. It
> has been a wonderful day.
> Michael J. McManus
> Co-Founder, President
> Marriage Savers
> marriagesavers.org

##############################
- THE GENDER WARS
Denver Post
25 August 2004

The Gender Wars
By Al Knight

It's inconceivable that just 40 years ago a book titled "Taking Sex
Differences Seriously" would have been published.

In those days, nearly everyone assumed there were important sex
differences between men and women. Then along came the feminist
movement, and universities from sea to shining sea began offering
"women's studies" and everything changed.

But now Steven E. Rhoads, a professor of public policy at the University
of Virginia, has written what is both an entertaining and scholarly book
with the above title that remakes the case that sex differences do
matter.

Rhoads, it must be emphasized, does not deal in trivial matters and
certainly doesn't pick a side in the gender war. Rather, he has
assembled and analyzed dozens of academic studies that touch not only on
the differences between men and women but on important areas of public
policy. These include parenting, the reliance on day care, divorce,
career options for women, equal pay, education offerings, the effect of
fatherless homes, and even the adverse impact of Title IX, the federal
law that was supposed to provide equity between the sexes in college
sports.

In a lecture the other day carried by C-SPAN, Rhoads said he has no
intention of telling people how to live, but he didn't shy away from
reaching some clear conclusions about how the gender wars have impacted
the nation's culture and public policies.

One of the author's main concerns has to do with raising children, the
effect of day care, and the respective roles instinctively assumed by
mothers and fathers.

He discussed some of these obvious differences in a recent "Today" show
television appearance. "Fathers," he said, "tend to think that mothers
worry too much about the children. Guilty mothers always think they
could be, and thus should be, doing more with their kids. And moms,
since they are worriers and parent with more intensity, are taskmasters
with husbands about what needs doing and how it should be done. They
tend to make dad into an assistant mom. In two-career families, this
makes dad less than half in the grand scheme of things - he is only half
a provider and less than half a parent."

Fathers, he said, "frequently feel neglected by their wives, who they
think put their relationship with the kids ahead of their relationship
with their husband."

The impact of these differences can be profound once they are mixed with
other concerns like career options, day care and the division of labor
at home.

Rhoads is adamant on one point: He believes children are better off
generally if, in their early years, they can spend more time with their
mom. That means that in such cases, mothers must defer their career
ambitions. This, of course, runs counter to one of the main tenets of
the feminist movement: the notion that women can, and should, have it
all.

Rhoads also deals with the issue of whether "women have to work." He
debunks a familiar myth that has been endorsed by many men and women
alike, namely the belief that the nation's economy virtually requires
both parents to work. The author points out that a single wage earner
today, on average, makes 30 percent more in inflation-adjusted dollars
than was the case in the 1950s, when many moms stayed at home. What did
change over that period, he says, is consumer consumption patterns. Put
simply, couples today spend more on material goods than before. There
are more cars, bigger homes, etc. Many couples who opt to live more
simply are still able to live on a single income.

Feminists and others have been campaigning for years in favor of a
vastly expanded day-care program, but Rhoads cites a variety of research
that indicates this would not only be a mistake for children, but also
for their parents.

"Two-career families who put children in subsidized day care," he
writes, "apparently produce a near tripling of the odds that these
children will be disobedient and aggressive - hardly a trend the
government should support financially."

It would be much better, Rhoads argues, if government offered tax
benefits to couples where one parent stayed home.

It's hard to disagree with that conclusion, or with much else in this
valuable book.


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