Missed Call/Quiet Out Here/Pastors Say/More Time with Children - 10/06

[Smartmarriages]

- WHAT NEXT? - IF YOU MISSED THE CALL LAST NIGHT
- QUIET ON THE MARRIAGE MONEY FRONT
- PROJECT SOS LANDS $2.2M FEDERAL GRANT
- MARRIAGES SOMETIMES NEED HELP
- PASTORS SAY LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX IN CHURCH
- MARRIED AND SINGLE PARENTS SPENDING MORE TIME WITH CHILDREN, STUDY FINDS

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- WHAT NEXT? -IF YOU MISSED THE CALL LAST NIGHT
> Diane, I missed the conference call last night and saw where it was recorded.
> (Now What? Next Steps Coaching Bridge). Would you share information on how I
> can access that information?
> Dan Diehl

You can listen to the recording of the Coffin, Stoica, Ortwein panel for the
next month, until November 17. To listen call 1-918-222-7201 Ext 359. There
is no charge other than your own local long distance charges. - diane

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- QUIET ON THE MARRIAGE MONEY FRONT
There is still little in the news about the grants. Here's one more (an
opinion piece) on the Weld County grant and a brief mention in the
Jacksonville business journal.  Please send any you see.

LISTINGS: Several of you have asked, and, NO, I'm not going to alert the
list each time a grant abstract or job listing is added to the website. You
just have to check from time to time.  Start at Smart Marriages home page,
click on Community Marriage Initiatives (5th item down on left under the
puzzle piece.)  No, they're in no particular order, I just post the most
recent ones at the top.  And, yes, it was my idea to highlight the marriage
education courses mentioned in each abstract, I did this in self defense as
have been getting many inquiries about whether I know which courses are
being used by which successful recipients.  I just refer people to the list:
http://www.smartmarriages.com/grant.recipients.html  - diane

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- PROJECT SOS LANDS $2.2M FEDERAL GRANT
The Business Journal of Jacksonville, Florida
October 16, 2006 

An abstinence and risk-reduction program aimed at teens in Northeast Florida
will get more than $2.2 million from the federal government over the next
five years

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services approved the grant for
Project SOS, which serves six Northeast Florida counties.

Project SOS is one of 13 organizations in the state to be funded by the
Department of Health and Human Services. The funding for Project SOS, as for
nine of the other organizations that received funding, is to promote healthy
marriages. Project SOS will get $454,332 a year for five years, and is the
only organization in Northeast Florida to receive one of the grants.

Last year, Project SOS lost a three-year federal grant that funded a program
aimed at reducing teen pregnancy and looked to the business community to
fill the funding gap.

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- MARRIAGES SOMETIMES NEED HELP
Tribune Opinion 
October 18, 2006
http://www.greeleytrib.com/article/20061018/TRIBEDIT/110180104

All those love songs from your parents' "Mellow Gold Hits from the 1970s"
albums or the so-called "chick flicks" with lots of rain, kissing and Celine
Dion ballads hide one thing: Marriage is hard.

To be fair, it's tough to write lyrics about the 578th time your spouse
forgot to take the laundry out of the dryer, and movies about fighting over
who will pick up the kids from soccer just don't work too well, unless it's
on "Lifetime," and then it turns out the kid has been kidnapped or
something.

Pop culture can't help us. In fact, it could make things worse, raising the
expectations society places on our unions. And that's why we're glad that
the Weld County Department of Public Health and Environment received a $5
million federal grant to focus on healthy marriages for low-income couples
beginning in January.

Divorce rates increased nearly 1 percent between 2000 and 2005 in Weld
County, according the U.S. Census Bureau, and almost half of all marriages
fail.

We believe it's especially important that low-income families get some help.
Not only is it possible that therapy, classes or workshops are too expensive
for them, the pressures low-income families face can't help but strain their
marriages. In fact, money always ranks in the top three of problems that
cause rifts in marriages when you read articles about divorce.

When marriages fail, society pays, as it leaves the door open for child
abuse, substance abuse or depression. That leaves it up to social programs,
the government or treatment centers to solve problems that couples in
healthy marriages could most likely work out themselves.

It would be far too easy for those couples to say they couldn't afford the
classes and let their problems fester until it may be too late. And now that
transportation and baby-sitting will be available as well through the grant,
it's our hope the Weld program gives them no easy way out.

Marriage, after all, is not easy, and that's something movies just won't
tackle, unless they're trying to win an Oscar.

###############################
- PASTORS SAY LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX IN CHURCH
ABCNews.com 
Oct. 17, 2006
 
Some Churches Are Encouraging People to Open Up About Sexuality

. . . .

Church leaders have traditionally left the topic of sex to the secular
world, but there's a burgeoning trend among some churches across the country
to address human sexuality.

In sermons and special seminars, pastors are tackling topics ranging from
how to keep passion in a long-term relationship to how to recover from porn
and sex addiction.

A new billboard in New Jersey advertising the Web site Mysexlifestinks.com
is not an ad for an online chat group, but for the Discovery Church, where
Pastor Randy Smith hosts weekly discussion groups.

"Sex was invented by God for us to use and to enjoy," Smith said.

Speaking From Experience

The Robertses, who have been married for 38 years, say God never intended
sex to be sinful. But for many couples, talking about sex is steeped in
shame.

They say it's time for that to change.

The Robertses experienced their share of troubles early in their own
marriage. Diane says she was very unsatisfied in the first five years of
their marriage. She believes the onus is on women to communicate their needs
to their husband.

"If you are not communicating, they don't know what your needs are," she
said.

Ted said he was addicted to pornography and alcohol, so he can speak to
troubled men from his own experience.

Diane says she counsels many women who find out their husbands are leading
secret lives -- having affairs or engaging in Internet sex.

She tells them to talk to their pastors.

"They say, 'Well, I could never do that,'" Diane said.

Not Mere Promotion of 'Bad' Behavior

Talking openly about sex is not without critics, who want the discussion out
of the church and back into the privacy of the bedroom.

Some worry that talking about sex will encourage underage and unmarried
couples to engage in it.

"Talking about sex doesn't promote it," Ted said. "We're involved in it on
an ongoing basis. We're sexual beings. But talking about it in a biblical
perspective, you can bring a healthy orientation."

Copyright © 2006 ABC News
#########################
- MARRIED AND SINGLE PARENTS SPENDING MORE TIME WITH CHILDREN, STUDY FINDS
The New York Times 
October 17, 2006
By ROBERT PEAR

(Changing Rhythms of American Family Life: mothers are spending at least as
much time with their children today as they did 40 years ago, and the amount
of child care and housework performed by fathers has sharply increased.)

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 ‹ Despite the surge of women into the work force,
mothers are spending at least as much time with their children today as they
did 40 years ago, and the amount of child care and housework performed by
fathers has sharply increased, researchers say in a new study, based on
analysis of thousands of personal diaries.

³We might have expected mothers to curtail the time spent caring for their
children, but they do not seem to have done so,² said one of the
researchers, Suzanne M. Bianchi, chairwoman of the department of sociology
at the University of Maryland. ³They certainly did curtail the time they
spent on housework.²

The researchers found that ³women still do twice as much housework and child
care as men² in two-parent families. But they said that total hours of work
by mothers and fathers were roughly equal, when they counted paid and unpaid
work.

Using this measure, the researchers found ³remarkable gender equality in
total workloads,² averaging nearly 65 hours a week.

The findings are set forth in a new book, ³Changing Rhythms of American
Family Life,² published by the Russell Sage Foundation and the American
Sociological Association. The research builds on work that Ms. Bianchi did
in 16 years as a demographer at the Census Bureau.

At first, the authors say, ³it seems reasonable to expect that parental
investment in child-rearing would have declined² since 1965, when 60 percent
of all children lived in families with a breadwinner father and a
stay-at-home mother. Only about 30 percent of children now live in such
families. With more mothers in paid jobs, many policy makers have assumed
that parents must have less time to interact with their children.

But, the researchers say, the conventional wisdom is not borne out by the
data they collected from families asked to account for their time. The
researchers found, to their surprise, that married and single parents spent
more time teaching, playing with and caring for their children than parents
did 40 years ago.

For the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/us/17kids.html?ex=1161748800&en=73e1f060a0
0bd064&ei=5070&emc=eta1

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