Alabama!! / State of Unions/ Pesky Stats/ Writing Articles/ Markman on NPR - 1/ 27/07

[Smartmarriages]

- ALABAMA PROGRESS: CMP AND MARRIAGE MONTH PROCLAMATION!
- STATE OF OUR UNIONS
- MAKING YOUR OWN MARRIAGE NEWS
- THOSE PESKY STATS
- MARKMAN ON NPR: ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
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- ALABAMA PROGRESS: CMP AND MARRIAGE MONTH PROCLAMATION!
 
> Diane,  
> In February 2006, Alabama Governor Bob Riley signed the Marriage Proclamation,
> designating Feb 7-14th as Marriage Week in the state. This year, however,
> we've done even better: he's designating February "Marriage Month". The
> Governor will hold a signing ceremony Feb 2 and many Mayors around the state
> will also sign in their cities. We are having an essay contest again this
> year, with 8th graders writing about "The best marriage I know", and the
> winners from each district will be invited to the Governor's Mansion, with
> their parents and teacher, to be recognized. Our Marriage Handbook, "Keys to a
> Healthy Marriage" has turned out be an invaluable resource. Those in the
> Coalition can download a pdf on our site http://www.AlabamaMarriage.org
> Or, directly at: 
> http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/H/HE-0829/HE-0829.pdf
> David Schramm 
> Auburn  

Go Bama, go!!  This is terrific.  Just as soon as the proclamation is posted
I'll get it to the list.  - diane

Counseling could be best wedding gift
The Huntsville Times
January 26, 2007
By KAY CAMPBELL

Local clergy hope covenant builds marriages that last

Ah, February: the month when thoughts can turn to romance, and roses and
chocolate precede a marriage proposal. Not so fast, say many local clergy -
75, in fact, have signed a Community Marriage Covenant promising not to
marry couples until they have had meaningful premarital counseling. The
ministers hope to effect in Madison County, where the divorce rate runs half
again as high as the national average, what has happened in other places
with the covenant: building marriages that last and reducing divorces up to
48 percent.

A public ceremony celebrating the covenant will be held next Friday at 1
p.m. on the east side of the County Courthouse downtown with Circuit Judge
Billy Bell presiding.

Mike and Harriet McManus, founders of Marriage Savers, will attend. The
McManuses will lead a workshop beginning next Friday evening to train mentor
couples in local congregations to counsel engaged couples, support married
couples and help troubleshoot a marriage on the brink.

"The minister cannot do it all," Mike McManus said Monday from his office.
"That's simply an unfair expectation. Most of them didn't learn anything
about this in seminary."

Halting 'disintegration'

The McManuses, based in Maryland, have spent the last 15 years building
their nationally respected training program to help congregations prepare,
enrich and restore the marriages of their members.

"I don't pretend to be objective," McManus said . "I think the
disintegration of marriage is the central domestic problem of our times."

McManus, who has been a correspondent for Time magazine and is the
syndicated author of "Ethics and Religion," can quickly reel off the cost of
singleness for both adults and children: reduced life span and increased
financial pressures for the adults and increased delinquency, teen pregnancy
and dropout rates for the children. Plus, the children of divorce grow up
less likely to marry and more likely to divorce if they do marry, he said.

"The failure of marriages puts an awful lot of people at risk," he said. In
the McManuses' home church, between 1992 and 2000, of the 288 couples who
were contemplating marriage, 19 percent backed out after premarital
counseling helped them confront serious differences, effectively preventing
marriages that would have failed, McManus said. Of those who did marry, 97
percent are still married - a success rate extraordinarily higher than the
50 percent national average.
    
Since most people in the U.S. marry in a house of faith, McManus said,
starting there is a great way to begin.

"What I find exciting is that these churches are going to do something about
this," McManus said of the congregations who have joined the Marriage
Covenant and are sending couples to the training. "They are not just sitting
back. Many people have never seen a good marriage up close. This is a great
gift - older couples have wisdom they can pass on. These are skills that can
be taught."

The covenant and training are sponsored by the Madison County Coalition for
Healthy Marriages. For information, contact coalition director Debbie Preece
at 519-7100 or preeced at comcast.net.

© 2007 The Huntsville Times

Mike and Harriet McManus will present a two-day preconference training
institute at the Denver Smart Marriages Conference plus two workshops.
Learn everything you need to know about creating a mentor-based Marriage
Policy in your community.  If you don't have one, it's the very first and
most effective thing you can do to begin to rebuild a marriage culture.

> 113 Two Days - Wednesday & Thursday, June 27, 28
> Creating Marriage-Saver Congregations & Community Marriage Policies
> Mike & Harriet McManus
> Learn how to reduce the divorce rate to near zero in your congregation and
> slash city divorce rates in half by training Mentor Couples who can put a
> "safety net" under every marriage as they prepare couples for life-long
> marriage, enrich existing marriages, save 90% of the troubled ones, help the
> separated to reconcile, and stepfamilies to be successful.  Learn how to
> create a Community Marriage Policy. $100 spouse discount. Also plan to attend
> the Marriage Savers Banquet, Wed night, June 27, featuring Nicky and Sila Lee:
> The Marriage Course - $37 per person.  Click for more information:
> http://www.smartmarriages.com/marriagesavers.html
> 
Registration available on-line in March.
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- STATE OF OUR UNIONS

Marriage Matters: State of our unions
By James and Audora Burg
Sturgis Journal (Michigan)
January 26, 2007 

In an annual ritual Tuesday night many televisions were tuned to the "State
of the Union" address to get a snapshot of the nation's health.

The marriage movement has its own report, "State of our Unions." It doesn't
usually get the press attention reserved for the president and fails to make
the six o'clock news, but it's definitely newsworthy.

Released in July, it's an annual compilation of marriage information by
researchers with the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in New
Jersey.

It's interesting stuff - if you're into statistics and trends about
marriage, as we are (you may remember Jim's confession some months ago that
he is a "research geek.")

The data quickly becomes interesting to the rest of us when you consider
that people in healthy marriages typically have better physical and mental
health and wealth-building capacity than unmarried (or unhealthily married)
individuals.

And the data on the well-being of children? Uncontrovertibly, children fare
better when their parents are married - to each other.

Speaking of children, the theme of this year's report was "Life without
children," how "the increasing portion of the life course spent without
children in the household...is changing the pattern of American adult
lives."

The researchers conclude, "It is hard enough to rear children in a society
that is organized to support that essential task. Consider how much more
difficult it becomes when a society is indifferent at best, and hostile, at
worst, to those who are caring for the next generation."

The report includes a 40-year look-back at trends on marriage, divorce,
cohabitation, loss of child centeredness, fragile families, and teen
attitudes about marriage and family.

We are curious what statistics would be specific to Sturgis or St. Joseph
County. How would our numbers on key social indicators - marriage, divorce,
cohabitation, etc. - compare to the national picture as detailed in the
"State of our Unions" report?

Then take it a step further. It could be fascinating on the local level to
line up our social indicators against our key economic indicators.

We wouldn't be surprised if there was a community-wide correlation between
the state of marriages and the state of the economy, the well-being of
children, and the overall health of our community, seen holistically.

You want the true picture of the "State of Sturgis" or "State of St. Joseph
County?" Look at the state of our unions.

Then realize the annual "State of our Unions" report is far from an
irrelevant academic exercise preserved in percentages. It's a blueprint for
societal change.

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- MAKING YOUR OWN MARRIAGE NEWS
This is a great article but the aspect I want to point out is using current
news of the day as take-off point for a marriage story.  Even though the
National Marriage Project's "State of Our Unions" report is released in
July, the Burgs were able to peg it to the President's State of the Union.
That's the key!  And, the piece below is another you could use to talk about
how well - or the lack of - collecting and reporting divorce/marriage data.
Like in California, you could write a commentary that we shouldn't be too
harsh on China, at least they collect and report the data. And, that gives
you a take-off point for why that's important. - diane

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- THOSE PESKY STATS

China admits goofing divorce statistics
EarthTimes.org 
27 Jan 2007 
News Category: Legal

Beijing, Jan 27 (DPA) China has halved its divorce rate after statisticians
admitted that they had counted the number of people and not the number of
divorces in the annual figure, state media said Friday.

The official divorce rate is likely to drop from 2.76 per 1,000 in 2005 to
about 1.3 per 1,000 last year, the official China Daily newspaper said.

The National Bureau of Statistics previously calculated the rate based on
the number of divorcees, making the level of divorce in China appear as high
as that in some Western nations.

New figures will be based on the number of divorces, in line with
international practice.

Xu Anqi, a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, had for
many years 'waged a lone battle to get the 'mistake' corrected,' the
newspaper said.

Angi had lobbied for the change since the 1990s but many government
officials 'thought the wrong calculation would not cause any trouble,' she
was quoted as saying.

The United Nations and international research institutes used the official
statistics, which 'caused a lot of misunderstanding,' she said.


- MARKMAN ON NPR: ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
January, 26, 2007

A piece "Playing Nice Isn't Always a Natural Instinct" that applies chimp
research to the conflict tactics of members of Congress concludes with this:

> It seems inevitable that humans will argue, so often the focus among people
> who study conflict is on how to argue more productively.
> 
> Howard J. Markman, director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at
> the University of Denver, says there are two kinds of conflict: destructive
> and constructive.
> 
> "It's the destructive conflict that kills marriages and kills bills," he says.
> 
> Markman has helped set-up an organization, called Love Your Relationship,
> aimed at helping couples learn to talk without fighting.
> 
> Markman thinks in the distant future, thousands of years from now, historians
> will look back and see that the civilizations that survived were those that
> learned to manage conflict well. In the meantime, Markman's wondering if he
> should offer his services to the new Congress.

To listen, or read the transcript:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7043100

Howard will present several times at the Denver Smart Marriages conference
including a three-day preconference PREP training.

> 101 Three Days - Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday, June 26, 27, 28
> The PREP Approach
> Howard Markman, PhD, Scott Stanley, PhD, Susan Blumberg, PhD, Natalie Jenkins
> Videos, role play and research shed light on both marital failure and success.
> Qualifies you to present the PREP program to help couples communicate, manage
> conflict, and nurture fun, friendship and intimacy in marriage.  $150 spouse
> discount if both spouses attend PREP.  Discount couples will receive two
> leader manuals but will share the instructor kit and book. Click for more
> information: http://www.smartmarriages.com/prep.html
> 
Register ONLINE in March.

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