McCarthy | Home Visits | Fatherhood and Marriage | Bounces | Cohabitation - 9/27/07

[Smartmarriages]

- SEX, INTIMACY & AGING: BARRY MCCARTHY SEMINARS OCT 26 & 27TH
- ANOTHER PIECE OF THE PUZZLE: MARRIAGE EDUCATION HOME VISITATION
- MARRIAGE AND FATHERHOOD
- LISTSERV BOUNCES 
- NO FAULT AND COHABITATION HARMFUL TO FAMILIES

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- SEX, INTIMACY & AGING: BARRY MCCARTHY SEMINARS OCT 26 & 27TH

Barry McCarthy on Sexuality, Intimacy & Aging day-long seminar
Oct 26, 2007 San Francisco/Burlingame, California
Oct 27, 2007 Los Angeles, California
$169 per person - 6 hrs CE
Website: http://www.health-ed.com/
Phone: 800-839-4584


Barry's workshops at the Denver Smart Marriages conference both received
over-the-top ratings.  I highly recommend them if you work with couples at
any age/stage or if you're a couple at any age/stage. His step-by-step
guidance on how to help couples develop their own "sexual style" is
invaluable. In fact, just the concept ("that a couple develops an individual
sexual style") is a crucial paradigm - helps couples understand the task at
hand and break through a lot of hopelessness and pain.  - diane

> 757-407
> Married Sex for Men
> Michael Metz, PhD, Barry McCarthy, PhD
> Ten things men need to know to deal with the common problems ­ low desire,
> porn addiction, erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, etc. ­ to build a
> healthy, pleasurable sex life.
 
> 757-602
> Rekindling Desire
> Barry McCarthy, PhD
> One in five marriages is non-sexual, i.e., have sex less than 10 times a year.
> Specific exercises bridge the cycles of avoidance and self-consciousness and
> reestablish desire. Case illustrations.

Order as CDs or MP3 downloads at 800-241-7785 or at
http://www.iplaybacksmartmarriages.com
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- ANOTHER PIECE OF THE PUZZLE: MARRIAGE EDUCATION HOME VISITATION

Diane, One of our grant partners, St. Louis' Nurses for Newborns has been
awarded a ACF Home Visitation Healthy Marriage Grant.

Our St. Louis Healthy Marriage Coalition will provide Marriage Educators to
go into homes to provide healthy relationship education to the
parents of newborns.

Another piece of the Healthy Marriage Puzzle!

Bridget Brennan, SLHMC

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- MARRIAGE AND FATHERHOOD

Using 24/7 Dad in Healthy Marriage Initiatives
 
Pittsburgh is quickly becoming known for its well-funded, ground-breaking
Healthy Marriage Initiatives.  Two initiatives, The Marriage Works and
TWOgether Pittsburgh, are having a tremendous impact on families in the
5-county Pittsburgh region. Both initiatives are using the 12-session 24/7
Dad program to connect healthy fathering with healthy marriages. Each
Initiative has customized the 24/7 Dad program to fit their settings and
target populations.
 
The Marriage Works, a four-year demonstration project that serves the East
End, is focused on equipping churches to prepare couples for marriage;
enrich existing marriages; and restore troubled marriages both within their
congregations and in the community at large.

Participating couples attend eight, 3-hour weekly sessions together and then
split into male and female groups for sessions 9 and 10.  During the last
two sessions a ³safe zone² is created to help dads open up about issues as
they are taken through five sessions that cover: family of origin;
masculinity; handling & expressing emotions; discipline; rewards &
punishment; expectations; and child development.  In the last half of
session 10, couples come back together to work through the 24/7 Dad
Parenting Session. 
 
TWOgether Pittsburgh, a coalition of regional non-profits mobilized to
strengthen marriages in the 5-county greater Pittsburgh area, has made two
24/7 Dad options available to their facilitators.  The first is a 7-week
workshop series that begins with an introductory event for the whole family
followed by 6 sessions taken straight from the 24/7 Dad curriculum. At the
conclusion of each session, facilitators provide a discussion starter called
³Wife Talk² that encourages the men to ask their wives a question during the
coming week related to the session topic.  In sessions 5 and 6, couples work
together through sessions that include: discipline, rewards & punishment,
expectations, and child development.
 
The second option is to offer the 24/7 Dad program one weekend per month for
two months. Dads arrive Friday night and work through Sunday afternoon and
are able to cover the entire curriculum.
 
Both options are easily able to integrate the use of the 24/7 Dad assessment
tools, since all sessions are covered and in the same order as originally
designed.
 
You can e-mail community at fatherhood.org to request a copy of the Customized
Facilitator¹s Guide that will help you adapt the 24/7 Dad program for your
own particular setting. NFI staff is available for consultation throughout
the adaptation process. Simply email us at: community at fatherhood.org

A PROGRAM OVERVIEW: If you're interested in exploring the use of this
program in your setting, get a quick 90-min introduction/overview by
listening to the recording of the highly-rated 24/7 Dad workshop at the
Denver Smart Marriages Conference.   Order as a CD or MP3 download at
800-241-7785 or at http://www.iplaybacksmartmarriages.com

> #757-217
> 24/7 Dad ­ TOOB
> David Jones, CFLE
> Help men become involved, responsible, committed dads. Includes exercises,
> recruitment and implementation strategies for a variety of settings.
 
Additional Fatherhood and Marriage Curricula workshop recordings available
from the Denver conference, also highly rated sessions:

> 757-416
> 7 Secrets of Effective Fathers
> Carey Casey, DMin, Ron Nichols
> Help fathers become measurably more effective with this engaging program from
> the National Center for Fathering. Includes pre-post assessment tools.

> 757-609
> InsideOut Dad ­ TOOB
> Ken Gosnell, MDiv, MA
> This National Fatherhood Initiative program is being used across the country
> to help reunite inmates to their spouses and families to reduce recidivism.

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- LISTSERV BOUNCES 

> Diane, I keep failing to restore my subscription to the listserv after being
> out of town for a month and having too many e-mails bounce back to you. Please
> help!
>  
> Wendy Wiles Kase, JD, MSMFT
> Chicago, IL 60611

You have to resubscribe when you get automatically unsubscribed.  I think
it's set to unsubscribe names after three bounces.  I can't change the
settings.  I'm told you can fix this at your end by increasing the SIZE
setting on your mailbox.

It's easy to resubscribe.  Just go to http://www.smartmarriages.com and
click Subscribe/Unsubscribe in left column under E-Newsletter/Listserv.

I'm going to share this with the list because I receive more emails about
this than anything else.  Maybe some of you can take proactive action and
enlarge your mailboxes??  -diane

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- NO FAULT AND COHABITATION HARMFUL TO FAMILIES

No-fault divorce, cohabitation harmful to families
Renew America 
Bryan Fischer
September 27, 2007

I had the opportunity to speak earlier this week on behalf of the Idaho
Values Alliance in presenting testimony to the Legislative Family Task Force
chaired by Rep. Steven Thayne of Emmett.

Using statistics provided by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, I
pointed out that the divorce in Idaho, while about what it was in 1970, is
almost 40% higher than the national average. Also worrisome is the fact that
the marriage rate in Idaho is now 60% lower than it was just a generation
ago.

Since out-of-wedlock births in Idaho are at their highest totals in state
history, the clear implication is that increasing numbers of Idahoans are
cohabiting rather than entering into the solemn commitment of marriage. The
effective "divorce" rate, then, is likely to be substantially higher even
than the statistics indicate, since the break up of cohabiting couples does
not show up in divorce summaries.

Cohabiting unfortunately has become increasingly acceptable, due to the
sexual revolution and the rise of feminism, and there are now twelve times
as many cohabiting couples in America as there were in 1960.

Research confirms that cohabitation is harmful for adults, the children in
such homes, and for society in general. Cohabiting relationships are
notoriously unstable, as cohabiting couples break up at a much higher rate
than married couples, and cohabiting couples who eventually marry have a
divorce rate that is 46% higher than couples who do not live together before
marriage. Children pay a terrible price for the inherent instability
associated with these environments.

The risk of domestic violence is twice as high for women in cohabiting
relationships, who are nine times more likely to be killed by their partners
than women in marital relationships.

Children in cohabiting environments are at a much greater risk of both
physical and sexual abuse. In fact, the most unsafe environment for children
is one in which the mother is living with someone other than the child's
biological father, which is the case in the majority of cohabiting
households.

Further, cohabiting couples report lower levels of income, sexual
exclusivity and sexual satisfaction than married couples. The bottom line is
that, if we care about both Idaho's adults and Idaho's children, we will
support public policies that encourage marriage rather than cohabitation.

No-fault divorce, enacted in Idaho in 1970, has contributed to the
instability of the marriage relationship by making it possible for one
partner to unilaterally dissolve a marriage and break up a family, leaving
spouses with no legal protection for the bond they have created.

As Maggie Gallagher observed, marriage "has become less binding than the
average business deal. Marriage is one of the few contracts in which the law
explicitly protects the defaulting party at the expense of his or her
partner." No-fault divorce has contributed to a 25% increase in the rate of
divorce all by itself, and has perversely contributed to an increase in
cohabitation as adults have less and less confidence that a marriage
commitment will receive significant legal protection.

Reversing the trend toward cohabitation will require a cultural awakening
which reestablishes the view that personal happiness is a function of
high-trust and lasting relationships.

But public policy changes are certainly a key element. It is probably time
for Idaho legislators to revisit no-fault divorce, and perhaps replace it
with a "mutual consent" plank, in which a "no-fault" divorce can only be
granted if both parties agree to it, especially when minor children are
still in the home.

Mutual consent divorce would give some leverage and bargaining power to the
innocent spouse, and involves the least amount of government intrusion since
the couple would work out custody and financial issues before coming into
court.

It's worth noting that New York is the only state without no-fault divorce,
and one main reason is that every time it has been proposed, feminist groups
have fiercely opposed it. They recognize the exposure no-fault divorce
creates for women, especially those who have left the workforce to devote
their full energies to raising children. Women in such circumstances often
experience a precipitous drop in their standard of living, and no-fault
divorce leaves them sadly unprotected. We can, and should, do better for
Idaho families.

© Copyright 2007 by Bryan Fischer
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/fischer/070927

Bryan Fischer is the Executive Director of the Idaho Values Alliance, whose
mission is to make Idaho the friendliest place in the world to raise a
family. He has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy (from Stanford
University) and a graduate degree in theology.

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12th Annual Smart Marriages® Conference, Hilton San Francisco Hotel,
July 2 - 5, 2008  
Pre-Conference Training Institutes June 30-July 2
Post-Conference Training Institutes July 6

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