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- Title
Tension between institutional and individual views of marriage.
- Authors
Amato, Paul R.
- Abstract
This article discusses the institutional and individual views of marriage. Marriage has become a major focus of social policy. During the last decade, three states namely Louisiana, Arizona, and Arkansas, implemented covenant marriage, a form of marriage in which spouses vow to seek counseling if their marriages are in trouble and to refrain from seeking no-fault divorces. Oklahoma established the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative and trained hundreds of individuals to provide free premarital education to people planning to marry. Other states incorporated relationship skills and conflict-resolution courses into high school curricula, distributed information on marriage to newlyweds, and funded public education campaigns to promote the value of marriage. The U.S. Congress reacted to this decision by passing the Defense of Marriage Act, which recognized marriage exclusively as a union of one man and one woman. The debate between family scholars who adopt a marital decline perspective and those who adopt a marital resilience perspective is a useful starting point in understanding the current status of marriage.
- Subjects
MARRIAGE; INTERPERSONAL relations; NO-fault divorce; MARRIED people; SOCIAL marketing; SOCIAL policy; U.S. states
- Publication
Journal of Marriage & Family, 2004, Vol 66, Issue 4, p959
- ISSN
0022-2445
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.0022-2445.2004.00065.x