Abstract
Since 2000, U.S. federal and state governments have devoted almost $1 billion to marriage and relationship education (MRE) programs that teach the skills and attitudes associated with satisfying, long-term marriages. While advocates argue that MRE is an effective way to counter the negative social outcomes resulting from marital decline, critics contend that it is an ideological policy focused on reinstating the moral primacy of heterosexually married families. Drawing on two ethnographies we argue that this debate misses a key feature of MRE. These interventions simultaneously trace structural issues to individualistic tendencies and assume that social problems related to marriage demand individual-level solutions. We consider how this dilemma played out in social spaces where marriage and relationship education policy was discussed and implemented and how MRE advocates navigated this tension, specifically by articulating, codifying, and teaching new individualized norms for marital behavior. This qualitative case study illustrates a common tension in the framing of social problems in the U.S.: Structural issues are translated into individual deficiencies even when the problem is identified as individualism, thereby limiting the scope of perceived solutions.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Editor-In-Chief David Smilde for his insightful and generous feedback and Managing Editor Rebecca Hanson for her careful attention to the manuscript. Jennifer Randles’ research was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant no. 0903069) and the following at the University of California, Berkeley: Center for the Study of Social Change, Graduate Division, Institute for Governmental Studies, Center for Child and Youth Policy, and Sociology Department. Orit Avishai’s research was supported by Fordham University and the American Sociological Association.
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Randles, J., Avishai, O. Saving Marriage Culture “One Marriage at a Time”: Relationship Education and the Reinstitutionalization of Marriage in an Era of Individualism. Qual Sociol 41, 21–40 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-018-9375-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-018-9375-1