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Marriage movement

B. S. Raghavan

IT IS only to be expected that in a country like the US where 43 per cent of the marriages end in divorce, 50 per cent of the couples cohabit before marriage, if they marry at all. According to the 2001 Census Bureau's report, less than 25 per cent of th e households can boast traditional families (father, mother and children living as a single unit). There should be a concerted drive to rehabilitate marriage as an institution sanctified by law and custom and as an imperative pre-requisite for a harmonio us, well-knit society. The objective is to realise the full meaning and significance of what has been called ``married bliss'' but which, more often than not, turns into married curse.

At the official level, some State governments have taken initiatives to give marriage education a fillip, putting unhappy couples through courses on keeping personal relationships on an even keel, developing communication skills that would cement, rather than rupture, relations, averting, if possible, and resolving, if it came to that, conflict situations, and managing anger and aggression. For instance, Oklahoma has set aside $10 million for a scheme aimed at cutting the divorce rate by a third over te n years. Arizona has allocated $5 million for training married and dating couples in ``marriage skills'', inculcating in them the spirit of mutual adjustment, accommodation and understanding.

In Florida, high school students are encouraged to undergo an orientation on the various aspects of inter-personal relationships between the two sexes as a way of preparing them for the fact that marriage is not all wooing and cooing, but requires hard, sustained efforts if it is to be kept going with the same type of love and emotional bonds as at the time of courting. The State's Fatherhood Commission has asked the cities and counties to adopt policies intended to save couples from `shot gun' marriage s, or make sure that they enter into normal weddings with a full awareness of the nitty-gritty of quotidian real married life.

These official efforts have themselves been the culmination of campaigns undertaken by voluntary organisations to put marriages in the US back on the rails. A group called Marriage Savers has been successful in persuading the clergy of 147 towns and citi es in Maryland State to make couples coming to them to tie the knot to subscribe to a covenant of love, fidelity and devotion, commitment to the marriage vows for life and dedication to the bringing up of their offspring in an atmosphere of peace, happin ess and harmony. As regards young couples, in general, Marriage Savers takes an undertaking, again through the good offices of the clergy, to receive four months of marriage mentoring and desist from cohabiting and having sex before they wed. It is signi ficant that there has been a spectacular drop in divorces in that State.

Likewise, a nationwide marriage movement has been launched by organisations such as the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education which joined recently for the fifth time in as many years to provide an occasion for married couples, clergy, mar riage counsellors, family therapists and interested persons of both sexes to participate in a Smart Marriages, Happy Families Convention. It was notable for the comprehensive attention paid to all the problems that arise in marriages with the help of wel l-brought out videotapes.

All these activities stem from one crucial finding: Divorces take an unacceptable toll in blighting the emotional growth of children and bringing the society itself to the verge of possibly irreversible decadence.