Poverty 1, Relationship Education 0

When unmarried women in low-income communities give birth, most are in an ongoing relationship with the child’s father, and the vast majority of these couples express a strong desire to raise their child together and eventually marry.   These instincts are on-target – children benefit socially, emotionally, and academically when raised by two parents who are in a loving, stable relationship.  Yet studies show that maintaining a healthy partnership is very difficult for many of these new parents.

Eight years ago, the US Administration on Children and Families launched the multimillion-dollar Building Strong Families (BSF) study to learn whether educational programs could strengthen the relationships of unmarried parents in low-income communities.  The largest experimental study of couples ever conducted, the BSF project involved 5103 unmarried expectant or new parent couples recruited from eight sites around the United States.  Half of these couples were offered classes on effective communication, problem solving, and parenting skills, while the other half were randomly assigned to a control group.

The first results from the BSF project were released in late May.  Fifteen months into the study, there were virtually no measurable differences between couples in the treatment and control groups.  Offering couples training in relationship and parenting skills had no discernable effects on how they communicated, their ability to manage disagreements, their rates of intimate partner violence, their ability to parent together, or the involvement of fathers in the lives of their children.  Moreover, the programs did not affect whether couples stayed together, lived together, or married.  One effect that did emerge:  African American couples who were offered the classes were more satisfied with their relationships than those who were not.  But this effect was small, it did not translate into higher marriage rates, and African American couples in the program group were still less happy 15 months later than all other couples assigned to the control group.

Some will be surprised to learn that offering education in relationship skills and parenting to low-income couples does not actually change their relationships or parenting.  Nevertheless, the results of this important project deserve close analysis, as they contain crucial lessons for future efforts aimed at improving the lives of families in low-income communities.

One lesson is that offering classes to couples provides no guarantee that couples will participate in them.  The BSF programs were intensive, requiring 30 to 42 hours of group meetings.  Across the eight sites, 45% of all couples assigned to receive instruction never attended any of these meetings.  In fact, only 17% of the program couples received at least 80% of the classes required by the program.  It may be that couples assigned to the program group were simply unable to find the hours required.  Lower-income couples generally have more demands on their time, and less flexible time, than higher-income couples, and the arrival of a baby adds to these challenges.  Asking couples who are already spread thin to take on new tasks, even to improve their relationships and parenting, may be unreasonable.  Ironically, the couples least likely to receive the classes were those whose relationships are known to be most vulnerable:  those who were not married or cohabiting, had less than a high school education, or were African American.

The BSF findings also call into question the basic idea that relationship skills training is a viable route for improving intimate relationships.  Emerging evidence suggests that the quality of couples’ intimate relationships is powerfully constrained by the environments in which couples live.  For example, even middle-class couples who are perfectly capable of effective communication when times are good lose that ability during periods of stress.  The way couples relate to each other may be less a skill that can be taught than a capacity that can be fostered or hindered by the circumstances that couples face.  Programs that emphasize relationship skill training are likely to be underestimating the power of these circumstances in the lives of couples, a glaring omission when aiming to improve the lives of children born to disadvantaged parents.

The intent behind BSF was right, but the interventions failed to produce the desired outcomes.  Alternative approaches to building strong families might devote the same resources toward improving living conditions in lower-income communities.  Whatever enables low-income families to manage their lives better should make it easier for them to manage their relationships as well.  With greater support, couples who are motivated to be together may find ways to do so, even in the absence of programs that target their relationships directly.

Further Reading:

Wood, R.G., McConnell, S., Moore, Q., & Hsueh, J. (2010). Strenghtening unmarried parents’ relationships: The early impacts of Building Strong Families.  Executive summary.  Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research.

****

This article was written by Benjamin Karney and Thomas Bradbury, Professors in the UCLA Department of Psychology and Co-Directors of the Relationship Institute at UCLA (on Twitter: @UCLA_RI).