They also include links to Bill Doherty's keynote address at last year's Smart Marriages conference, article by Hara Marano in NY Times on the Smart Marriages conference, etc. etc. Americans today are less likely to marry, less likely to be happy when they do and more likely to divorce. That, in essence, was the conclusion of a report released by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in July 1999. And those realities also help explain the growing interest among government officials in encouraging, and sometimes requiring, pre-marital counseling. Advocates of government-sanctioned marriage education classes argue that they save governments the costs associated with broken marriages.
Some people question the emerging policies, however.
While few opponents, if any, are willing to argue against the idea of teaching people how to stay happily married, they object to government taking on that responsibility. Couples who do not must wait three days to get married. The law also requires the state's high-school students to take a course on marriage and relationship skills. Oklahoma passed a similar law last year. In other states, individual schools and school districts are offering both brief seminars and semester-long classes in marriage preparation to their students.