Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

The federal government has recently taken an unprecedented role in actively promoting marriage through social policies to address family instability and poverty in America. In 1996, Congress overhauled welfare policy to encourage work and marriage as routes to economic self-sufficiency for poor American families. This policy focus eventually led to the creation of the federal Healthy Marriage Initiative, a program that primarily funds relationship skills classes to promote marriage. Using ethnographic data from a community-based marriage education program for poor parents funded through a healthy marriage grant, I analyze how government-sponsored relationships skills classes intended to promote marriage tailor their messages for poor families. In doing so, this study addresses a broader sociological question: how does policy co-opt and transform ideas about love, family, and interpersonal commitment in the service of a particular political agenda? Moreover, how do parents accept, contest, and transform these ideologies on the ground when such ideas come up against the lived experience of families trying to create and maintain love while raising children in poverty? Ultimately, without addressing the structural issues that undermine poor couples’ aspirations to marry, relationship education frames healthy marriage as an emotional and economic partnership, one in which communication, conflict resolution, and financial management skills can be a social and psychological bulwark against the stresses of parenting in poverty.