Ottawa author, psychologist and relationship researcher Dr. Sue Johnson is on a mission: she wants the federal government to put an effort into improving marriages.

Reports on the state of our unions are numerous.

The Vanier Institute of the Family, which conducts research on the changing nature of the Canadian Family, reported last year that a Canadian's risk of divorcing by their 30th anniversary now stands at 38 per cent, a drop since the 1999s. The average age at divorce in Canada is 44 for men and 41 for women.

Other studies point out that happy marriages are good for health, for productivity and for the economy. For example, relationship distress adversely distresses human immune and hormonal systems, Ohio State University psychologist Janice Kiecolt-Glaser reported after she took blood samples from newlyweds at odds with one another.

Other studies have shown that both men and women with high blood pressure and heart disease fared better if they were in loving partnerships.

Johnson, the head of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute and a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Ottawa, argues that Canada needs a national institution to co-ordinate strategies to build strong marriages.

"There is little support for the most basic unit in society. We don't have an active government policy for an institution that thinks about how to strengthen marriages," she says. "I'm not sure we have to throw millions at it. But you need a national commitment and a central organization."

It's different elsewhere, Johnson points out.

For example, the California Healthy Marriages Coalition, funded by a $11.8-million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides relationship skills and marriage education classes.

The coalition estimates that California pays $4.8 billion for the costs of family fragmentation, ranging from ranging from welfare costs to increased health care and high school dropouts.

In Washington state, a course for low-income couples called "Bringing Baby Home" focuses on how having a baby can shift the dynamics of a relationship. Another U.S. program called "Marriage Savers" matches mentor couples with a young pair to demonstrate how a healthy relationship works.

In a 2006 statement, President Barack Obama said research "shows that marriage education workshops can make a real difference in helping married couples stay together and in encouraging unmarried couples who are living together to form a more lasting bond." Expanding access to these kinds of services is "something everyone can agree on," he added.

This June, Obama announced the creation of the President's Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative and said he would ask Congress to move on his $500-million budget request for a Fatherhood, Marriage and Families Innovation Fund.

Johnson has developed relationship programs for the U.S. military for soldiers returning after deployment. Corporations have asked her to produce courses for employees because workers who are happy in their relationships are more engaged, stable and creative.

Fifteen years ago, Johnson would have said it's impossible to define, scientifically, how to support marriages. "But there has been a lot of research into adult love and bonding since then."

You think people are not by nature monogamous? Johnson doesn't agree, but when she expressed this opinion a few weeks ago when she was a guest on the CBC's Steven and Chris show, there was a collective gasp.

"When a marriage doesn't work, the people in that relationship often get married again. If we're not monogamous, then we're psychotic," says Johnson.

She has collected her 25 years of research into the marriage bond in a book called Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for Lifetime of Love. It is not how much a couple disagree, it's how they disagree that determines a couple's chances for sticking together, she says.

"You need to teach people things to make a difference. Men like our stuff. It's scientific, it's logical and it doesn't blame them."

Anne-Marie Ambert, a professor of sociology at York University and author of the text Changing Families: Relationships in Context, says the well-being of both adults and children is better served in stable marriages.

"Children develop more happily, become better citizens, do better in employment and education when they live in two-parent families," Ambert says. "I could care less if people get married or live together. But I am a researcher and an educator and the facts agree."

But she argues that if we want to strengthen conjugal bonds as a society, we first need to attack poverty, which prevents people getting married in the first place and is one of the most significant risk factors for divorce once they are married.

Ambert says children should learn as early as elementary school about how to become part of a happy couple -- how to empathize and how to be sensitive -- and they should start learning about relationships before they learn about sex. That requires that teachers be trained and be brave, because there is the risk of offending people. "The earlier the better," she says.

Clarence Lochhead, the executive director of the Vanier Institute of the Family, says Johnson's idea is interesting, but he hesitates to endorse it.

"It would be a good and healthy thing. But one would have to be careful about framing the need for such an agency and make sure that it's inclusive," he says.

The notion of family has proved be a fluid thing. Rather than "marriage," Lochhead prefers to use the term "relationship of care that involves commitment over time."

Even young people aspire to marriage and say they want to spend their lives with a single person, but that is not the reality for many Canadians, he says.

"We gave up on the idea of promoting a version of the ideal family and concentrate on the lived reality."

Johnson says her idea is not about only heterosexual couples, or people in legal marriages, or even about keeping unhappy people together.

She opposes the punitive approach to divorcing couples. In the U.S., for example, there is a movement afoot to repeal no-fault divorce.

"We always reach for a stick and not a carrot," she says. "We need more choices, including working on your marriage."

HOLD ME TIGHT

What: An eight-week relationship education program that is being offered for the first time in Ottawa

Where and when: Hopewell Public School, 17 Hopewell Ave., Thursdays from Sept. 23 to Nov. 11, 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Cost: $600 per couple plus GST

Information: 613-722-5122 or www.holdmetight.net



Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/Ministry+Happy+Marriages/3509754/story.html#ixzz0zdonQ7tR