In particular, Bumpass adds, "The literature that Popenoe and Whitehead cite in support of their point doesn't support it whatsoever -- in fact, the key article they cite reaches the opposite conclusion." (For the record, that report -- "Premarital Cohabitation and Subsequent Marital Dissolution: A Matter of Self-Selection?" by Lillard, Brien and Waite -- appeared in Demography magazine in 1995.)

Popenoe and Whitehead say the report demonstrates that "even when this selection effect is carefully controlled statistically, a negative effect of cohabitation on later marriage stability still remains." However, Bumpass notes that the Lillard study actually states, "Correction for selectivity completely eliminates the effect of prior cohabitation on marital dissolution." In other words, if they handed in their paper to sociology 101, Popenoe and Whitehead would flunk.

"Most of this [report by the National Marriage Project] is ideology," says Schwartz. "It is speechmaking that appeals to people's hopes rather than any scientific research." Bumpass goes further, saying, "Moral advocacy is important, but it must not misrepresent science. In general, Popenoe is a well-respected professional. He has written some very useful articles and books. He has just let his zeal in this matter carry him away."

The Oklahoma Marriage Policy relies, almost exclusively, on ideological literature. The only impartial document is the CDC report on divorce rates. The rest of the supporting literature is published by Marriage Savers, the National Marriage Project, the Council on Families in America, the Heritage Foundation and the National Fatherhood Initiative -- all of them funded in part by the arch-conservative Scaife Family Foundation.

All told, the Scaife Family Foundation paid $400,000 to these five organizations in 1998. According to McManus in his 1998 annual report, Scaife saved Marriage Savers from the brink of dissolution with its first grant.

The Scaife Family Foundation's founder, Richard Mellon Scaife, is a well-known Pittsburgh philanthropist who has given over $340 million to conservative organizations. These contributions include $330,000 to an organization that investigated Vince Foster's suicide, as well as a grant for the academic chair that Kenneth Starr had counted on taking at Pepperdine University when the Whitewater investigation ended.

What does this have to do with the Oklahoma Marriage Policy? The Scaife Foundation's contributions, taken together, leave the Oklahoma governor's office open to the appearance that its policy can be bought -- especially when one notes that R.M. Scaife of Pittsburgh is listed as having made the maximum personal contribution of $5,000 to Oklahoma Gov. Keating's last campaign. (Campaign contribution information was not available on Gov. Huckabee.)

Surely, some of the five organizations in question on the Oklahoma Marriage Policy's bibliography will be able to point out liberal as well as conservative contributors, but the cluster of Scaife-supported authors on a government policy gives the impression that Keating and his team are either unconcerned with maintaining even the appearance of impartiality -- or woefully ignorant of research on marriage and relationships as a field of study.

When asked about the absence of non-ideological guidance on the Oklahoma Marriage Policy, its author, Jerry Reiger, says, "We are hoping for as broad an impact -- and input -- as we can find. It's not a matter of exclusion so much as not being aware." But who should make an effort to become aware of marital outcomes research, if not the author of a policy aimed at cutting divorce?

In the Oklahoma Marriage Policy, Reiger and Keating use the aforementioned ideological documents to lend currency to their program, yet they have not bothered to notice that there are several professional, peer-reviewed journals prominently featured in the footnotes of those very articles. What would it have taken Reiger to buy the latest copy of Sociology or the Journal on Marriage and the Family? (The answer: $19.)

Sociologists have agreed for some time that the older and better-educated that a bride and groom are when they marry, the less chance they will divorce. Unfortunately, none of the marriage advocates funneling their efforts into Oklahoma or Arkansas public policy addresses either the age of the couples or their education. Instead, they substitute "marriage education" for higher education, as if a preparatory course in marriage can substitute for one in nursing, engineering or HTML programming.

"Notice the timing," says professor Tom Bradbury of UCLA, who has spent a lifetime studying the efficacy of marital interventions like therapy and workshops. "Has the scientific community come out en masse to ask Congress to back its consensus [on preventing divorce]? No."

The "marriage movement" is being fueled by organizations with specific social agendas (like the Scaife Family Foundation, Marriage Savers, the Heritage Foundation, the National Marriage Project and the National Fatherhood Initiative) as well as the entrepreneurs they promote, who've formed "marriage education" programs to profit from people's (justifiable) fear of divorce.

Nevertheless, says Bradbury, "If these untried programs are funded, and if, or rather when, they fail, it's the scientific community which will suffer because the bad research being used to back entrepreneurial claims will have eroded legislative and public confidence in the future effort to prevent divorce."

It turns out that divorce rates in Oklahoma and Arkansas have been high for years, as they have been throughout the South. The CDC last sounded the alarm on this issue in 1995. On the first page of its most recent report, CDC researchers note that the disparity between North and South "has been persistent but narrowing over time."

Somehow, when asked about the CDC's findings, Jerry Reiger, Oklahoma's Cabinet secretary for health and human services and author of the Oklahoma Marriage Policy, and Chris Pyle, Arkansas director of family policy, knew nothing of the historical North-South divorce disparity, nor of its decline -- despite the fact that both use the CDC report in their policies. Perhaps they didn't read it after all.

Simply put, this key element of the CDC's report means that if every state south of the Mason-Dixon line did nothing about divorce over the next 10 years, their divorce rates will probably continue to decline as the baby boomers age. Or more cynically, Govs. Keating and Huckabee can initiate any program they want and still take credit for the sweep of history.

In all the sociological literature, there is no magic bullet for marital strife. There is some very promising work, especially that of John Gottman, psychology professor at the University of Washington, whom entrepreneurs like those hired in Oklahoma seem to crib at every opportunity. But marital interventions have a short half-life. Depending on whose study you cite, couples that undertake marital therapy and any number of marital workshops have the same divorce rates as the rest of us.

Clearly, no one has the answer, but the race to solve marital woes should not become divorced from reality. Certainly we have more important issues -- poverty, child abuse, homelessness -- to deal with.

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