Three words that have historically stricken fear into the hearts of liberals fearing right-wing "family-values" conspiracies: Healthy Marriage Initiative. Last fall, CMCA received a grant award of nearly $500,000 per year for the next five years as part of the Head Start Healthy Marriage Initiative. While I was ecstatic to receive that kind of funding, I was a little nervous about the implication that we might become a dating service, wedding chapel, or spiritual counselor . . . none of which fit with our new Strategic Commitments. As it turns out however, what we are really talking about is supporting healthy relationships to benefit children. I attended a meeting today to start forming a statewide healthy marriage (relationship) initiative in Missouri with Dr. David Schramm. Among the fascinating information we got, I learned that "intervention research demonstrates that parent-child relationship quality and child behaviors were improved more by "Couples Education" than by "Parent Education" (Cowan & Cowan). That certainly puts an interesting twist on our efforts to work with Parents As Teachers and our own Head Start home visiting model. One could go many different directions with research related to healthy relationships but we also heard about one I had never considered. We know that unhealthy relationships between the adults in a child's life can lead to negative effects like maltreatment, depression, unhealthy stress levels, physical illness, and economic hardship but it also effects a child's quality and quantity of sleep. Why does that matter? A child's sleep patterns is directly connected to their cognitive performance, academic achievement, physical health, body mass index, and psychological adjustment! This information blew my mind. Dr. Schramm, in his remarks, indicated that marital agression in a child's life is a factor in childhood obesity. That may seem like a stretch, but when you consider the list of effects we already knew about crises, violence, and aggression in the home (maltreatment, depression, unhealthy stress levels, physical illness, and economic hardship), these factors line up with causes of obesity. When the parents of children, married or not, do the right things for their kids, they are greatly enhancing that child's ability to be successful. I am proud that we are diving into this arena with our partners at the University of Missouri. Following are the benefits we expect for healthy relationships among the following groups:
Adults: lower stress levels, better healthy habits and practices, better mental health, better physical health, greater financial well-being.
Children: improved school performance, decreased emotional/behavioral problems, decreased substance abuse, criminal activity and risky sexual behavior.
Workplace: Better employees, lower absenteeism, greater work commitment, greater job stability, higher levels of productivity.
Families and Communities: more involved fathers, better parenting, financial stability, homeowners, volunteers in communities, fewer risky behaviors/criminality.
I suspect I have another blog posting or two on this subject. What are your thoughts?
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2 comments:
When I first heard about the Healthy Marriage Initiative I had one response - turn and run the other way, fast! I was absolutely convinced that this was indeed a part of a larger right-wing conspiracy to impose someones idea of morality on our culture, and that was against nearly everything I held dear about living in this country. Life sometimes has a strange way of making you look the very thing you fear the most straight in the eye. Through a strange twist of fate or whatever you want to call it, I was presented with the possibility of working with this frightening monster. I set about reading everything I could find about relationship education. To be perfectly honest, most of it did little to calm my fears. I came to terms with "the monster" by framing it as an anti-poverty issue, which on many levels it is. Eliminating poverty is something I had a passion for, and with my reframing the idea of working with the monster became slightly (and I do mean slightly) more palatable. I knew that CMCA did not possess those far right-wing ideas that strike fear in my heart, and I was very releaved to get to know our partners at the University of Missouri and find that they did not hold those views either. So, we set about making a program that would provide relationship education to Head Start eligible families. I had to wrestle in my mind with "the monster" in my mind at every turn, and although I do not want to speak for the rest of the team, I suspect that "the monster" was fighting with all of us. This padt weekend was the kick-off event for our Healthy Marriage Initiative work. We call our program Connecting for Children. I felt a great deal of apprehension as the time for our first group of partcipants to arrive grew closer. As they arrived, it was obvious that they, too, were apprehensive. Then something began to happen. It was subtle at first, but it grew over the 16 hours we spent together. The monster began to retreat in the face of positive change that was taking place. The couples who were there began to find new ways to talk with each other about what they want for their children. Relationships between the participants formed to help support the change that was taking place. And in the end, I felt like I had slain that horrible monster from my mind for good. I would love to tell you more about this because now I am enthused, committed, and honored to be a part of this thing called relationship education. If any of you feel like you need help to fight the monster that may be in your head around the Healthy Marriage Initiative, give me a call. I have some weapons for the fight!
Darin, Congratulations on your grant. It's federal $$ and I have know doubt you'll use it well to improve the lives of families in mid-MO. However, some of both your and Robyn's language (& I know you don't have control over your poster's comments) take the tone of 'the lady doth protest...' when it comes to people's concerns about the publicly-stated agenda of the current administration to introduce THEIR faith's beliefs about family relationships. While it's both reassuring to know that you will have sufficient local autonomy over the $$$ to support our community's ideas about what constitutes healthy families and that you know that our values are not consistent with the Bush administration when it comes to respecting the values and beliefs of others, it is a little disingenuous to deny the Bush administration's religious agenda of which plenty of real evidence exists documenting its priority of supporting a specific religion's definition of 'family' and 'family structure'. It almost seems like both your posts were more a strategic opportunity to ridicule and vilify as conspiracy theorists any who disagree with the current federal administration's agenda. This attitude is unfortunate and inaccurate. I think you'll find that everyone is thrilled to have federal resources in the community to support safe households and, further, that no one in the community doubts your ability or intention to deliver the resources to families in the most effective way possible, including being respectful of their religious, cultural, and/or social beliefs. With a little luck, in a few months we'll have both state and federal administrations that will support families without presupposing their structure or attempting to influence their beliefs. Until then, we're lucky to have CMCA making the resources work here. Empirically Yours, TGR
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