MarriageTweets

Many of society’s ills we rally around have root in family breakdown. Rather than just accept family breakdown as inevitable, research now is quite clear on what makes marriage succeed or fail and how educational approaches change the odds. Come share and explore how strengthening marriages and healthy relationships makes a difference in the well-being of children in cities across America. // The Idea Camp is a collaborative movement of idea-makers who facilitate free hybrid conferences and develop resources for people who desire to move ideas toward implementation.

via Washington Times: 1) Keep lines of communication open with your children. 2) Stay connected (without micromanaging), and, especially, keep Dad engaged. 3) Set good personal examples; model the behaviors you want to see. 4) Set reasonable rules and enforce them without being punitive. 5) Know where your children are and who their friends are. 6) Eat dinner together regularly. Sharing good food is certainly wonderful, but the “magic” in eating together stems from the undivided attention and “face time” it creates for everyone. 7) Cultivate a religious life as a family. 8) Stay connected to a larger community.

There is no consensus, but Anthony Centore, director of Thrive Boston Counseling and Psychotherapy, and other specialists do say that it’s possible to fall back in love with someone - with work. “A lot of people come in and they think they can never feel the way they did,’’ Centore said, “but after they start going through the [therapeutic] process, their skepticism starts going away.’’ The National Center for Health Statistics stopped collecting detailed data on divorce in 1996. But Andrew J. Cherlin, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and author of “The Marriage-Go-Round,’’ predicts that 40-to-50 percent of marriages will end in divorce, with second marriages slightly more likely to end than first marriages. // related: Remarriage

A new Iowa State study of nearly 1,000 low-income families in three major cities found that one in four children between the ages of 11 and 16 reported having sex, with their first sexual intercourse experience occurring at the average age of 12.77. The study was co-authored by Brenda Lohman, an associate professor of human development and family studies; and Tina Jordahl, a former ISU graduate student. Tina Jordahl, a former Iowa State HDFS and public policy graduate student who is now a market research specialist with Hospice of Central Iowa, collaborated with Lohman on the study. It analyzes data from the “Welfare, Children and Families: A Three-City Study” — a six-year longitudinal investigation of low-income families living in Boston, Chicago and San Antonio.

The World Congress of Families (WCF), meeting in Amsterdam, has been told that men in monogamous relationships hold the key to bolstering the traditional family unit. Family Research Council’s Dr. Pat Fagan spoke to the WCF gathering on the need to strengthen the role of the traditional family in society worldwide. He is promoting monogamous marriage between a man and a woman — rather than relationships of unmarried couples producing children, or same-sex relationships that cannot produce children. ”Let monogamous men get serious about protecting their children and their families, and obtaining justice for them,” he suggests. “The monogamous culture has never encountered this form of competition ever before in human history.”

An estimated 50 million women in Asia are at risk of contracting HIV from male partners who engage in risky sexual behaviours, says a new UNAIDS report released at the 9th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) in Bali, Indonesia, this week. The report, HIV Transmission in Intimate Partner Relationships in Asia, cites evidence from several Asian countries indicating that most women are acquiring HIV as a result of their partner’s sexual behaviour, not their own: of the 1.7 million women living with HIV in Asia, more than 90 percent are thought to have acquired the virus from their husbands or long-term boyfriends.

Statistics are showing a trend in broken military marriages. The Pentagon says divorce rates among enlisted soldiers and Marines increased to about 4% in 2008, a full percentage point jump from when the Iraq war began. The civilian rate is 3.5%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers tracking 226 Army marriages at Fort Campbell, Ky., last year, found that 6% ended in divorce and that nearly 12% of the couples either became divorced or separated, according to results provided to USA TODAY. Troops in combat who worry their marriages might be failing rose from one in four in 2005 to one in three in 2007, according to an Army study published last year that examined mental health issues plaguing combat troops. More than 250,000 active-duty soldiers are married.

New research shows that when married people become single again, whether by divorce or a spouse’s death, they experience much more than an emotional loss. Often they suffer a decline in physical health from which they never fully recover, even if they remarry. The findings, from a national study of 8,652 men and women in their 50s and early 60s, suggest that the physical stress of marital loss continues long after the emotional wounds have healed. While this does not mean that people should stay married at all costs, it does show that marital history is an important indicator of health, and that the newly single need to be especially vigilant about stress management and exercise, even if they remarry.