Authors: Rebecca Cobb and Ron Rogge
Date and Location: November 2006; Chicago, IL
Summary: To investigate whether premarital education and characteristics of premarital education in a community sample of newlywed couples predicted marital trajectories over 27 months. Method: Newlywed couples (N = 183) completed measures of marital satisfaction nine times over 27 months, and prior to marriage they provided information about premarital education and demographic, personal, and relationship risk factors for marital distress. Results: Growth curve analyses indicated that wives who received premarital education had steeper declines in marital satisfaction (b = 1.34) compared to women who did not receive premarital education (b = .45, t(171) = - 2.12, p < .05, effect size r = .16), and this effect was independent of multiple known risk factors for the development of marital distress. For husbands, greater cost of premarital education and for wives, greater number of hours of premarital education was related to less steep declines in marital satisfaction. Conclusions: Participation in premarital education may lack benefit at best, and may be harmful at worst to newlywed couples. A possible explanation is that the quality of premarital education available to couples is generally poor and could be greatly improved by inclusion of empirically based relationship information and skills training that is known to lead to stronger marriages.