Participation in Research Study on Unemployment and Marriage

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Andrew Bland <abland3@indstate.edu>
Date: Wed, May 25, 2011 at 2:36 PM
Subject: Request to Announce Research Study on Unemployment and Marriage
To: "billcoffin68@gmail.com" <billcoffin68@gmail.com>


Hi Bill,

My name is Andrew Bland.  I am a doctoral candidate in the counseling psychology program at Indiana State University.  I am preparing dissertation research on the impact of unemployment on marital relationships in the current economy.

I am writing to request your assistance in recruiting participants for this research.  I am seeking as many as 500 married couples of diverse ethnic, occupational, and socio-economic backgrounds to complete an online questionnaire.

I am hoping that you can disseminate this link to people who you know who are married and unemployed:

           https://indstate.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_em8L1x2qzOoEbg8

Below is the text for an electronic announcement that I would appreciate your distributing via list-serves, online message boards, Facebook, e-mail, and in paper bulletins.  (You can just copy and paste.)  Please forward this message to anyone else who may be able to distribute the link and ask them to forward it as appropriate.  Upon request, I can also provide hard copies of paper flyers.

If you have any questions about this study, please contact me at abland3@indstate.edu or 812-872-2429.

Thank you,

Andrew Bland
Counseling Psychology Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Communication Disorders and Counseling, School, and Educational Psychology
Indiana State University
Terre Haute, IN 47809

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Recruitment Message

ARE YOU OR YOUR SPOUSE UNEMPLOYED?

Participants Needed!

I am seeking couples to complete a brief online questionnaire on how unemployment impacts marriages in the current economy.

Your participation and your responses will be kept confidential.
Interested in Participating?
Please go to https://indstate.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_em8L1x2qzOoEbg8
Have Questions?  Please contact Andrew Bland, M.A.: abland3@indstate.edu

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- http://trunk.ly/billcoffin/

Strengthening Families Summit June 8 & 9 The Family Strengthening Coalition

Strengthening Families Summit June 8 – 9
2 weeks, 4 days ago Posted in: Featured, Success Stories 0
Strengthening Families Summit June 8 - 9

The event, The Kansas Strengthening Families Summit, will take place Wednesday, June 8, on the campus of Newman University, 3100 McCormick, and Thursday, June 9 on the campus of Friends University, 2100 W. University, both in Wichita. The event will feature a keynote address by Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, and a variety of presentations, speakers and workshops designed to gather the latest research about and the most effective approaches to making Kansas families stronger and healthier.

The event will gather together national, regional and state experts, policy makers, community leaders, and social service practitioners and clinicians who are committed to taking informed action to help strengthen Kansas families. The summit is designed to collect the latest research on the social and economic impact of healthy family relationships, learn about current evidence-based practices to strengthen families, and build new connections for state and community collaboration.

“A large focus of the summit will be to capture as much of each participants’ comments throughout the two days as we can, and to assimilate this into priorities and an action plan to benefit families in Kansas,” said Mike Duxler, Ph.D., a summit organizer who is associate professor of social work at Newman University and program manager of Marriage for Keeps, Catholic Charities, Wichita. “We want to share our collective expertise in the area of marriage and family, with the dual purpose of applying research findings and identifying innovative and impactful strategies that have a proven track record.”

Duxler noted that Brownback, who will join with members of his cabinet to speak at the summit, has stated that two main goals of his administration are to turn the economy around and to strengthen families, and that one can’t be done without the other.

Duxler said as many as 400 people are expected to attend the summit, representing many professions, groups and fields of interest, including medical, faith, African-American, Hispanic, business, government, the legal system, education, and many others. The summit is funded entirely from in-kind support from universities and financial contributions from local businesses and non-profit groups.

On June 8, sessions and presentations by nationally and regionally known speakers will take place during the day at Newman University, while 10 to 12 critical conversation forums made up of topic-specific issues related to family strengthening will take place in the evening. The evening forums will be held on the campuses of Newman, Friends, Wichita State University and the Kansas University Medical Center-Wichita, with no more than 15 people per group led by a national leader in each respective area. On June 9, the summit will feature a variety of sessions and topic-specific workshops led by many summit participants who spoke June 8. All workshops will take place on the Friends University campus.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 7th, 2011 at 5:19 pm

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via thefamilystrengtheningcoalition.com

Married Couples Are No Longer a Majority, Census Finds

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Married Couples Are No Longer a Majority, Census Finds
WASHINGTON — Married couples have dropped below half of all American households for the first time, the Census Bureau says, a milestone in the evolution of the American family toward less traditional forms.
Married couples represented just 48 percent of American households in 2010, according to data being made public Thursday and analyzed by the Brookings Institution. This was slightly less than in 2000, but far below the 78 percent of households occupied by married couples in 1950.
What is more, just a fifth of households were traditional families — married couples with children — down from about a quarter a decade ago, and from 43 percent in 1950, as the iconic image of the American family continues to break apart.
In recent history, the marriage rate among Americans was at its highest in the 1950s, when the institution defined gender roles, family life and a person’s place in society. But as women moved into the work force, cohabitation lost its taboo label, and as society grew more secular, marriage lost some of its central authority.
“The days of Ozzie and Harriet have faded into the past,” said William Frey, the senior demographer at Brookings who analyzed the data. (The proportion of married couples slipped below half over the past decade, but was first reported as a precise count by the 2010 census.)
Today, traditional patterns have been turned upside down. Women with college degrees are now more likely to marry than those with just high school diplomas, the reverse of several decades ago, said June Carbone, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and co-author of “Red Families v. Blue Families.”
Rising income inequality has divided American society, making college-educated people less likely to marry those without college degrees. Members of that educated group have struck a new path: they marry later and stay married. In contrast, women with only a high school diploma are increasingly opting not to marry the fathers of their children, whose fortunes have declined along with the country’s economic opportunities.
“Employment instability depresses marriage rates,” Ms. Carbone said. Explaining the reasoning, she said, “I can support myself and the kid, but not myself, the kid, and him.”
W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, argues that the retreat from marriage is bad for society because it means less security for children. “It’s troubling because those kids are much more likely to be exposed to instability, complex family relations and poverty,” he said.
Married couples may be half of all households, but that does not mean that only half of Americans will ever be married. The overwhelming majority of Americans — with some exceptions — do eventually marry (though increasingly, working-class people do not stay married).
Households are changing in other ways. Americans are living longer than ever, so households now include a growing number of elderly singles, said Andrew J. Cherlin, a demographer at Johns Hopkins University. Other factors have been the large influx of immigrants, who tend to be single people in their 20s and 30s, and the growing number of young people who live together without being married.
There are 37 states, plus the District of Columbia, in which married couples make up fewer than 50 percent of all households, up from just 6 states in 2000, Mr. Frey said.
In all, 41 states showed declines in traditional households of married couples with children. In 2000, married couples with children were fewer than 20 percent of all households in just one state, plus the District of Columbia. Now they are fewer than a fifth in 31 states, Mr. Frey said.
The biggest change for the decade was the jump in households headed by women without husbands — up by 18 percent in the decade. The next largest rise was in households whose occupants were not a family — up by about 16 percent, Mr. Frey said.
 
 


Announcing the Coalition for Divorce Reform

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chris Gersten <updates@divorcereform.info>
Date: Mon, May 23, 2011 at 3:07 PM
Subject: Announcing the Coalition for Divorce Reform
To: Bill <billcoffin68@gmail.com>


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Dear Bill, 

In 2010, America’s non-marital birth-rate topped 40% for the first time in our history. Our divorce rate is near 50%. Over 60% of our children spend some time with a single parent during their childhood.

Yet there has been no national campaign to reform our divorce laws since no-fault became the law of the land in the 1970s. Until now. The Coalition for Divorce Reform has recently been founded to lower unnecessary divorce for parents with minor children.

We have just launched our new website, www.divorcereform.info, with a dozen respected bloggers to help organize support for the Parental Divorce Reduction Act which is posted on the site. Below you will find the introductions to our first nine blogs.

The Huffington Post has announced our website and new organization. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beverly-willett/the-most-pioneering-divor_b_863024.html

Please go to the site to learn more about the legislation we are proposing. We have political leadership in a dozen states committed to working for passage of this new Act which would require “divorce reduction education” for all couples with minor children before they could file for divorce.

We are looking for additional bloggers so if you are interested in blogging regularly or occasionally, please contact me directly at chrisgersten@gmail.com.

Please help us by posting on your Facebook and Twitter sites and email your email contacts about this new, all volunteer effort. We also have a Facebook page and would appreciate your clicking the “Like” button and letting your Facebook friends know about this as well. Here’s the link: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Coalition-For-Divorce-Reform/175335009188866

Here are excerpts from a few of the blogs. You may take these blogs and repost them or use them in any way you wish to educate people about the devastating impact divorce has on children and the need to reform our divorce laws.

The Impossible Dream: My Fight to Save My Marriage   BEVERLY WILLETT
…….But I don’t want a divorce,” I cried.  “I love my husband.”  Twenty years wasn’t something I wanted to chuck overnight.  Made of strong Southern female stock, I grew up believing the words “until death do us part” were non-negotiable.  Family was paramount, and divorce virtually unheard of.  “I don’t think there’s anything in life that can’t be forgiven,” my aunt said when I asked for her advice.  To me, that pretty much covered the whole territory.

Why We Must Reduce Divorce: A Custody Lawyer Looks at the Big Picture Through the Fog of Battle   JOHN CROUCH
……..I'm a divorce lawyer in Northern Virginia. Here's a sample of what I do for a living. I meet with a young lady who tells me, "My husband and I have decided we want a divorce. It will be uncontested, we're very friendly with each other, and the last thing we want to do is fight."

I ask "Have you agreed on the children's custody and visitation?" "Custody? We haven't talked about that”

Confessions of an Unabashed Marriage Saver, Michele Weiner-Davis

I have a confession; I am a psychotherapist who is an unabashed marriage saver.  But it wasn’t always that way.  When I began doing marital therapy in the late Seventies, I was a newlywed, twenty-something therapist charged with helping couples who were usually older than me and grappling with issues I had yet to face in my own life.

Denial: The Price of Our Children’s Best Interest, Kevin Senich

For too many children divorce defines childhood in America. For too many it is an experience shaping a horrific vision of marriage and parenting. For too many it is a nightmare from which they cannot awaken and for which their cries in the darkness go unheeded by their very own parents, parents whose denial, despite their love, compels them to ignore the cries of their own children. As parents, denial will not let us answer those cries of our children. One of us is not there; the other is not to blame. This can no longer pass for good parenting; no longer truly serve the best interest of our children.

A Challenge to protect 25 Million Years of Life, Seth Eisenberg

“In the next five years, five million American children will experience the break-up of their parents. As a nation, we could lose the promise and potential of 25 million years of life. Not because of war or famine, disease or natural disasters, but because of our own decisions. It doesn’t have to be that way.

A New Reason to Think Twice About Divorce, Cathy Meyer

According to a new book, The Longevity Project by Howard Friedman and Leslie Martin a parent’s divorce is a strong predictor of early death in adulthood. Think about it, your divorce can play a role in how long your child will live. And, according to the book, whether or not the divorce is high conflict or not makes no difference.

Children who experienced the divorce of their parents in childhood died about five years earlier, on average, than children who grew up in intact families. I can’t think of a better argument for the need for divorce reform.

Chris Gersten
Chairman
Coalition for Divorce Reform 

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