"We are now entering a new era--a Marriage Renaissance--fueled by powerful new research & understanding about how to make marriage work."
Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education
Under the kitchen sink in Wayne and Tamara's house there are three products which have been sold for decades. The dish detergent says NEW, the laundry soap says NEW AND IMPROVED, and the stain remover says GREAT NEW FORMULA.
Procter & Gamble knows that the word "new" sells products, especially products which have been around for years. So it is with the multibillion dollar relationship business.
Since the 1940s, popular magazines and books in the United States have offered a huge amount of psychological and counseling advice without statistical proof of any positive impact on the U.S. rate of divorce.
What do Wayne and Tamara Mitchell say about the "powerful new research" promoted by Diane Sollee and the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education? "New" is their way of running away from past claims. "New" is their way of selling a new generation on old claims.
Science requires that research prove itself by predicting future observations.
But the researchers on marriage have never--ever--been able to do this. They failed to predict the post-war baby boom, and the rise of divorce and teenage single pregnancy in the 1960s and 1970s. They failed to predict the current leveling off of the divorce rate, the increased age at which couples now marry, and the divergence in the divorce rate between affluent and poor couples.
