The Effects of Relationship Education in Low‐Income Couples: A Meta‐Analysis of Randomized‐Controlled Evaluation Studies
| Published date | 01 February 2019 |
| Author | Andreas Beelmann,Louisa S. Arnold |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12325 |
| Date | 01 February 2019 |
L S. A A B Friedrich Schiller University
The Effects of Relationship Education in
Low-Income Couples: A Meta-Analysis of
Randomized-Controlled Evaluation Studies
Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of
relationship education programs in low-income
couples.
Background: Relationship education programs
have been developed in response to family struc-
ture changes over the past fewdecades that have
placed low-income couples, in particular,at risk.
These programs are designed to teach effec-
tive communication and problem-solving skills,
which are important resources for the preven-
tion of divorce, single parenthood, and absent
fathers, and to navigate complex stepfamily con-
stellations.
Method: A systematic literature search for
studies evaluating relationship education within
a randomized-controlled design in low-income
couples was conducted, resulting in a set of 16
eligible research reports (providing information
about 48 independent studies). Weighted mean
effects were calculated, and moderators of
effectiveness were examined in meta-analyses of
variance and metaregressions.
Results: Analyses revealed a small but sta-
tistically signicant mean effect of d+=0.10
(SE =0.03), which doubled when program
attendance rates exceeded 50%. Effects were
generally higher in less disadvantaged samples
Department of Psychology, Friedrich-Schiller-University,
Jena, Germany (louisa.arnold@uni-jena.de)
Key Words: couple/marital/romantic relationships, family
policy, low-income, meta-analysis, parenthood, prevention,
program evaluation, relationshipeducation.
(i.e., those that were older, more educated,
higher-income, and more likely to be married).
Conclusion: Relationship education can have
small and stable effects, especially when reten-
tion rates are high. Offering programs at the
transition to parenthood is a promising strategy.
Implications: More needs to be done to reach
out to the most vulnerable couples and improve
participation and retention rates. The present
strategies are not sufcientlyeffective in recruit-
ing and retaining the targetpopulation. Combin-
ing relationship education with other programs
and services might be more feasible.
In recent decades, family structures in Western
industrialized countries have moved away from
the nuclear family model with two married
parents. This has led to new challenges for
parents, children, and welfare systems. Family
instability is increasing, more children have
single mothers and infrequent contact with their
fathers, and families are having to cope with
challenging stepfamily constellations (Cherlin,
2010; Kennedy & Bumpass, 2008; Lesthaeghe,
2010). This trend has been especially pro-
nounced in low-income couples, who are more
likely than middle-class families to experience
unstable partnerships, single parenthood, and
multipartner fertility (Goldstein & Kenney,
2001; Isen & Stevenson, 2010).
Growing up in such contexts is a risk factor
for successful development. For example, chil-
dren from single-parent households are more
22 Family Relations 68 (February 2019): 22–38
DOI:10.1111/fare.12325
Relationship Education in Low-Income Couples 23
likely to experience economic hardship, school
problems, or impairment of physical and mental
health compared with children growing up in
a home with two committed parents (Amato,
2005; Amato & Gilbreth, 1999; McLanahan &
Sandefur, 1994). The effects of family fragmen-
tation can be seen not only in child and parent
well-being; they also become evident as eco-
nomic costs in welfare systems (Scadi, 2008;
Schramm et al., 2013). Offering relationship
education (RE), especially to low-income par-
ents or couples at the transition to parenthood, is
one recent attempt to prevent the fragmentation
of these fragile family constellations or buffer
the multiple effects of the challenges they face.
Many programs have been established, and a
growing amount of research on their effective-
ness has emerged in recent years. By conducting
a thorough and rigorous meta-analysis of
the available research, the present study was
designed to investigate the effectivenessof these
programs with low-income couples.
D C
The demographic change in family structures
along with research on the importance of the
parental relationship and family stability for
child development provide the empirical base
for developing RE programs. The increase in
divorce, unmarried births, and absent father-
hood over the past decades led Cherlin (2004)
to proclaim that marriage and common concepts
of family had been deinstitutionalized. Cor-
responding to the family stress model (FSM),
which suggests that economic hardship is linked
to psychological stress and eventually rela-
tionship stress, disadvantaged couples who
are struggling with challenging economic cir-
cumstances are especially affected by these
demographic changes. In fact, the likelihood
of divorce for a woman is increased by factors
reecting her socioeconomic status, such as
marrying at a younger age, having a lower level
of education, and having children before or
within the rst 7 months of marriage (Bramlett
& Mosher, 2002; Martin, 2006; Smeeding,
Garnkel, & Mincy, 2011). Furthermore, child-
bearing to single parents and multipartner
fertility have become far more common in
low-income communities than in the middle
class (Amato & Maynard, 2007; Carlson &
Furstenberg, 2006). This leads to increasing
numbers of children growing up with absent
or nonresident fathers. Namely, one half of all
children in families with an income below the
national poverty line in the United States live
with their mothers but not with their fathers
(Sorensen, 2003). Many women in low-income
communities have children with their partners,
even when these partners show low aptitude for
long-term committed relationships due to nan-
cial instability, drug use, indelity, and crime
(Edin & Kefalas, 2005). It can be concluded
that the barriers to having a child in low-income
populations are lower than the barriers to stable
and healthy partner relationships. Providing
skills to promote the latter is a major goal in RE
programs.
P P P
Early intervention is considered the most
promising approach when aiming to compen-
sate for the effects of poverty (Aber, Morris, &
Raver, 2012; Reynolds, Rolnick, Englund, &
Temple, 2010). Until recently, when targeting
the critical life period of newborns and early
childhood, public policies have focused on
parenting rather than the couple relationship.
The latter has historically been regarded by both
couples and policymakers as a private matter
unsuitable for social intervention (Haskins &
Sawhill, 2009). During the past 2 decades,
however, there has been a shift in prevention
policy; RE has entered public agendas as a
preventive tool in family welfare programs.
Most prominently in the Decit Reduction
Act, which became law in 2006, the U.S.
Congress apportioned US$150 million per year
for marriage-strengthening activities with the
aim of improving the quality and stability of
marital and childbearing relationships. This,
in turn, was expected to enhance children’s
well-being and reduce dependence on welfare.
Similar efforts have been contemplated in the
United Kingdom (Clulow & Donaghy, 2010)
and Australia (Halford & Simons, 2005), but
the focus of initiatives in these two countries
focused primarily on parenting programs rather
than RE.
R E
Although there is no general theoretical foun-
dation, the idea of offering RE to low-income
couples comes from a perspective best described
by the FSM (see Conger, Conger, & Martin,
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