Contact: Steve Nock, (804) 924-6519, [email protected]
COVENANT MARRIAGE IDEA RECEIVES STRONG SUPPORT, POLL SHOWS
As the holidays with their emphasis on families approach, a new poll shows that many people favor covenant marriages.
Two states to date have passed legislation that allows couples to choose a covenant marriage option that requires pre-marital counseling and stipulates conditions that make obtaining divorce more difficult. Louisiana enacted such a law in August 1997 and Arizona passed similar legislation in May.
According to a recent Gallup Poll of Louisiana residents, 63 percent believe that covenant marriages will strengthen family life; 58 percent agree that covenant marriages will be better for children, and 59 percent think covenant marriages will last longer.
The poll, commissioned by sociologists at Tulane University and the University of Virginia, also found that most Louisiana residents believe that readily available "no-fault" divorces have created a culture that destroys the values that make stable marriages. Nearly 70 percent of the respondents say that divorce is a "very serious problem," and 25 percent believe it is at least "somewhat serious."
"Louisiana's passage of covenant marriages appears to be changing people's attitudes toward marriage and divorce," said Steven L. Nock, a U.Va. sociology professor.
The Gallup Organization conducted the poll by interviewing 540 Louisiana residents over the phone between July and September. The poll, representing a random sample of all working telephone numbers in the state, has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
Nock, James Wright and Laura Sanchez, sociologists at Tulane, have received funding from the National Science Foundation to study Louisiana's divorce and marriage rates. They plan on following for five years couples who marry in the conventional way and couples who elect covenant marriages.
"We want to investigate what factors make more restrictive marriages attractive to people and how the quality of marriage may be affected by the state's new law," said Nock.
The overwhelming majority of Louisiana residents polled believe that couples rush into marriage and focus too much on the happiness they expect from marriage and not enough on the hard work required of a successful marriage.
Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed agreed that society would be better if divorces were harder to obtain, and 71 percent endorsed long waiting periods for divorce proceedings to give couples a chance to resolve their conflicts.
The overwhelming majority of respondents agreed that a major problem in society is the number of divorced men who don't pay child support.
Although three-quarters of the respondents said divorce is undesirable, most thought a bad marriage is worse. Just over 70 percent of those surveyed disagreed with the statement, "If a couple has children, they should stay married no matter what."
More than half of the respondents said that premarital counseling is important and that agreeing in advance to counseling if problems arose is very important. Nearly three-quarters felt is was very important that couples share the same religious values.
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