A Republican Congressman from Texas is hoping to reduce his state’s 50
percent divorce rate by making it mandatory for parents to undergo a marriage
counseling course before filing for divorce. The 10-hour course in “conflict management, communication skills, and forgiveness
skills" would cost $150 and could, according to Rep. Warren Chisum, spare “kids
the anxiety and emotional stress that come with a divorce by their parents.”
Apparently, Mr. Chisum has never met a battered woman. As (almost)
everyone knows, it takes a lot of courage and planning for the victims of domestic
violence to file divorce papers. Requiring them to first take an expensive
course in forgiveness could easily have disastrous consequences for both these
women and their children.
Even for well-off, nonviolent couples, this legislation
would be ineffective at best and harmful at worst. The fact is, it’s impossible
to make a blanket judgment on whether divorce is right or wrong for every
family. Research on the subject offers conflicting answers, with some psychologists
finding kids always fare better with married parents and others finding that
children are more balanced if their unhappily married parents divorce.
As the
child of divorce, I am the first to see the validity in encouraging parents to
commit to working through hard times. But I am also the first to see that a
10-hour forgiveness course is hardly enough of a remedy to keep couples
together.
Interestingly, this same Congressman also recently sponsored
a measure that supposedly encouraged marriages to last—by doubling marriage
license fees while offering a discount to couples who took a counseling course.
Apparently, Rep. Chisum believes that money is the only sure path to a happy union….
Photo: irishhealth.net
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