Mathematica and other experts working with the BSF team are helping agencies plan targeted healthy marriage initiatives for unwed couples who are about to or who have just had a baby. These guidelines will help interested sponsors design and deliver program services. In addition, the guidelines...

This report focuses on the role of partners and spouses in the decision-making processes of social service clients. Using survey data, direct observation of couple interactions, and physiological measurement, findings suggest that the decisions of individuals receiving public...

This issue brief, the first in a series from our Building Strong Families project, focuses on program design. The brief is based on a conceptual framework that identifies factors to consider in developing programs and services to strengthen relationships in unmarried parent families. The...

An implementation study of the Building Strong Families (BSF) programs indicates that many unmarried couples are interested in services to strengthen their relationships around the time of their child’s birth. More than 5,000 couples volunteered for the BSF study across eight states. Although...

Family Connections in Alabama (FCA), a 12-month project conducted in 2003, aimed to design, implement, and evaluate a program to provide family life education to low-income unmarried parents of young children. This report describes and develops lessons learned from FCA that are relevant for...

Building Strong Families (BSF) is a large-scale demonstration and rigorous evaluation of marriage and relationship education programs that has now enrolled more than 5,000 low-income, romantically involved, unmarried couples. At enrollment, all couples were expecting or recently had a child...

This new brief—the first in a series—profiles the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, a pioneering effort to support healthy marriage that began in 1999, before the current national focus on marriage education and support. Oklahoma's program is also the only statewide marriage initiative...