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Welcome to the PAIRS Blog!  PAIRS Foundation is one of the nation’s oldest and leading providers of relationship skills training. We invite you to share your comments and experiences with us! You can download a current brochure from this link.

Survey reveals seven in ten South Florida parents considering divorce

Seven in ten parents of school age children have discussed or considered separation of divorce. Marriage education classes that teach skills for improving communication and conflict resolution are making a difference.

Double-digit unemployment, the second highest foreclosure rate in the nation, and a host of other stressors are taking a toll on South Florida families. According to a recent survey of 493 parents of school age children, seven in ten were considering separation or divorce in 2009.

The survey conducted by the nonprofit PAIRS Foundation in Weston, Florida included 204 men and 289 women living in South Florida (Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties). Seventy one percent of respondents were Hispanic/Latino, 14 percent Black, and 13 percent White.  At the time of the survey, 85 percent were married, eight percent engaged or considering marriage, and three percent separated or considering separation. Six percent were expecting a child.

In response to the question, “How often do you discuss or have you considered divorce, separation, or terminating your relationship,” 30 percent responded “Never.”

After the survey, the group went through a nine-hour marriage education class to improve communication, emotional understanding, empathy, and conflict resolution.

Six months after the class, the percentage of respondents who reported never considering separation or divorce doubled to 60 percent.

Amanda Falciglia, PAIRS Foundation’s Research Director, said the results show that without  effective intervention, increasing numbers of children in South Florida are likely to grow up in single-parent homes, with a significant impact on schools, neighborhoods, and greater need for taxpayer funded social services.

“Although the results of the initial survey are concerning, it’s reassuring to know couples can learn to strengthen their marriages and provide greater security, stability and resources to their children,” Falciglia said.

In 2006, PAIRS Foundation was awarded a multi-year, multi-million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, to provide marriage education classes in South Florida. PAIRS CEO Seth Eisenberg said the federal grant has enabled the nonprofit to provide free and reduced cost classes to more than 5,000 people and conduct extensive research on the program’s impact. In the near future, he said, when the grant program ends, couples will have to personally foot the nearly $500 cost of the program.

“Even during times of stress, couples can learn to create and sustain joyful, loving relationships,” Eisenberg said.

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PAIRS Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is one of the nation’s oldest and leading providers of relationship skills training. A schedule of upcoming classes is available online at www.pairs.com.

Helping Parents Strengthen Marriages and Families

The percentage of couples with children who never consider ending their relationship more than doubled after nine hours of marriage education.

A survey of 593 parents participating in marriage education classes showed that prior to their training, just 25 percent said they never consider divorce, separation, or terminating their relationship. Six months after completing the nine hour PAIRS Essentials class, that number increased to over 50 percent. The results are further validation of the impact of marriage education on strengthening families. Learn more in the full report this coming week.

Helping build a foundation for dreams come true in Liberty City

PAIRS President Seth Eisenberg, right, with Miami-Dade County Public Schools Supervisor, Dr. Shirley Johnson, center, and Sharon Henley, Director of Education & Program Manager, Urban League Of Greater Miami, at the McDuffie Center in Liberty City.

Liberty City is a Florida community of just over 43,000 people living less than two miles from the 79^th Street entrance to Interstate I-95 and minutes from downtown Miami. With a median household income of $21,000, many of the residents – 95% of whom are Black — live in extreme poverty. The city is considered one of the most dangerous in the nation, with a crime rate more than double the national average. Single mothers head a third of all households, triple the rate of nearby Miami, with less than 10 percent of households including married couples with children.

Last Saturday, at the request of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, PAIRS Foundation began delivering relationship skills training classes to the parents of fourth and fifth graders at Liberty City Elementary School and continued yesterday with programs for the students themselves as well as the teachers, administrators, and staff who impact the youngsters’ lives each day. The weekly classes will continue over the next month.

In 15 years of delivering programs that empower fathers, marriages and families, I have never seen groups so enthusiastically embrace the opportunity for learning, growth, and discovery that I witnessed in this first week with the Liberty City participants.

Students, parents, and teachers alike quickly accepted our invitation to explore how the way we communicate under stress impacts the quality of our relationships, eagerly practicing new styles that promote confiding, effective listening, boost self-esteem, and establish a foundation of good will.

The adults fast recognized the price they paid in their own lives for not getting their needs for bonding (emotional openness and physical closeness) met and considered how the deprivation of basic biological needs had led to distress, distrust, a sense of dis-ease (which often evolves into disease), and unhappiness, along with the range of behaviors many turn to in the hope of masking the pain they feel as a result of loneliness, isolation and disconnection.

Together, we explored the relationship road map, considering how our relationships as fathers, couples, and families impact our ability to pursue cherished dreams and aspirations, whether to raise children, get and keep jobs, pursue academic goals, or achieve success in any other area of our lives. We talked about the impact of those decisions on children, how our relationships affect them, and the role our choices as adults have on their ability to grow up with the love, support and resources vitally important to realizing their own potential.

Over the weeks ahead, we’ll share powerful exercises and tools for enhancing communication, understanding emotions in ourselves and others, and dealing with differences and conflicts in ways that promote closeness, cooperation and understanding.

Our collective hope is that this experience will strengthen the families of Liberty City, help more fathers stay actively, responsibly engaged in the lives of their sons and daughters, and provide new opportunities for couples and families of all types to create lives in which their dreams for themselves and their children have a better chance of coming true.

Life lessons for a visionary team

Seth Eisenberg, left, with Sanford Rosenthal.

Each week the PAIRS team — including lead instructors, assistants, research, finance, and administrative staff – meets for one to two hours to review lessons learned, best practices, and assure we’re aligned and prepared for the challenges of the days ahead. The meetings regularly take place at the offices in Weston, from which we direct implementation of the South Florida grant project that has touched the lives of thousands of local men, women, teenagers and families since beginning in October 2006.

While schedules are often packed full with classes, previews, data analysis, reporting, and other time-sensitive activities, the meetings have been invaluable to building, sustaining, and motivating a team that is able to consistently meet the highest expectations of the people we serve. Although each member of our team makes significant contributions, organizationally, I believe our nearly 100% client satisfaction rate is closely related to the interactions that take place in our weekly meetings.

Every meeting follows the same format, modeled after an exercise taught in PAIRS classes that was originally developed by the late Virginia Satir, known as the Daily Temperature Reading:

• Appreciations: Team members take turns acknowledging each other for specific actions over the previous week that made a difference, creating an environment in which individual contributions are purposefully recognized and collectively appreciated.
• New Information: Team member take turns sharing details of tasks they are working on, from classes and previews planned, goals established, research reports, lessons learned, and challenges overcome, assuring the full team is up-to-date and aware of the interconnectedness of our collective efforts.
• Puzzles: Team members ask about anything they’re wondering about – and get answers — whether they’re seeking additional information on a planned activity, deeper understanding of an assigned task, details of an expectation or objectives, or general information about organizational issues.
• Concerns with Recommendations: Team members are invited to share concerns over issues or actions that could be getting in the way of our effectiveness, focusing on a specific situation, including, as appropriate, how they felt about the situation, and offering a specific recommendation for what we should do instead. Much of our growth and improvement as an organization over the past several years has emerged from the concerns and recommendations shared in weekly meetings.
• Wishes, Hopes, Dreams: Team members are invited to share whatever their hopes are for the week ahead, whether it’s personal or professional. Expressions are often related to shared goals for an upcoming class, the impact of our efforts, or for a new project we’ve taken on. Sometimes they’re connected to personal hopes for someone struggling with an illness, going on a trip, adjusting to a significant change in their life, or celebrating a special moment. Whatever they are, it’s an opportunity to stay connected to the individual and collective aspirations that are unique to each member of our team.

Recently, as a result of a concern shared at a previous meeting, we decided that one meeting a month would be created by any team member who volunteered to take it on and that the rest of us would join in enthusiastically, an exercise we call, “Follow the Leader.” Sanford Rosenthal, a social worker who has been actively involved with PAIRS for more than five years, quickly volunteered. He proposed we would meet at a location outside the office and that he would plan the rest without letting us know the details until we arrived.

Moments after I sat down around the long table with the other members of our team, Sanford said he was ready to begin. He reached into a bag to retrieve plastic glasses he personally prepared for all of us. They had all been altered so that we could either not see at all or see only glimmers of light and shapes through a very slight, narrow opening in the center. Then he turned off the lights in the room and began the meeting.

Sanford has been my friend for much of the past decade. From my first meeting with him, I knew he was blind. Yet until the moment that I placed the glasses on my head and sat back as he began the meeting with “Appreciations,” I never fully understood what it was like for him to sit at our meetings, classrooms, and many places in between without being able to see even a glimmer of light, facial expressions, or visibly take in the environment around us.

Led by Sanford, we continued through the steps of our regular agenda, experiencing a heightened awareness of sounds, intonations, and smells as the deprivation of our sight led to increased sensitivity of our other senses.

We completed the meeting more aware than ever of the unique experiences of others, in this case, our friend and colleague, Sanford. I suspect each of us were also more grateful than ever for the resources we have, our abilities, and empathy for those who have different abilities.

With Sanford’s permission, we eventually removed the glasses, all very aware that for our friend and many others, they could not.

With sour economy, men are investing more in family harmony

With a sour economy and difficult job market, more and more men are investing in their families.

For many South Florida families, the state of their unions is stronger than ever.

A sour economy, soaring healthcare costs, and difficult job market is leading increasing numbers of men to marriage education classes for tips and tools to bring greater harmony to their families, improve relationships with spouses and children, and strengthen their ability to weather financial challenges.

More than 5,000 men and women in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties recently participated in free classes offered by the nonprofit PAIRS Foundation as a result of a federal grant provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. A follow-up study of 400 men six months after the nine-hour class offers encouraging news for efforts to curb the rate of divorce and family breakdown.

• 95% reported improvement in communication with their partner;
• 93% reported improvement in regularly sharing appreciations;
• 92% reported improvement in their ability to resolve conflicts constructively;
• 84% reported improvement in their physical intimacy;
• 89% reported improvement in their ability to confide emotions;
• 94% reported improvement in their overall relationship.

Seth Eisenberg, President and CEO of PAIRS Foundation, said the program focuses on enhancing competencies in three areas:

1. Emotional literacy;
2. Confiding, listening and problem-solving skills for building and maintaining intimacy;
3. Practical knowledge, strategies and attitudes for sustaining positive marriage and family life.

“The goal is to enable couples to create relationships that both partners can live with joyfully,” Eisenberg said. “To sustain relationships based on love and intimacy, each partner must be able to identify his or her own feelings and needs, communicate them in such a way that they can get met, and integrate skills that lead to constructive conflict resolution based on empathy, good will and a shared relationship vision.”

“Marriage education classes offer a road map and practical tools to be successful,” Eisenberg added. “Research shows that for most couples, it’s far more effective than traditional counseling or marriage therapy, far less costly, and an inconsequential expense compared to the price and impact of divorce.”

Classes were delivered through Broward County YMCA, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, City of Fort Lauderdale Parks and Recreation Department, churches, and agencies that help men and women, including veterans, rebuild their lives after being homeless, such as Carrfour Supportive Housing. PAIRS Foundation recently began offering classes online as well.

“The most urgent challenges facing neighborhoods and communities nationwide can be traced directly to the impact of family breakdown,” Eisenberg said. “Children are healthier, happier and better able to achieve their potential when they have the active engagement of both their fathers and mothers and the resources that come from strong two-parent families,” he said. “We’re delighted to help their parents find the road map and tools to be successful.”

For a copy of the full research report or information on upcoming classes, visit http://fatherhood.pairs.com, e-mail info@pairs.com, or call 877-724-7748.

Life, Love Lessons from the Developmentally Disabled

Sanford Rosenthal, a veteran PAIRS instructor who lost his vision to retinitis pigmentosa, teaches relationship skills to a developmentally disabled group at ARC Broward.

Nearly 50 million Americans live with a disability. For many within this community, the challenges of sustaining relationships can be life and death matters.

This week, I joined Sanford Rosenthal, a veteran PAIRS instructor and social worker who lost the last remnants of his vision several decades ago to the disease retinitis pigmentosa, to introduce PAIRS relationship skills to 70 disabled adults and staff members at ARC Broward.

The private, not-for-profit organization provides daily support and assistance to children and adults with mental retardation, autism, Down’s syndrome, cerebral palsy and other developmental disabilities, delivering a continuum of support to over 1,000 children and adults.

The audience fast embraced our invitation to begin an adventure into the miracles of their own lives and relationships, eagerly sharing insights into the logic of love and emotions from the unique perspective of the severe challenges they face daily.

As we introduced Virginia Satir’s powerful stress styles of communication, the men and women eagerly offered comments and perspective on behaviors such as people pleasing, blaming, computing, and distracting through facial expressions and words many struggled to share.

When we began teaching Satir’s Daily Temperature Reading, a powerful exercise for nurturing cherished relationships, hand after hand quickly rose for a chance to participate through heartfelt, specific appreciations for the people who make a difference in their lives. Many motioned to staff members, urging them forward to thank them personally for their daily counsel, faith, and support; others turned to one another to offer a warm embrace, words of acknowledgment, and other verbal and facial expressions that communicated their gratitude. The 90 minutes allowed for our brief presentation could have easily turned into a full day, as the courage and example of each class participant inspired similar expressions from their enthusiastic peers.

Although close in proximity, this group – like similar groups in communities throughout our nation — lives a world away from millions of Americans who are not afflicted with a life-altering disability. It was impossible not to be touched by the deep gratitude they expressed for those who met their most basic human needs – someone to listen, believe in them, truly see them.

I suspect Sanford and I both left the group having learned as much, if not far more, than we shared.

I returned to my nearby home, wife, and nine-week old son more aware of my ability to speak, learn, listen, and share; more grateful than ever for the resources, freedoms, lessons, and challenges of my life as I reflected on the overwhelming obstacles each of these men and women endure daily to continue their own. I recalled my adolescent experiences with the late Virginia Satir and Daniel Casriel — the energy, authenticity, and faith they brought to developing the exercises and insights we shared with this audience, trusting they were smiling upon our efforts, offering their own blessings to the lives of these extraordinary human beings, grateful that their lives, values, and passions were continuing to make a difference in the world.

And I thought of Satir’s poetic words, “I am me,” penned in response to a teenage girl decades ago who turned to her for guidance as she struggled to understand her own life:

“I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it — I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know — but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me. However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay.”

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Seth Eisenberg is President and CEO of PAIRS Foundation. This post originally appeared in his personal blog, Redefining Relationships. Reprinted with permission.

Vital resources to reducing teen pregnancy

Helping parents learn to model healthy relationship building skills and open the lines of communication with their children is critical to reducing teen pregnancy.

For the first time since 1990, Rob Stein reports in today’s Washington Post, the rate of teen pregnancy is increasing. That news is likely no surprise for educators, counselors and activists working with teenagers, whether in distressed inner city schools or cozy suburban neighborhoods. In both settings and others in-between, teens are increasingly without resources vital to reducing behaviors that contribute to risky sexual activity: positive adult role models and their parents’ active engagement.

While there is no one size fits all approach to reducing teen pregnancy, educational programs that focus on helping youngsters better express themselves through conversations with trusted confidants offer much promise. That’s especially so when confidants are parents and other significant adults who are able to model healthy relationship building skills.

Last year, PAIRS Foundation delivered communication skills training to 135 teenage mothers and expectant mothers through a partnership with Miami-Dade County Public Schools. The training included modules on understanding and expressing emotions, active listening, and healthy conflict resolution that allowed the youngsters to better understand themselves and confide in others.

The results of follow-up research nearly half a year later offered important guidance to future efforts aimed at reducing teen pregnancy rates:

• Eighty-six percent reported an improved ability to say “no” to unwanted sexual advances;
• Eighty-two percent reported a greater ability to confide feelings about sexual issues with significant others;
• Seventy-seven percent were more likely to consider consequences of their decisions about sexual behavior;
• Sixty-four percent said their ability to talk with friends about sex improved;
• Fifty-three percent said their ability to talk with parents, stepparents or guardians about sex improved.

Lessons learned emphasize the importance of focusing on emotional understanding, improving the ability to confide and resolve differences, building self-worth and self-esteem, and providing coinciding training to significant adults whose behaviors, attitudes, and engagement powerfully influences teen decisions about sex.

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See “Rise in teen pregnancy rate spurs new debate on arresting it,” “Answering the call,” “A gift that lasts a lifetime,” and “Helping men succeed as husbands and fathers.”

Answering the Call

Sleeping on Maybelle's Lap, 1965.

Reprinted from Redefining Relationships.

I’ve often wondered if my life would really be different if someone had answered my mother’s phone call in the early sixties when she reached out for a therapist to help save her marriage to my father. The story I’ve heard recounted many times since is that it was the end of summer, a last desperate attempt to rescue a 17-year marriage, but since no one was available to help, the chance for reconciliation passed. Their union, and the last hope for our intact family, dissolved forever.

By four, Maybelle, a young widow who had arrived in the Washington, D.C. area from South Carolina seeking respite from the poverty and discrimination of the time that faced many African Americans in the south, became my primary caretaker. Her devotion, love and joyful spirit remains my fondest childhood memory.

The youngest of four, by my twelfth birthday, I became the only child regularly living in our comfortable suburban home. For the most part, it was Maybelle and me, as my mother’s constant routine included busying herself to emotional and physical exhaustion week after week, year after year, serving her therapy patients and a father lawyering himself tirelessly for elite corporate clients and the new family he quickly created, with little time, patience or apparent desire to stay engaged in the life of a son he barely knew.

Throughout it all, Maybelle and I always found reason to laugh.

I don’t remember anyone ever asking if I’d done my homework, how I’d done on a test, what was happening at school, with friends, or talks about drugs, alcohol, sex or much of anything else important. I do remember my father’s rage when he had to take time from his busy law practice to go to court with me as a young teenager after I got in trouble for being delinquent. I can still see his angry face and feel his words as he told me how ashamed he was and that he’d never forgive me for embarrassing him.

The lessons I learned came mostly from friends I found whose parents were nearly entirely absent from their lives too. Many others emerged from the promises I vowed to myself during those years to one day give my own children a different childhood. When I found myself in a painful, destructive marriage with their mother, it took years to finally surrender to the realization that I could not save them from the legacy of divorce. Although I knew that what was in my hands was the ability to stay actively involved in their lives through shared custody, coaching their sports teams, volunteering in their schools, and choosing career and life decisions that allowed me to make being their father my top priority throughout their childhood years. Together, we could learn as much as possible about breaking the cycle of divorce to help our family and others.

Nearly half a century after the phone call that wasn’t answered for my parents and the marriage that wasn’t saved, I regularly find myself seeking out the young children of couples who attend marriage education classes I now help organize and teach to thousands of couples in South Florida and elsewhere, silently pledging to each of them that I will always do my best to competently answer their parents’ calls.

Last week, I had a chance to review and report on research looking at the impact our brief workshops are having on their parents. The results brought statistical, scientific evidence to support the testimonials and grateful appreciations that have become almost commonplace at the conclusion of our 12-hour classes. I was particularly eager to see the results from the fathers of these children, hoping to finally find an answer to the question I’d asked myself about my own parents’ relationship for much of my life.

In our six-month follow-up with nearly 500 men, we found:

• 95% reported improvement in communication with their partner;
• 93% reported improvement in regularly sharing appreciations;
• 92% reported improvement in their ability to resolve conflicts constructively;
• 84% reported improvement in their physical intimacy;
• 89% reported improvement in their ability to confide emotions;
• 94% reported improvement in their overall relationship.

[For a copy of the full report, see fatherhood.pairs.com.]

Would that have been enough to save my parents’ marriage, I wondered? Had my parents attended our class, would it have changed the course of my own life? While I’ll never really know the answer to that question, I do know that for these children, they’ll have a better shot at keeping the childhood, support, encouragement, and resources that are lost by millions of youngsters when their parents breakup, the childhood I lost too.

From her home in heaven, I hear Maybelle’s laughter, feel her warm embrace, and find comfort in the idea that perhaps that’s the grand scheme of it all.

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Seth Eisenberg is President and CEO of PAIRS Foundation. This post originally appeared in his personal blog, Redefining Relationships. Redistributed with permission.

Research Report: PAIRS Relationship Skills Training Helps Men Succeed as Husbands and Fathers

By Seth Eisenberg & Amanda Falciglia

Introduction

Strong families are critically important to the well-being of children and dramatically impact the health, stability, safety and viability of communities throughout the United States. Helping fathers improve their ability to create and sustain stable marriages and promoting consistent, active, responsible engagement with their children is vitally important to the well-being of children and communities.

Resilient marriages and families are built on core values and behaviors that are significantly influenced by early life experiences. Men generally prepare for their roles as husbands and fathers based on the examples provided by their fathers, who learned from their own fathers, and so on.

Through the middle of the 20^th century, those examples primarily provided a model for marriages based on security, stability and raising children with men traditionally serving as primary breadwinners and women most often assuming primary responsibility for raising and nurturing their children.

As women increasingly entered the workforce to help meet the challenges of World War II and continued to pursue education and career opportunities over subsequent decades, gender roles and the basis of marriage gradually shifted to peer relationships sustained by love and intimacy (Satir, 1983).

Men who looked to the examples of their own fathers for models of relationship increasingly floundered, leading to significant increases in national rates of marital and family breakdown and generations of American children raised in single-parent households. Those children typically reached adulthood without the knowledge or skills needed to create and sustain their own marriages and parental relationships, contributing to exponential rates of divorce, greater numbers of children born to single parents, and millions of youngsters growing up without the critical involvement and resources provided within stable, two-parent homes.

These experiences have substantially contributed to social conditions that threaten the very fabric of American society, culture and potential for economic prosperity, including dramatic increases in delinquent and illegal behaviors that lead to juvenile and adult incarceration, illegal drug use, risky sexual activities, declining academic performance, mental and physical health consequences, increased poverty, and the squandered potential of children – our future generations.

Research demonstrates that PAIRS relationship skills training, a behavioral/cognitive educational approach developed, evaluated, and refined over a quarter century, has the potential to reverse this trend and significantly contribute to strengthening families and improving outcomes for children.

Brief Overview of the PAIRS Approach

For over a quarter century, PAIRS (Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills) classes have provided a comprehensive system to enhance self-knowledge and develop the ability to sustain pleasurable intimate relationships. PAIRS delivers a unique technology built on a skills-based approach to enhancing empathy, bonding and emotional literacy. PAIRS curricula integrate a wide range of theories and proprietary methods from psychology, education and psychotherapy and presents them in an educational format in classes ranging in length from nine to 120 hours. PAIRS acts to bridge therapy, marital enrichment, and marriage and family development through a cost-effective group educational approach to reducing marital and family breakdown. This study evaluates the impact of PAIRS most popular brief programs, PAIRS Essentials (9 – 12 hours) and PAIRS for Life (12 – 18 hours), delivered in public group settings by non-mental health professionals.

PAIRS programs focus on enhancing competencies in three areas: (1) emotional literacy; (2) skills for building and maintaining intimacy; and (3) practical knowledge, strategies and attitudes for sustaining positive marriage and family life with the goal of enabling couples to create relationships that both partners can live with joyfully (Gordon, 1996). For this to happen, each partner must be able to identify his or her own feelings and needs, communicate them in such a way that they can get met, and integrate skills that lead to constructive conflict resolution based on empathy, good will and a shared relationship vision.

The PAIRS Facilitator

The PAIRS Facilitator plays a vitally important role establishing rapport, personal and organizational credibility, group safety, assuring ethical practices, guiding exercises, and empowering each participant’s personal journey through the curriculum. Qualities most important in effective course leaders include:

• Personal warmth, optimism, authenticity, poise, and maturity;
• Speaks clearly with appropriate pacing and expression, is easily understood, avoids wordiness, professional jargon and terminology;
• Emotionally stable and comfortable with emotional intensity;
• Relevant and appropriate self-disclosure;
• Ability to maintain a safe educational environment, including appropriate boundaries;
• Use of appropriate humor;
• At ease with groups and establishing group rapport, appropriately evaluates and reads participant responses;
• Authentically models tools and values;
• Stays within boundaries and topics of each class,
• Effectively teaching existing curriculum content and covers all required material and exercises within time allowed;
• Knowledge, understanding, and adherence to PAIRS standards of ethical practice and licensing;
• Asks for help when needed;
• Understands and respects the vulnerabilities of class participants;
• Identifies and recommends improvements based on group feedback;
• Consistently receives positive evaluations from class participants.

Related Literature Review

• Children raised in stable, two-parent families have an overall higher standard of living, receive more effective parenting, experience more cooperative co-parenting, are emotionally closer to both parents, and are subjected to fewer stressful events and circumstances (Amato, 2005).
• A 1991 analysis summarizing the results of ninety-three studies conducted over three decades confirmed that children with divorced parents are worse off on measures of academic success (school grades, scores on standardized achievement tests), conduct (behavior problems, aggression), psychological well-being (depression, distress symptoms), self-esteem (positive feelings about oneself, perceptions of self-efficacy), and peer relationships (number of close friends, social support from peers) (Amato & Keith, 1991).
• A meta-analysis of sixty-seven studies conducted in the 1990s found that children with divorced parents typically scored significantly lower on various measures of well-being than did children with continuously married parents and revealed that children with divorced parents continued to have lower average levels of cognitive, social and emotional well-being (Amato, 2005).
• Children in single-parent or other non-intact family structures are at greater-risk of committing criminal or delinquent acts, almost two times more likely to have pulled a knife or a gun on someone in the past year (Franke, 2005).
• Communities with high rates of family fragmentation (especially unmarried childbearing) suffer higher crime rates (Franke, 2005).
• Divorce – regardless of economic status – has been shown to strongly correlate with robbery rates in American cities with population larger than 100,000 (Willats, 1987).
• Compared to those with continuously married parents, children of divorce are more likely to experience poverty, educational failure, unhappiness, emotional problems, risky sexual activity, non-marital childbirth, marital discord, and divorce (D’Onofrio, 2008).
• Children born to unmarried parents are disadvantaged across a broad range of outcomes, including higher rates of infant mortality, lower scores on tests measuring cognitive abilities (math and verbal), and more behavioral problems in early and middle childhood. As adolescents and young adults, these children have higher rates of delinquency and teenage pregnancy, lower educational attainment, and more problems finding and keeping steady jobs. They also exhibit more mental health problems (Chase-Lansdale, Cherlin, & Kiernan, 1995).
• Over the second half of the 20^th century, the basis of marriage shifted from security, stability and raising children to meeting each other’s needs for love and intimacy. Sustaining intimacy is a skill that can be learned (Durana, 1998).
• In 1996, the United States topped the list of industrialized nations in which children are growing up without a father in the home, with more than 21% of American children living in single-mother families compared to just over 4% in Italy. A child living in a single-mother family is five times more likely to live below the national poverty line (UNICEF, 1996).
• Criminogenic needs identified as predictors for incarceration and recidivism can be linked to the lasting impact of early childhood experiences on adults who grew up without the benefits of a two-parent home. Criminogenic needs include increased likelihood of anti-social personality, anti-social attitudes and values, anti-social associates, family dysfunction, poor self control and problem-solving skills, substance abuse, and lack of employment/employment skills (Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, 2006).
• By 1986, more than half of the inmates of state correctional facilities had grown-up without the benefits of a two parent household (Chapman, 1986).
• A Bureau of Justice Statistics study of 25,000 incarcerated juveniles found they were nearly three times as likely to have come from single parent homes than their non-incarcerated peers; a child growing up in a single-parent home is seven time as likely to be a delinquent (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1988).
• Incarceration rates have steadily increased in the United States, significantly within the most vulnerable communities, as minority men in particular increasingly turned to illegal enterprises such as drug trafficking and related activities, as options for economic survival and advancement. More than 2 million American children have a parent who is incarcerated in a State or Federal prison or jail (Grayson, 2007).

Public Opinion

According to a 2007 PEW Research Center study, there is a growing generation gap in behaviors and values related to marriage, family structure, and parenting. While Americans overwhelmingly believe that births to unwed women are a big problem for society and they take a mixed view at best of cohabitation without marriage, these two nontraditional behaviors have become commonplace among younger adults, who have a different set of moral values from their elders about sex, marriage and parenthood. (Pew Research Center, 2007) Highlights from the study include:

• A Generation Gap in Behaviors and Values. Younger adults attach far less moral stigma than do their elders to out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation without marriage. They engage in these behaviors at rates unprecedented in U.S. history. Nearly four-in-ten (36.8%) births in this country are to an unmarried woman. Nearly half (47%) of adults in their 30s and 40s have spent a portion of their lives in a cohabiting relationship.
• Public Concern over the Delinking of Marriage and Parenthood. Adults of all ages consider unwed parenting to be a big problem for society. At the same time, however, just four-in-ten (41%) say that children are very important to a successful marriage, compared with 65% of the public who felt this way as recently as 1990.
• Marriage Remains an Ideal, Albeit a More Elusive One. Even though a decreasing percentage of the adult population is married, most unmarried adults say they want to marry. Married adults are more satisfied with their lives than are unmarried adults.
• Cohabitation Becomes More Prevalent. With marriage exerting less influence over how adults organize their lives and bear their children, cohabitation is filling some of the vacuum. Today about a half of all nonmarital births are to a cohabiting couple; 15 years ago, only about a third were. Cohabiters are ambivalent about marriage – just under half (44%) say they to want marry; a nearly equal portion (41%) say they aren’t sure.
• Divorce Seen as Preferable to an Unhappy Marriage. Americans by lopsided margins endorse the mom-and-dad home as the best setting in which to raise children. But by equally lopsided margins, they believe that if married parents are very unhappy with one another, divorce is the best option, both for them and for their children.
• Racial Patterns are Complex. Blacks are much less likely than whites to marry and much more likely to have children outside of marriage. However, an equal percentage of both whites and blacks (46% and 44%, respectively) consider it morally wrong to have a child out of wedlock. Hispanics, meantime, place greater importance than either whites or blacks do on children as a key to a successful marriage – even though they have a higher nonmarital birth rate than do whites.

National Priority

Policy makers at every level of government routinely echo national sentiments regarding the importance of marital and family stability, yet public policy itself is often inconsistent, ineffective, or silent in areas in which concerted local, state and federal efforts could reverse the increasing generation gap and meaningfully improve outcomes for children, families, and communities. A coordinated national effort bringing together leadership of the public and private sectors is needed to incorporate evidence-based relationship skills training into America’s national educational curriculum – a fourth “R” for education: Relationships — including:

• Elementary, middle and high schools;
• Adoption, foster care, early childhood, special needs, and parenting education;
• Juvenile and adult detention, probation, rehabilitation, and reentry;
• Job training and workforce innovation;
• Welfare and assistance to needy families;
• Initiatives for active duty military, guard and veterans, especially those impacted by combat deployments;
• County and state support for premarital education;
• Early local interventions for parents in divorce proceedings;
• Immigrant absorption.

An effective, ongoing, concerted national approach reflected in state and federal policy will dramatically contribute to the well-being of children, strengthen America’s families, neighborhoods and communities, and enhance national productivity and prosperity for generations to come.

Special Interests

While the national cost to America for decades of increasing rates of marital and family breakdown are enormous, many special interests have emerged with solutions that both address and contribute to maintaining the status quo:

• Private enterprises that profit from increased rates of incarceration and recidivism. As of 1988, taxpayers spent an estimated $18 billion for costs related to maintaining 650,000 inmates [double the number of five years prior] in state and local prisons. (Joel, 1988). The largest prison corporation in the U.S., Corrections Corporation of America, trades on the New York Stock Exchange. In 2008, revenue was $1.6 billion with net income of $150 million (CCA, 2008).
• Residential developers, realtors, advertisers, lenders, and shareholders that benefit from increased rentals, property sales, and related fees as divorces increase demand for housing;
• Pharmaceutical manufacturers, advertisers, distributors and retailers that generate revenues from products developed to mask emotional experiences significantly related to the impact of relationship breakdown;
• Family law practices sustained substantially by revenues generated from divorce proceedings;
• Mental health professionals serving clients impacted by family breakdown with evidence suggesting therapy is actually harmful to preserving marriages (Doherty, 1999);
• Doctors, hospitals, diagnostic service providers, and insurance companies who benefit from costs associated with serving patients whose emotional experiences related to the breakdown of primary relationships are directly linked to significant physical health consequences.

Methodology

In October 2006, PAIRS Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit headquartered in Weston, Florida, was awarded a multi-year, multi-million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, to conduct a marriage education demonstration project in South Florida. The project, “PAIRS Relationship Skills for Strong South Florida Families,” was envisioned and created by PAIRS President Seth Eisenberg, who has directed implementation of the initiative from inception, including significant adaptations to the original PAIRS curriculum; creation of multi-lingual print and multi-media teaching, training and marketing materials in English, Spanish, French and Creole; training of more than 200 program instructors, assistants, support staff, and referral partners; and recruitment, training, and oversight of a team of nearly 20 full-time and part-time professionals. Amanda Falciglia, PAIRS Foundation’s Research Director, oversees data collection and analysis.

To date, approximately 5,000 couples and singles have participated in brief (9 – 18 hour) classes in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties. Participants represent a highly diverse pool of adult men and women in all stages of relationship with significant inclusion of minorities and couples entering the program at high levels of marital distress.

In designing evaluation of the demonstration project, PAIRS Foundation collaborated with Dr. Andrew Daire of the University of Central Florida’s Marriage and Family Research Institute. The study utilizes a range of assessment instruments to measure marital cohesion and the level of pleasure couples experience in their relationships. Key instruments include the 32-question Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier, 1976) and 6-question Relationship Pleasure Scale (Daire, 2008), a proprietary PAIRS assessment which has been validated by UCF as providing an accurate measure of key relationship dynamics.  Some participants also completed the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2006) and OQ45 Outcome Questionnaire (Owen & Imel, 2010). All of these instruments are provided in both English and Spanish.

South Florida is home to one of the nation’s largest Hispanic/Latino communities, who represent the majority of participants in this study. The majority have minor children.

While the size of the research sample has allowed PAIRS Foundation to begin analyzing and interpreting data on a broad range of significant variables, the purpose of this presentation is to share a preliminary snapshot of key findings based on statistically significant samples.

Classes evaluated for the study were offered in a variety of formats, from weekend intensives to multi-week sessions that generally include three hours of instruction one time per week over four to six weeks, delivered in partnership with local faith-based, community, and educational organizations, including public schools, churches, synagogues, YMCAs, rehabilitation centers, and through providers of supportive housing to the formerly homeless.

Individual classes range in size from eight to as many as 150 participants, delivered by a primary facilitator, teaching assistant, administrative and research support staff. Generally, one additional teaching assistant is provided for every 15 participants beyond the first 20. All staff members involved in program delivery complete a minimum of PAIRS Level One Professional Certification Training (32 hours), including ethical standards, domestic violence, and grant operations modules. Facilitators are certified and licensed annually by PAIRS Foundation.

Assessments are completed by participants prior to the first delivery of services, at program conclusion, and again six and 12-months subsequent. All participation is voluntary.

Prior to the delivery of services, participants complete informed consents, demographic questionnaires, and assessments either online or manually, with the opportunity to review their answers for accuracy and completion upon arrival at their first class. Follow-up questionnaires are completed at their final class and by mail, phone, online, or in-person six and 12-months after program completion.

The majority of participants are referred to PAIRS by a friend, family member, colleague or professional in the community; others have been recruited in response to key-word advertising on the Internet, flyers, news articles, billboards, posters, brochures, newsletters, and previews. Most participants have at least one phone, e-mail or in-person contact with a member of PAIRS’ staff prior to enrollment. More than 99 percent of participants completing PAIRS say they would recommend the program to others.

Findings

Research has consistently confirmed statistically significant positive change across all key groups in terms of demographic, socio-economic, ethnic, and relationship status measures. Immediate benefits for couples who measure in the atypical low range are especially meaningful as is the fact that, individually, the far majority of participants experience statistically significant improvement both in levels of couple cohesion and the level of pleasure in their relationship.

PAIRS Research Team recently evaluated pre, post and six-month follow-up assessments from 419 adult male participants in PAIRS Essentials and PAIRS for Life classes to specifically review the programs’ impact on men, whose attitudes and behaviors are critically important to sustaining marriages and providing consistent, active, responsible engagement with their children. Prior research has confirmed statistically significant benefits for couples, adult women, and teenage participants.

Highlights of the findings include:

• 95% reported improvement in communication with their partner.
• 93% reported improvement in regularly sharing appreciations.
• 92% reported improvement in their ability to resolve conflicts constructively.

• 84% reported improvement in their physical intimacy.
• 89% reported improvement in their ability to confide emotions.
• 94% reported improvement in their overall relationship.

SIX MONTH FOLLOW-UP Adult Males; N = 419
Results	Communication	Appreciations	Conflict Resolution	Physical	Emotional	Overall
Much Improvement	35%	34%	35%	31%	34%	39%
Some Improvement	43%	46%	39%	38%	40%	43%
Very Little Improvement	16%	13%	18%	16%	16%	12%
No Improvement	4%	6%	7%	14%	10%	5%
Worse	1%	0%	1%	2%	1%	1%

Reducing the Frequency of Family Financial Disagreements:

• 48% decrease in frequency of men always disagreeing, almost always disagreeing and frequently disagreeing with financial decisions.
• 35% increase in frequency of financial decisions in which men always agree.

Increasing Agreement on Ways of Dealing with Parents or In-Laws:

• 53% increase in men always agreeing with ways of dealing with parents or in-laws.

Increasing Agreement on Aims, Goals and Things Believed Important:

• 60% increase in men always agreeing on aims, goals, and things believed important.

Increasing Agreement on Amount of Time Spent Together:

• 30% increase in men always agreeing on amount of time spent together.

Increasing Agreement on Major Decisions:

• 50% increase in men always agreeing on major decisions.

Increasing Agreement on Leisure Time Interest and Activities:

• 89% increase in men always agreeing on leisure time interest and activities.

Increasing Agreement on Career Decisions:

• 65% increase in men always agreeing with career decisions.

Decreasing Frequency of Leaving the House After a Fight:

• 70% decrease in men always leaving the house after a fight.
• 29% increase in men never leaving the house after a fight.

Increasing Frequency of Confiding in Mate:

• 77% decrease in men who never confide in their mate.
• 32% increase in men who confide in their mate most of the time or all the time.

Decreasing Frequency of Quarrels with their Partner:

• 43% decrease in men who quarrel with their partner all the time.
• 85% increase in men who never quarrel with their partner.

A full report is available online. For more information, contact Amanda Falciglia, PAIRS Foundation, (954) 703-4533.

Funding for this project was provided by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Grant: 90FE0029/04. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.

Answering Haiti

By Lauren DelGandio, Seth Eisenberg and Robert Henthorn

Residents and staff of Carrfour Supportive Housing's Little Haiti community role-play stress styles of communication in PAIRS relationship skills class.

A PAIRS team traveled to the heart of Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood this week to deliver services to nearly 40 residents at a Carrfour Supportive Housing community for formerly homeless adults. Opened in 2003, Little Haiti provides permanent housing and an array of supportive services to help their residents achieve independence and self-sufficiency. For the residents of this community and more than a thousand others rebuilding their lives in Carrfour sites across Miami-Dade County, the organization’s dedicated staff is a daily lifeline.

Our team arrived in Little Haiti as residents and neighbors were processing news reports and graphic images of the unprecedented level of death and horrific destruction that had befallen the tiny Caribbean nation just hours earlier. For many, including those who had triumphed over enormous physical, mental, and emotional challenges to rebuild their lives, the reports arriving by phone, text, and reporters on the ground were powerful reminders of the fragile nature of life itself.

PAIRS CEO Seth Eisenberg with residents of Little Haiti

How do we respond when tragedy afflicts loved ones who are instantly a world away? How can we answer when family and friends are trapped dying or dead within collapsed homes and buildings, babies and their mothers are crying out unanswered prayers for help amidst the chaotic ruins, thousands of corpses are bearing silent witness to helplessness in the face of tragic devastation, basic services that provide sustenance and life are eviscerated, and disease and desperation is rising each moment from the ruins?

PAIRS Team Member Robert Henthorn (right) with Carrfour staff and Little Haiti resident.

Many turned to their cell phones to send contributions to international aid organizations, emptying pantries, medicine cabinets and the shelves of local grocers to box food, supplies, and blankets for the coming airlift, many turned to prayer for the souls of the deceased and protection for the traumatized survivors, each turned to each other to offer comfort and consolation through anguished tears and whispered words, collectively grieving as one people.

Through the tears and trauma of death, we bore witness to the emergence of renewed passion and determination for life and each other. Differences that hours earlier may have erected the illusion of separateness melted away into our shared human experience. Suddenly, for these moments, past words, disappointments, disagreements and disputes were willingly surrendered to the joy of life, love, and each other against a backdrop reminding us all of the brevity and fragility of life itself.

For tens of thousands in Haiti, there has been too little hope this week that the anguished cries for help echoing beneath the rubble will bring rescue in time to save their lives. For millions more – watching, listening, witnessing their horror from the comfort of our homes and neighborhoods, will we hear their cries? Will we also surrender the illusionary fortresses that too often imprison us within our own lives, homes, families, and communities from seeing, feeling, and truly embracing our common humanity?

For the residents of Carrfour’s Little Haiti community, as we witnessed their active engagement in the PAIRS relationship skills training class this week, the answer was clear.