Nancy Landrum, MA

Corresponding author: Nancy Landrum, MA

Citation: Nancy Landrum, MA (2026) The Generational Effects of Marriage on Children: Marriage Education as a Preventive Mental Health Intervention. Int J Fam Med Pub Health, 5(1);1-3.

Copyrights: © 2026, Nancy Landrum, MA, This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Conceptual Background: The Evolution of Marriage and Its Clinical Implications

The following are broad generalizations, but they summarize the attitudes and purposes of marriage up until the past century.

Historically, marriage functioned primarily as an institution for survival rather than emotional fulfillment. Anthropological and sociological evidence suggests that for much of human history, marital unions were structured around economic cooperation, reproduction, and protection rather than romantic love or emotional intimacy (Coontz, 2005; Stone, 1977). Divisions of labor reflected both biological constraints and culturally reinforced norms, with men’s roles centered on provision and defense and women’s roles emphasizing childrearing and domestic labor (Hrdy, 2009).

From a developmental perspective, human motivation follows a hierarchical pattern in which physiological and safety needs take precedence over relational and self-actualization needs. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs proposes that higher-order needs such as intimacy, esteem, and self-fulfillment emerge only after basic survival needs are reliably met (Maslow, 1943). For much of history, the need for intimate emotional marital bonds were secondary to survival.

The Industrial Revolution and the rise of the middle class fundamentally altered this dynamic. As material stability increased, marriage gradually shifted from an economic necessity toward an emotional partnership (Coontz, 2005). By the mid-twentieth century, particularly following World War II, women’s increased access to education and employment reduced economic dependence on marriage, allowing love, emotional safety, and personal fulfillment to become more important motivations for marital commitment (Cherlin, 2004).

This cultural shift occurred without corresponding information about how to meet these deeper needs. Marriage became expected to provide emotional intimacy, psychological safety, sexual fulfillment, and personal growth—functions it had rarely been required to serve historically (Finkel et al., 2014). Unfulfilled expectations in these areas are strongly associated with marital dissatisfaction, psychological distress, and divorce.  (Whisman, 2007).

The widespread adoption of no-fault divorce laws beginning in the late 1960s reflected growing recognition of individual well-being within marriage (Cherlin, 2004). While these reforms reduced barriers for individuals in unsafe or irreparably distressed marriages, population-level data indicate that repeated partner selection alone does not reliably produce improved relational outcomes. Divorce rates remain higher in second and subsequent marriages than in first marriages (Amato, 2010).

Research increasingly suggests that relational outcomes depend less on partner selection and more on learned interpersonal skills, including emotional regulation, communication, conflict management, and attachment security (Bradbury & Karney, 2010). Longitudinal studies demonstrate that couples who receive structured relationship education show sustained improvements in marital satisfaction and reductions in conflict (Hawkins et al., 2008). My observations over thirty years of teaching these skills to couples, as well as reports from other marriage educators, validate that unhappy couples who learn the functional skills demonstrated in happier marriages transform from unhappy and dissatisfied to stable and satisfying marriages.  (Gottman & Levenson, 2000).

From a public health perspective, marital distress is associated with increased risk for depression, anxiety disorders, cardiovascular disease, impaired immune functioning, and adverse outcomes for children (Robles et al., 2014; Whisman & Baucom, 2012). Taken together, this evidence supports the conclusion that contemporary marital dissatisfaction reflects not the failure of marriage as an institution but a mismatch between higher expectations and insufficient skill education. Framing marital competence as the result of learnable skills rather than the automatic result of love and commitment may reduce the emotional barrier to seeking help and yield measurable benefits for family health.