Healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs for couples with children aim to strengthen couples’ relationships and ultimately improve the well-being of participants’ children. Although these programs have shown some success in improving outcomes for married couples, their success with unmarried couples has been limited.

In this brief, the Fatherhood, Relationships, and Marriage, Illuminating the Next Generation of Research (FRAMING Research) study team examines potential reasons why HMRE programs have been less successful with unmarried parents compared to married parents. They also present strategies for ways HMRE programs could be strengthened to better serve unmarried couples with children. They present their recommendations in three steps. First, they examine the distinctive characteristics of unmarried parents who participate in HMRE programs. Second, they discuss what the goals of HMRE programming could be for unmarried parents based on their characteristics and needs. Third, they propose enhancements to HMRE programs to better address the characteristics and needs of unmarried parents.

This work is part of the FRAMING Research project, which is sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to systematically review healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood programs (HMRF). ACF partnered with Mathematica and Public Strategies to conduct the project to examine existing and ongoing research on HMRF programs and related fields, pinpoint key learning gaps, and identify the best ways to fill those gaps.