Healthy Marriages Grand Rapids

HMGR Launches New Initiatives

Healthy Marriages Grand Rapids recently turned 10 years old!  This birthday brings with it an opportunity for celebrating the work that has been done, as well as envisioning the work toward healthy marriages that can be done in our community.  Our first ever e-zine is part of this vision, promoting our intent for enhanced communication with the community.

Leading HMGR is Executive Director Dr. Ryan Jaarsma, who stated, "Marriages in our community are hurting - I see it every day in my office.  HMGR is in a unique position to get the word out that there are exciting programs and resources to help married couples as well as those who are dating. "

HMGR is part of the national movement to find fun and creative ways to teach basic relationship skills to people at all levels of relationships, including teens.  "Today's adolescents are bombarded with unhealthy cultural and media images about what it means to 'hook up'," Dr. Jaarsma noted.  "They get little positive information about what to look for in a potential life-partner."  With that in mind, HMGR is working toward three major initiatives for 2007-2008:

1.  Provide trainings in healthy relationship skills for adolescents and college-aged young adults. 

2.  Promote national programs such as The Third Option and Survival Skills for Healthy Families in our community.

 3.  Provide programs that strengthen marriages and support children in our community.

For more information on HMGR click here.

Marriage & Family Building Series Begins November 7

Dr. Derek McNeil kicks-off 10th Annual Series with "Marriage: Disillusionment and Reslience"

The Marriage and Family Building Series, now in its ninth year, is specifically designed to equip pastors, clinicians and lay-leaders with up-to-date and effective tools for strengthening marriages.  The Series was created to address the needs of busy, overworked pastors, church staff, lay-leaders, and clinicians who have little time to keep up with the fast-paced and increasing demands of the hurting couples and families they serve.  Timed over lunch (with lunch included) to minimize time away from work, and designed for "bullet-point" takeaways to maximize resource building, the series brings in a host of national and local experts on the topics of marriage and family.

We are very proud to have Dr. Derek McNeil, professor of Psychology at Wheaton College, start off the series this year.  Dr. McNeil has a masters in Marriage and Family Therapy from Northwestern University's prestigious Family Institute as well, and he will be speaking about how to make marriages more resilient, especially those who are currently disillusioned and feeling hopeless. 

For more information about the Series, click here.

The Third Option Gaining Momentum

Option 1: Stay in a lifeless marriage. 

Option 2: Get a divorce. 

Option 3: Find the middle ground to a happy

and fulfilling marriage. 

From New York to California (and now in Grand Rapids!) churches are discovering the benefits of offering The Third Option program. The Third Option helps ordinary couples re-build better marriages through peer ministry and a psycho-educational program. It combines: a support group, mentor couples, and workshops on relationship skills. Many couples will come to The Third Option as an adjunct to therapy, or as a stepping stone to counseling.  It is free to attend and the program atmosphere supports healthy relationship skills without being judgmental or blaming to one partner.

Pastor Allen Pickett of Knapp Street Reformed Church has been helping couples in our community work toward this third option by facilitating the Thursday night program to offer couples TOOLS to help them.  Mentor couples provide on-going SUPPORT to help couples over the rough spots in their marriage.  This program has been building a larger group of couples and is open and ready for more to join. 

For more details click here.

Research Continues to Support That Children Need Two Married Parents

SmartMarriage.com feature

Research published by the International Child and Youth Care Network Online Journal in July 2007 has supported the volumes of research already published showing that the very best environment for children growing up is with two continuously married parents.

Compared with other children, those who grow up in stable, two-parent families have a 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.

Cohabitating parents tend to be more disadvantaged than married parents. They have less education, earn less income, report poorer relationship quality, and experience more mental health problems. The risk of relationship dissolution also is substantially higher for cohabiting couples with children than for married couples with children

The research shows that single-parent families have an elevated risk of economic hardship, greater challenges in functioning effectively as parents, and greater exposure to stress due to their circumstances.

Click here for the full article.