Abstract
The divorce rate in society today seems to be reaching alarming proportions. Every individual has experienced the effects of divorce in some way or another, either through relatives, friends, parents or through their own marriages ending in divorce. Social workers and other social service professionals need to find new and creative ways to address the problem of maintaining and sustaining marriages. Marriages need support in order to survive. This support is essential and necessary as healthy marriages form the basis of healthy families and healthy families help to create a healthy society. The implication thus is a need for a proactive and preventative approach to assist married couples.
Marriage enrichment (ME) provides a solution to helping couples maintain marital happiness and satisfaction. ME focuses on sustaining, nurturing, strengthening and enriching marriage relationships. It is an approach that generally refers to weekend retreat programmes and other group settings in which married couples with reasonably healthy marriages learn how to improve their marriage and increase pleasure and success. Marriage enrichment uses an educational and skills training perspective that encourages and enhances good communication and interpersonal relations between spouses.
The aim of this study is to identify and describe the content of a marriage enrichment programme. The objectives of the study are as follows: to explore the need for a marriage enrichment programme by means of the perusal of available literature and an empirical study; to explore the elements that will comprise the content of an enrichment programme by means of qualitative research using different focus groups; to provide themes and guidelines for the development of an enrichment programme; to formulate conclusions and recommendations based on the results obtained from the study.
The study was conducted with 12 social workers from two different government organisations in the Johannesburg area. The research findings provided positive results. Themes and guidelines on the content for a marriage enrichment programme were identified.
Dr. Emmerentie Oliphant