The Value of Premarital Education

Premarital education programs have been designed with the aim of helping prospective spouses examine and evaluate their relationship prior to marriage. It is widely considered as preventative skills training and assumes that exposing couples to the skills to improve their relationship will help them deal with interpersonal difficulties as they arise. Skills commonly included in the programs involve communication, negotiation, problem‐solving and decision making. There are a number of problems identified with the current status of premarital education programs including the atheoretical nature of most programs, the lack of specific goals in the program format, and poor evaluation procedures which are used to examine effectiveness. Overall it is concluded that although the concept of preparation for marriage is a good one, the current value of these programs is limited. A personal account of one premarital education program is also provided.