In 2002, the United States federal government created the Healthy Marriage Initiative, a policy that has distributed almost $1 billion in welfare money to marriage education programs. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in classes for a purposive sample of 20 government-approved marriage education programs and textual analysis of more than 3,000 pages of curricular materials, I analyze how U.S. healthy marriage policy addresses issues of gendered communication and power. This case reveals the limitations of what I call ‘‘interpersonal gender interventions,’’ which (...) obscure how gendered ideologies and inequalities are often maintained through institutionalized practices and state action. Specifically, I argue that by focusing on negotiation, communication, and conflict-resolution strategies—or what marriage educators call “relationship skills”—at the interactional level, state-sponsored marriage education masks persistent institutionalized gender inequalities, namely, latent and hidden forms of marital power. More broadly, I use this case to reveal how interpersonal gender interventions will likely have limited utility if individuals learn to develop more gender-egalitarian beliefs in the absence of institutional changes that enable them to act on these values. (shrink)

In the 1996 overhaul of federal welfare legislation, Congress included provisions to promote employment, marriage, and responsible fatherhood to prevent poverty among low-income families. Little previous research has focused on how marriage promotion policies construct paternal identity. Drawing on data from an 18-month study of a federally funded relationship skills program for low-income, unmarried parents, I analyze how responsible fatherhood policies attempt to shape ideas of successful fatherhood and masculinity in the service of the government’s pro-marriage, antipoverty agenda. The program (...) promoted a class-specific version of what I call marital masculinity, one that seeks to redefine marriageability for low-income men by claiming that marriage comes before financial success and encourages fathers to earn more. It did this by targeting fathers’ masculine identities in two ways: first, by emasculating fathers who only provide financially for their children, and second, by promoting a highly gendered conception of paternal caregiving. By analyzing how this strategy can be understood as both empowering and controlling for low-income men, this research adds to the sociological literature on how welfare policies shape paternal identity and gendered family practices. (shrink)