Caring and intimate relationships are critical to individuals’ well-being throughout their lifespan.1,2 Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) programs are designed to build skills that improve relationship quality for adult couples, individuals, co-parents, and youth. Historically, a segment of HMRE programs has focused on relationships for adolescents and young adults (generally ages 15-24). However, in 2020, the Administration for Children and Families launched an initiative[a] designed to help young people successfully transition to adulthood by promoting their socio-emotional development and strengthening their relationship and other life skills.3 This focus is motivated by research suggesting that intervening during adolescence—before young people’s relationship habits are solidified and they make marital commitments—is an important strategy for promoting healthy adult relationships.4,5 These skills are also transferable to other relationships important for youth development.
This brief was created by the Marriage Strengthening Research & Dissemination Center, a partnership between Child Trends, the National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University, and Public Strategies.
Offering extra support on developing healthy relationships is particularly important for youth who have faced interpersonal trauma and adversity (for example, youth aging out of foster care, those who are or have been involved with the juvenile justice system, those who are parents, and those who are or have experienced homelessness); these experiences may place young people at increased risk for poor relational and other outcomes. However, few HMRE programs have been created or adapted to meet the specific needs of youth with these experiences.
This annotated bibliography is intended to provide practitioners and researchers within the HMRE field with useful information that may help them adapt, develop, and test new or refined strategies for working with diverse groups of youth, including those who have faced adversity. It includes literature on (1) outcome evaluations of HMRE programs with youth who have faced adversity, (2) program implementation research with these populations, and (3) descriptive research that provides important contextual information for working with these adolescents and young adults.
Footnotes
[a] Relationships, Education, Advancement, and Development for Youth for Life (READY4Life).
The authors would like to thank the Steering Committee of the Marriage Strengthening Research and Dissemination Center (MAST Center) for their feedback on earlier drafts of this annotated bibliography. We would additionally like to thank Ria Shelton for her research assistance.
Editor: Brent Franklin
Designer: Catherine Nichols
Mindy Herman-Stahl, PhD, is a senior researcher at Public Strategies with more than 20 years of experience with expertise in areas of qualitative and quantitative (descriptive and multivariate) data analysis on service delivery implementation and outcomes, as well as the contextual factors that influence program effectiveness. In addition, she is well-versed in translating research into actionable and understandable dissemination products, including briefs, reports, webinars, presentations, and peer-reviewed journal articles.
Sydney J. Briggs, MPA, is a senior research analyst in the Reproductive Health and Family Formation research area at Child Trends. Her research interests center on the prevention of and responses to family violence. At Child Trends, Ms. Briggs currently serves as an analyst for the MAST Center and studies innovations in school-based reproductive health care service delivery.
Lisa Kim, BA, is a research analyst in the Reproductive Health and Family Formation research area at Child Trends. She is most interested in improving access to quality care for underserved communities and understanding how socioeconomic factors and racial/gender inequalities affect health outcomes. At Child Trends, Ms. Kim supports a broad range of work focused on innovations to family planning practices, adolescent pregnancy prevention programming, healthy relationships, and fatherhood.
Elizabeth Wildsmith, PhD, is Co-Principal Investigator of the MAST Center and oversees the Center’s building capacity activities. She is a sociologist and family demographer at Child Trends who studies family formation and reproductive health. Her research examines marriage, cohabitation, and childbearing, as well as how social and family contexts may increase exposure to, or offer protection from, risk factors associated with the negative health and well-being of women, children, and families.
The Marriage Strengthening Research and Dissemination Center (MAST Center) conducts research on marriage and romantic relationships in the U.S. and healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs designed to strengthen these relationships. The MAST Center is made up of a team of national experts in marriage and relationship research and practice, led by Child Trends in partnership with Public Strategies and the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University.
The MAST Center is supported by grant #90PR0012 from the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation within the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The MAST Center is solely responsible for the contents of this brief, which do not necessarily represent the official views of the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, the Administration for Children and Families, or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
1. Collins, W. A., & Van Dulmen, M. (2006). “The course of true love(s)…”: Origins and pathways in the development of romantic relationships. In A. C. Crouter & A. Booth (Eds.), Romance and sex in adolescence and emerging adulthood: Risks and opportunities (pp. 63-86). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
2. Connolly, J. A., and McIsaac, C. (2009). Romantic relationships in adolescence. In R. M. Lerner & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of adolescent psychology: Contextual influences of adolescent development (pp. 104-151). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
3. Office of Family Assistance. (2020). Healthy marriage and relationship education for youth. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ofa/programs/healthy-marriage/youth
4. Rhoades, G. K., & Stanley, S. M. (2009). Relationship education for individuals: The benefits and challenges of intervening early. In H. Benson & S. Callan (Eds.), What works in relationship education? Lessons from academics and service deliverers in the United States and Europe (pp. 45–54). Doha International Institute for Family Studies and Development.
5. Simpson, D. M., Leonhardt, N. D., & Hawkins, A. J. (2017). Learning about love: A meta-analytic study of individually oriented relationship education programs for adolescents and emerging adults. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 47(3):477-489. doi: 10.1007/s10964-017-0725-1.