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The South Dakota Family Policy Council is standing for marriage.  We’re doing that in a variety of ways.  Our primary focus is to encourage pastors to bring God’s Word to issues of marriage and family.  Working with clergy across our state and working with national and state marriage organizations we’re bringing resources to families that will strengthen marriage.

There are five significant areas to focus on to make any community a Marriage Community that stands strong from marriage:

  • Youth and Abstinence training
  • Pre-Marriage training for engaged couples
  • Marriage enrichment
  • Struggling marriage Mentor ministry
  • Step Family ministry

Marriage & Family Initiative

An initiative to reduce divorce rates, starting in the state’s largest population centers.

Sponsor a M.F.A. & Marriage Mentor Training

  • Pierre, Hughes County: 35 Marriages Saved
  • Rapid City, Pennington County: 225 Marriages Saved                   
  • Aberdeen, Brown County: 55 Marriages Saved
  • Spearfish, Lawrence County: 41 Marriages Saved
  • Watertown, Codington County: 42 Marriages Saved
  • Mitchell, Davison County: 33 Marriages Saved

Numbers of marriages saved is based on reducing the divorce rate by 50%! 

  • Between 1960 and 1980, the U.S. divorce rate surged by nearly 250%… About half of all marriages undertaken today will end in divorce. William A. Galston, Braking Divorce, The American Enterprise, May/June 1996
  • Since 1972, more than a million youngsters have been involved in a divorce each year. Karl Zinsmeister, Divorce’s Toll on Children, The American Enterprise, 1996
  • Twenty-four months after divorce, about two-thirds of former marriage partners thought the break-up might have been a mistake and that they should have tried harder to resolve their conflicts. Karl Zinsmeister, The American Enterprise, 1996
  • Those who are separated or divorced account for 70 percent of all chronic problems drinkers, while married people account for only 15 percent … (After a divorce) "both sexes experience particularly high mental health risks. Dr. Robert H. Coombs, Professor of Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), conducted a review of 130+ empirical studies
  • There are 70% higher suicide attempts in children who have lost a parent. 60% of children in psychiatric clinics, and more than 80% of the adolescents in mental hospitals have been through a divorce. They are twice as likely to repeat a grade, and five times likelier to be expelled or suspended. Karl Zinsmeister, Divorce’s Toll on Children, The American Enterprise, 1996
  • Children ranking stressful situations listed parental divorce as second only to the death of a parent of close family member. The death of a friend, or even being “physically hit” by a parent, was preferred to divorce.    Karl Zinsmeister, Divorce’s Toll on Children, The American Enterprise, 1996

The first city to adopt Marriage Saver’s policy was Modesto, California. In 1986, there were 1,900 divorces in the county. Nine years later, there were only 1,600 divorces, even though the county’s population had grown 39%. If this ratio had increased with the population, there would have been 2,700 rather than 1,600 divorces. This policy appears to saved 1, 330 marriages, in one year.
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