Relationship Education in an Age of Pessimism

by Alan J. Hawkins

Taking a big picture over a long period of time, scholars argue that society has made enormous progress. We are much healthier, wealthier, safer, and smarter than our great-great-great-great grandparents.1 So, societal optimism should be high, right? Instead, youth and young adults today are less optimistic about the civic future than in the past. A recent Harvard Youth Poll found that only a quarter of young Americans (ages 18-29) feel hopeful about the future of the country. Just five years ago, that figure was more than half (55%). 

Maybe they absorb this pessimism from the polluted political air they breathe – both the dark populist right and angry woke left. And constant media feeds about natural disasters and violent crimes only amplifies this sense that the world is falling apart around them. Trust in institutions that are supposed to make for a just world and a better life is tanking. Sometimes I think we should relabel Gen Z to Gen P because of how Pessimism (with a capital P!) is such a defining feature of this generation.   

This makes me sad. One of the founding mothers of the modern marriage movement, Maggie Gallagher, claims: “Optimism is America’s birthright. There is no age-old problem we do not insist on trying to cure, rather than endure.” Gallagher asserts that the marriage movement stems from this sense of traditional American optimism. 2 Relationship education (RE) is a tool that can give people greater hope, a stronger sense of agency, and the needed cognitive and behavioral skills and pathways to achieve their family aspirations. 

So, what happens when the inherent optimism of relationship education collides with pervasive pessimism that seems baked into the current cultural zeitgeist and personal doubts about marriage and family life? I want to noodle on this question here. I don’t have a lot of solid answers. But I think I have some important questions that RE practitioners should be wrestling with these days, especially as they are thinking about “Gen P.”  

• Development. When developing RE programs, curricula, and other resources, are we anticipating the cultural and personal pessimism users bring to their educational experience? And how would we shift our curriculum to address this challenge? I think we need to give more direct attention upfront to participants’ frames of mind. Can we help them make room for a more optimistic vision for the future and greater hope in their capacities to achieve their family aspirations?
  
  If so, how? Well, I suspect that personal narratives – real-life narratives from real people – will have more power to soften personal pessimism than cold facts and objective research. So, let’s make sure to include real-life narratives in our curricula of people who have benefitted from RE, and probably do so with video rather than just facilitator talk.

• Recruitment. When we are marketing RE resources and recruiting participants, are we aware of the mental and emotional baggage of cultural and personal pessimism? And how would we shift these efforts to address this challenge? I wonder how the bright, cheerful, optimistic recruitment messages on social media platforms really sound to Gen P: “Come learn the simple secrets to building a gold-medal marriage (or becoming a super-dad) you’ve always dreamed about!!” I worry that messages like these create instant suspicions rather than pique interest. I worry that they come off like we are not sensitive to the problems they see and bump into in real life.
  
  I don’t know. But maybe we should experiment with addressing their doubts directly and upfront: “Yeah, the world can really suck. But maybe you can make it a little better, one healthy relationship at a time.” Okay, as you can see, I’m no marketing savant. But more talented marketers, I’m sure, could find better ways to meet young people these days where they are in their more shadow-filled spaces instead of employing the sunny, light-hearted messaging I see in most RE recruitment efforts.

• Instruction. When we are teaching RE participants, do we know how to work through their pessimism filters? I think personal hope and optimism are legitimate direct targets of RE intervention. I suspect that we tend to see hope as an indirect byproduct of relationship education. When they gain the knowledge and skills, then they will see a brighter relationship future ahead.
  
  But what if their pessimism just makes the learning harder to begin with? How would we change our pedagogy to directly target an outcome of greater optimism and hope? As I wrestle with this tough question, again, I come back to power of real-life stories. They reach us at a more emotional level and seem to offer an assuring hand: “You can do this too!” Also, there is a science of hope now, as Dr. Chan Hellman reminded us in his recent 2026 NARME Summit plenary address, and plenty of evidence that it can be taught and learned. We could integrate some of this knowledge into our RE efforts. 

Evaluation. Relationship hope is something we usually do not measure to see if our hard instructional work is paying off for our learners, many of whom come to us in some distress and may be leaking hope? Maybe it should be our primary – meaning first – target, because it will better sustain the hard efforts needed over time for change in other relationship outcomes (that we measure more often). There are good measures of relationship hope/confidence we can use in our evaluation efforts.  

I hope this brief blog gets you thinking. We know that depression clouds thinking. Similarly, I suspect that pessimism filters what we are trying to teach “Gen P” about healthy relationships, making it harder to believe that efforts for change will be successful – or that it even matters given the common perception these days of a world falling apart. 

What do you think? What else will make our RE efforts more effective at breaking through the barrier of young people’s pessimism? Share your brief thoughts below. 

 1. Rosling, H., Rosling, O., & Röknnlund, A. R. (2018). Factfulness: Ten reasons we are wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think. Flatiron.

 2. Sadly, I could no longer find a link to the important founding report that includes this quote: Gallagher, M. (2000). The marriage movement: A statement of principles. Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education; Institute for American Values; Religion, Culture, and Family Project, University of Chicago Divinity School.

Alan J. Hawkins is Vice-chair of NARME. He is the Chair of the Utah Marriage Commission, and an affiliated scholar of the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University. He retired from the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University after 33 years of teaching, research, and outreach, much of it focused on the effectiveness of relationship education.