On-Line Marital "Tune-Ups"?

Per the New York Times, a number of efforts are afoot to provide on-line tools for "preventive maintenance and assessment" for married couples. (Providing relationships with something between scheduled maintenance/inspection visits by your car dealer, and your annual physical?)

Professors from UCLA and University of Miami are soliciting 500 married couples to participate in a study of on-line self-help couples therapy.

Researchers at Brigham Young offer an (inexpensive) on-line martial/relationship assessment which, they say, yields a graphic report depicting a couple’s communication and conflict style, and how much effort each partner puts into the relationship.

A similar assessment tool is also being studied in Australia as part of a telephonic and remote program of marital counseling, intended for those in remote areas who simply cannot practically arrange for face-to-face contact with a counselor.

Custody and Religion Part 4: Something in the Water in Chicago?

I won't really get incensed (pun intended) until I read a clearer and more definitive description of the facts and order in the underlying case, but a recent report suggests that Chicago judges are willing to make intrusive orders not only against divorced parents, but against new step-parents, in regard to issues of religious upbringing, seemingly pretty much ignoring that stuff about "establishment of religion" it mentions in my pocket Constitution.

. . .and another hat tip (diamond-crown two-tone straw) to Howard Friedman at Religion Clause for the pointer.