Premarital Guidance During Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Revitalization of premarital guidance has been conducted by the Director-General of Islamic Community Guidance of the Ministry of Religious Affairs since 2017. The program is a solution to high cases of divorce, child marriage, and domestic violence. The main priority of this program is implemented in districts/cities with high divorce rates. Semarang as the provincial capital could be a portrait representation of this program, let alone it is recorded as the city with the highest divorce rate in Central Java. The target for 2018-2019 could be achieved well and maximum. The COVID-19 pandemic brought its problems for the fulfillment of this targeted activity. This descriptive qualitative study illustrated how the implementation of pre-marital marriage guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic at the Ministry of Religious Affairs of Semarang. The results showed that the COVID-19 pandemic gave technical changes in implementing premarital guidance that should be under the health protocols such as reducing the number of participants for face-to-face premarital guidance, eliminating premarital guidance for teenagers, and improving independent premarital guidance. Also, there was a decrease in the target activity caused by the low number of marriage applicants.

Keywords

• marital guidance, premarital guidance, covid-19 pandemic