Preface

This book is written chiefly for three groups of readers: for those looking forward to marriage, those already married, and parents with children approaching the marriageable years.

For those not yet married, the hope of this book is to prevent bad marriages. If we know why marriages go wrong, we are the better able to make marriages that will go right. Many young people confound us with this paradox—that they ponder long and hard over the choice of a career, but marry on what seems like the spur of the moment. They will consult scientists and their tests, family and kinsfolk for their judgment on the proper choice of a job, and disregard all of these in the establishment of a supposedly lifelong relationship.

For those already married but chafing perhaps at the matrimonial bit, this book may be of help in giving an objective look at marriage in general and at some one marriage in particular. Sometimes a calm, detached look at one's self and one's marriage may give a better and more wholesome perspective.

Finally, there are the modern parents who seek to counsel their children in matrimonial matters, even though that counsel at times is unsolicited. Parents do have some influence in their children's choices in marriage, in spite of "juvenile wisdom" in a secular age. For such parents, we hope this book may be of some value.

We are family sociologists who have studied family life through formal research projects and less formally in various other ways. We have read many books on marriage and the family and attended innumerable conferences devoted to their analyses and discussion. We have talked confidentially and in considerable detail with many persons who are married or who were contemplating marriage. The professional experience of one of us extends over almost half a century; that of the other, about half of that time.

We have come through this learning process with certain definite conclusions about what makes for success and failure in marriage, and we have tried to state these briefly and simply in the pages that follow. Some of the requirements for a happy marriage, such as wise choice of mates and marrying your own kind, are important perennially and everywhere,

even though each generation must rethink them in terms of its own conditions of living. Other factors grow out of the particular culture of people and the life values which they accept. These are of peculiar importance for an understanding of American marital problems because of the way our record compares with that of other countries.

Our underlying faith in the future of American family life is steadfast. Negatively, this faith does not include a belief in magic in the area of marital relations. It rejects a belief in the miracle of words and other magical incantations. With all due respect for the achievements of science, we have no confidence in its ability to transmute impossible choices of mates into lifelong happy marriages. Nor does our faith have any room for "trenditis," with its enervating acceptance of "what is being done."

On the positive side, it is our contention that happiness in marriage is an achievement, to be earned in accordance with long-established values in human relations. Instead of adjusting to patterns of behavior identified in selected areas by adding-machines, we incline to accept, when necessary, nature's way in the human body of resisting the invasion of threatening infection. The body does not adjust to the trend—that is the way of sickness and death. Rather does it seek to marshal its defenses to overcome the threatening invaders. Similarly, if commonly accepted values and ways of life do not promote family life, as viewed in the light of experience, we can reject them in favor of others—if we think family stability is a desirable goal. Choice is one of the burdens of life; wise choice, one of its possibilities.

James H. S. Bossard
Eleanor Stoker Boll
Philadelphia
August, 1958

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