Chapter 11 - What Do We Really Think About Marriage And Family Life Problems?

"Whenever I read or hear about the cost in dollars and human terms of mental sickness, infantile paralysis, the common cold, the venereal diseases, and other serious ills of mankind; whenever I think of the intelligence and money that is poured into research and programs to master these ills, I think of the American family, with its problems and their cost in dollars and in human terms. I compare the organized efforts, the financial support given to them, the research maintained by large foundations to deal with family problems, with those directed at these other ills, and I can only conclude that we care relatively little about the family and what it means in the lives of our people."

Thus spoke a wise old man to us as this book was in process of being written, and his words suggest a series of challenging questions. What do people really think about importance of family life in general and its problems in particular? What social philosophy do we apply to the field of domestic relations? We know the appalling record of our marriage failure and how it compares with that of other nations of the world. Are we disturbed perhaps only a mere fraction as much as we were because Russia sent a satellite into space before we did? We know the range and pity of the tragedies of marriage failure. Do we compare them with the plight of farmers suffering from drought? At a time when economic production, marketing, human efficiency, and military operations are almost obsessed with the importance of research, how much comprehensive and well-financed research is being done in the field of the family? International competition has even made us aware of the need for basic research. What basic research for family life is being done, and how is it being received? Would the Kinsey studies of sex behavior be of such a kind? How and in what spirit have they been received? We raise questions of this kind because the answers to them tell us something of what our attitudes toward family life problems really are. "I ain't minding what people say," a Negro laundress once told us, "but what they gone and done."

Especially have we been backward in stressing a preventive approach to marriage problems. Certainly the idea of prevention is a familiar one to people at large since educational campaigns and popular slogans have emphasized it in regard to such common ills as cancer, mental diseases, accidents, and the like. In regard to marriage, only some few predictive studies, based chiefly on personal traits and characteristics, have implied a definitely preventive approach. This is all the more striking because the prediction of unhappiness for certain marriages among one's acquaintances is an age-old folk practice. We have been slow in formulating the facts about unwise marriages as determined by contemporary American social living. It has even been unpopular in certain quarters to point out that marriage at too early an age, after too brief a courtship, with an exclusive emphasis upon romantic attraction, with widely separated religious and social class backgrounds does not make for happiness, despite the supporting evidence that is available. It would seem as though a great many people think of marriage as an achievement rather than a reasoned choice for a lifelong relationship. Especially does one sense this in certain parents who, bowed down under the economic burden of maintaining their children in accordance with the standards of our child-laborless, high-school-and-college-education-attendance, car-driving-af ter-sixteen generation, look upon the marriage of their daughters as a welcome relief. There are many evidences of family and social pressures upon getting married, regardless. This does not make for an intelligent choice of mates.

Certainly one of the most important things about any problem is the way we regard it. Do we think it is important? Does it really matter? Do we think something can be done about it, or do we accept it as a cross that must always be borne, and that all that matters is the bearing of it? However, despite our lip service to the family and its fundamental importance, what do we really think about our marriage and family life problems?

Some Popular Attitudes Toward Our Marital Problems

Opinion on the nature and urgency of American family problems is far from unanimous. Such unanimity is lacking even as to its seriousness. There are those, and their number fortunately is not small, who speak out of their own experience and insist that American life is sound at the core. They point to their own happiness, they call attention to the very high plane of living that a large proportion of our population enjoys, and they emphasize the cultural richness of much of family life. Thus assured, they tend to brush away the reverse side as an unfortunate but nontypical part of the national picture. Since many persons holding such views are prominent and successful in their chosen fields, they have much to do in shaping our national thought about the nature and importance of our family life problems. Often it is only when the lightning strikes some branch of their own family tree that some awareness of the problem comes to them.

There is another group who see our high divorce and desertion rates as signs, not of domestic decadence, but of high and rising standards of family life and human relationships. The growing tide of family dissolution really is an index, they say, of higher instead of lower conceptions of family life and of a greater moral sensitivity among our people. We have become increasingly intolerant of conditions which formerly were endured. No longer are men and women, and especially women, willing to endure physical and mental cruelty or to continue an unhappy relationship just for the purpose of maintaining a contract for which ethical justification has disappeared. This basic attitude, developed years ago by Lord Bryce, then British Ambassador to the United States, and attributing our high divorce rate to the high ethical character of our population, finds numerous champions down to the present day.

There is a third group who welcome approvingly any apparent laxity in family mores, and the greater license it would seem to bring. By all means, let us marry early and often, they seem to say. "Isn't it exciting?" The old order changes. We must prepare for the brave new world of tomorrow. "Don't you agree," a bright-eyed, sex-conscious lassie once said to us, "that the family is on the way out?" When we demurred, we got a rather withering look. "Aren't you a bit naive?" This is apt to be the voice of youth, passing through its inevitable stage of rebellion, impatient with time-honored restrictions, devoted to the new because it is new, and with a fervor which increases directly with its indefiniteness.

Then there are those people who suffer from what we call trenditis. This is a restricted form of the reaction just described. Not that these people necessarily like what is happening, but one must adjust to the trend. This results from the prevailing American habit of taking a sidewise view of life. The criteria for sound conduct are what other people are doing, what "everyone" is doing. Rightness is determined by an adding-machine, and wisdom consists in adjusting to the trend line.

Again, there are those who seem to take a rather cavalier or callous attitude toward divorce, desertion, and other signs of marriage failure, dismissing them as relatively unimportant in comparison with our achievements in other areas. The United States is the richest and most powerful nation in the world, they will say. Our standard of living is the highest in the world. More people have electric washing machines, refrigerators, and automobiles in this country than in any other. "We have so many cars," one wag says, "that we need not fear the coming of the Russians. They couldn't find any place to park." With our record in the field of material and other achievements, why worry about such incidental costs as a high divorce rate? "Can't they find some other person to marry?" this school of thought seems to say.

A surprising number of people apparently think that marriage is outside the realm of thoughtful analysis, and that cause and effect do not operate in it as in other areas. Love is the dominant force here, and love follows neither rhyme nor reason. The force of romantic attraction defies intelligence. Anything can happen in marriage. People will choose wisely and act sanely about other things, but not about love and marriage. "Why, just take the case of the Smiths, every reason for them to break up in six months, but they have lived together for sixteen years."

Some of the people, holding this view, point to the slow progress of the eugenics movement. In spite of all we know about the facts of human heredity, and their obvious manifestations in the nonhuman animal world, we go on ignoring their meaning for human mating. What makes this even more striking is that intelligent men called attention to this omission thousands of years ago. Thus, as far back as the sixth century B.C., the Athenian poet Theognis wrote: "We look for rams and asses and stallions of good stock, and one believes that good will come from good; yet a good man minds not to wed the evil daughter of an evil sire if he but gives her much wealth."

This is an attitude which reminds us that man is least scientific about the things that are closest to him. The history of science does show this revealing fact: that man is the last thing that man has studied scientifically. Science begins with the stars—the objects farthest removed from him; it comes last to the minutiae of human living. There is some of the peacock in man: his tail feathers droop when he looks at his feet.

Over against the preceding attitudes, there are those thoughtful students of human society who are genuinely alarmed at the American record in the family field. Having delved into centuries of history, they point out that in this respect we are at one with some well-remembered eras in human history, such as the time of the disintegration of the classic Greek culture, the breakup of Roman imperial society, and the French Revolutionary period, when the disorganization of family life became commonplace. Moreover, in the retrospect of time, they see these developments in the family field as symptoms of the disintegration of the larger social order. For the family, they point out, is our basic social institution, and family life is the source of social stability as well as of personality development. A stable society is impossible without a stable family life. On the other hand, the family cannot rise above the character of its people and the nature of their collective culture. Family and society are inextricably interrelated; they are two facets of the same thing, each reflecting the quality of the other. Such is their earnest insistence.

A Buoyant Belief in Magic

Of the people who marry each year, many are unaware of the special hazards of marriage in this country. Even if they have some knowledge of the facts, they are prone to think of themselves as a unique case that is sure to be different and to defy all the current odds. Particularly will the younger ones, and they constitute the majority of persons marrying, hold to a certain mystical belief in the magic of some good fairy who will bring them their own happiness. This buoyant belief in magic in marriage is a very widespread one, and deserves full and serious discussion.

The word magic, to most readers, will bring up thoughts of primitive peoples, with their weird practices and incantations. Thus in a given primitive society, a man, wishing that his child may enjoy perfect health, takes the beak of a raven, an animal that is said never to be sick, and lays it alongside his child that it too may be equally well. Or an amulet is worn to ward off a particular kind of danger over which it is believed to have the power of control. Or there is the belief that certain persons have made themselves masters of some secret power, through the ownership of some specific name, amulet, words, or possession. Another is the use of the analogy or likeness, as when a man, wishing his child to grow, chews the sprouts of a salmonberry and spits over the child's body, so that the child will grow as fast as the salmonberry. Or there is the belief in the power of concentrated will whereby the magician can command and order an evil to go away or an event to happen. In other instances, it is when a specific incantation accompanies this will that the desired effect is brought about. Other forms of magic might be mentioned, but in essence they are invariably the same in their belief that the external world is amenable to human control as soon as the proper techniques have been mastered.

It is this basic meaning of magic that we must understand. The practices of magic, and they may take a great variety of forms, all grow out of man's wish to achieve something outside of the ordinary course and sequence of events. Magic is an effort to avoid the ordinary expectancies of life. Thus understood, magic is not confined to any nation nor to any time. It is age old and universal. And the belief in it in this respect is akin to faith in science and a certain belief in religion. In fact, magic has often been called the science of primitive man, and at least one noted scholar calls magic "religion's disreputable sister."

Marriage and family life naturally are an area in which strong wishes for the miraculous exist, to create and foster a belief in magic. All that present-day people need is that the belief be so clothed as to make it acceptable to their way of thinking. It is our contention that such a belief in magic in marriage is very widespread in our society today, and that it is accepted in forms that are common to our modes of thought. The more important of these forms will be briefly discussed.

Belief in the Magic of Words

One of these is the belief in the magic of words. This might be called the semantic menace of the modern age, for thousands and thousands of persons are abroad with a linguistic equipment and skill which far exceed their insight and understanding. Many of us have developed a deep-seated devotion to words and their power. Witness the invention of high-sounding words for very simple ideas. Note the jargon which characterizes many intellectual cults. Count the number of pedantic clichés. Enjoy the use of words to hide thought, as in the following quotation: "The concept of correlation as the ratio of the variation in the dependent variable which is explained by variation in the independent variable is gaining considerable popularity." Particularly does this kind of thing appeal to certain younger age groups, and these, it will be remembered, loom large in marriage and family problems.

Words aptly selected do have their importance, to be sure. As Samuel Butler put it: "The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called 'The Old Sailor.' " Centuries ago, the writer of the Book of Proverbs pointed out that words fitly spoken were like apples of gold in pictures of silver. But this is not the kind of word usage we have in mind here. Rather do we mean the substitution of words for insight and more effective procedure, as if words possessed some magic of their own. Concerning this practice, we cannot resist the temptation to quote a few lines from Charles B. Loomis:

What is it that I mean, O
potent soul of mine O
ecstasy divine In luscious
meadows green.

Professional and semiprofessional groups particularly like to employ this magic—in dealing with persons in distress. We have an almost unlimited confidence in "conferring" a problem out of existence. There is, for example, the classic illustration of what goes on at a social welfare conference, provided by Florence Sytz, of Tulane University:

(1) Profess not to have the answer. This lets you out of having any. (2) Say that we must not move too rapidly. This avoids the necessity of getting started. (3) Say that the problem can't be separated from all the other problems. Therefore it can't be solved until all the other problems have been solved. (4) For every proposal set up an opposite one and conclude that the "middle ground" (no motion whatever) represents the wisest course of action. (5) Discover that there are all kinds of "dangers" in any specific formulation or conclusion. (6) Appoint a committee. (7) Wait until an expert can be consulted. (8) State in conclusion that you have all clarified your thinking. This obscures the fact that nothing has been done. (9) Point out that the deepest minds have struggled with the same problem. This implies that it does you credit even to have thought of it. (10) In closing the meeting thank the problem. It has stimulated discussion, opened new vistas, shown us the way, challenged our inventiveness.

The field of marriage and the family is no exception to all this. From a long list favored through the years, we select two recent verbal amulets—insight and tolerance. Consider insight. Here is a key to unlock the stoutest steel doors. Now really, we are told, any two people can live together if they have sumcient insight. Often, too, there is the added implication that certain persons, upon the establishment of proper professional relations, can facilitate the development of this insight.

Just what does insight mean? It means understanding. And who wants to be understood by his or her mate? "Men," wrote Edgar Saltus, "hate to be misunderstood, and to be understood makes them furious." Isn't this equally true of women? Does any intelligent woman want her husband to understand her? Isn't much of a woman's appeal to a man due to the fact that he does not quite understand her? And isn't this the essence of her effort? What does it do to the husband to have insight into his own frailties? Obviously it will make him face reality. Is this desirable? Is reality a comfortable thing to live with? How many of us do it, wholly, that is? What does it do to the wife to have insight into her husband's behavior? Will it help? What does it do to the husband when he realizes his wife's insight into his behavior? Does all this do much more than breed condescension, patronage, pity, or smugness? We are reminded here of the waggish statement that a woman usually respects her father but her view of her husband is mingled with contempt, for she is privy to the transparent devices by which she snared him.

Then there is the case cited by the venerable sage about the woman who said: "I've been developing insight into my husband's ways for many years, and we don't have as much in common now as we did when I started." Finally, there is this other puzzle. Since insight is supposed to help John Smith reconstruct himself as a mate, how is this to be reconciled with the insistence that his personality patterns "jelled" in early childhood?

Or take the word tolerance. Many problems are waved aside with the magic wand of tolerance. We hie ourselves to the dictionary, and sure enough, our suspicions are confirmed. It means to endure, to put up with. Does this create a happy marriage, let us say, between two quite different cultural products? To tolerate is to insult, wrote Goethe years ago. It is true that many husbands and wives tolerate each other, but is this a recommended choice? And wasn't Samuel Coleridge right when he insisted that we are none of us tolerant in what concerns us deeply and entirely? Speaking of words, would fortitude be a better one in this connection? If one wishes to invoke the magic of a word in marital relations, why not select spontaneity? Are husband-wife relations ever really good unless they are more or less automatically good, i.e., spontaneous? A person might go through the whole gamut of words whose magical powers have been invoked in this area, only to find that they all boil down to an acceptance of the situation from which the trouble begins. In other words, these "magical" words are used to dress up a situation so as to make it more acceptable. This is not without its helpfulness. What cannot be cured must often be endured. There are many things that wise therapy can do under these circumstances. Our emphasis in this volume, however, is directed to other ends, to efforts to avoid these situations, and a plea for more emphasis upon such efforts.

The Magic of General Cures

Second is the belief in the magic of general cures. This has been a time-honored one, developing early in human history to meet the demand of simple men for simple explanations and answers. This has been particularly evident in the field of sickness. During the greater part of the span of human experience, some one cause of sickness was accepted, which in turn called for some single way to overcome it. Not that the explanations and cures have always been the same. Now sickness was caused by devils, now by the magical incantations of a personal enemy, then by the wrath of an offended deity, or by the spread of pestilential air. Such explanations dictated in turn the cure —frightening away the devils, wearing a fetish around the neck, propitiating an angry god, staying out of the night air, or building a fire to cleanse the atmosphere. Advanced developments called for the single approach to a particular disease, like the Babylonian formula to call down the wrath of the gods on the worm that was supposed to cause toothache.

Contemporary man is not free from such mental habits. Who has not heard juvenile delinquency attributed to bad housing, lack of recreational facilities, or personal frustrations? Who is not familiar with explanations of mental disorders, now in terms of heredity, now of unhappiness in childhood, now of domineering parents, or excessive sexual inhibitions? The field of marriage and the family is no less replete with this kind of thinking, possibly more, than other areas of human behavior.

One of the most favored of contemporary cure-alls is education. What we need is more education for more people—so runs the favorite slogan of many problem-solvers. And there has been this about the traditional American educational system, that its abiding faith has been in a certain magical oneness which endows it with general pervasive powers to accomplish many specific ends. We are reminded of a university we once visited. On its crowded campus was one building with four main entrances, each announcing in stone a separate school for undergraduates, with a separate curriculum to train for subsequent careers. The teachers and courses were essentially the same in all four undergraduate schools. The course offerings were, to be sure, combined in different ways.

In fact, not only is education hailed as a general panacea for many of our personal and social ills, but its more zealous advocates see it as the force that is to reconstruct our society. This is an intriguing ambition. It represents a marked change from the historic purpose of education, which was to transmit the wisdom of the past. One cannot but wonder what reasons these educators have for thinking that they are able, or have been delegated, to construct the society of tomorrow. What preparation have they had for such a task? What agreement is there among them as to the nature and form of the brave new world of tomorrow? This is important because students will pass from one to the other of these reconstructors.

All of this is very important for marriage and the family. We have leaned very heavily upon education as the way to promote family happiness. No other nation has ever formally educated so large a proportion of its young people as we do, and courses on marriage and the family are now an integral part of the American system of education. A survey made some years ago reported that a total of almost two thousand professors were giving courses in this area in some six hundred and fifty colleges and universities. Supplementing this are courses below the college level, group instruction in church and young people's organizations, and various other efforts. Most of this development has taken place within the past generation, but more and more marriages continue to fail.

Looking objectively at this magical conception of education in the field of marriage and family living, certain questions are bound to arise. First, how competent are the teachers in this area? Their task is not an easy one. Education for family living is not like teaching algebra, Latin, or political science. It is not only a difficult but also a delicate area for intelligent exploration. There are no ready-made answers in a book to be transmitted to eager minds. There are no appellate courts which render the final decisions, nor post-mortems to establish the actual causes for domestic failure. Competence for this job involves more than knowledge of the Ivory Tower variety; it requires an understanding of life, people, their frailties, and their virtues, and no one profession has a monopoly of this. One must have knowledge plus insight plus perspective plus a balanced sense of values. Education for marriage assumes an enormous assignment.

Fortunately there are a limited number of centers where sound preparation for this task has been proceeding. Beyond these, however, the situation is far from reassuring. It was clearly revealed in a survey made by Dr. Henry A. Bowman less than a decade ago of six hundred and thirty-two colleges and universities offering such instruction. The mythical average which he presents follows.

There is only one course offered in the school and it is offered in the sociology department. It was started within the past ten or so years. The course is elective but not open freely and without restriction to all students. It extends through one semester and carries three semester hours credit. Classes meet three times per week. They are coeducational.

The instructor has some background in sociology or psychology or both but has had no specific training in marriage education. He is married and living with his wife. The marriage course is only a small part of his load. One gets the impression that administratively at least it is a sideline rather than his major responsibility although it may be his major interest. There is only one section of the course. One of the instructor's problems is to keep enrollment down to the point where he can handle this one section effectively.

The instructor handles all topics within the course. He does not bring in a series of specialists. He assigns a textbook and collateral reading. He considers at least part of his course to classify as functional education for marriage. No topics are deliberately omitted from the course. The instructor has problems concerning textbooks, library facilities, audio-visual materials, course content, defining student needs. He devotes considerable time to individual counseling upon student request.

Although students, faculty members, parents, and members of the community are favorably inclined toward marriage education, the course is available to only a very small proportion of the student body. Students are especially favorably inclined toward the course. Opposition and skepticism, when there is any, tends to come from members of the faculty and administration. The marriage course is made available to students going into teaching but the course is taught in an institution that makes no thoroughgoing provision for the training of teachers in this area.*

* Henry A. Bowman, "Marriage Education in the Colleges," Journal of Social Hygiene, XXXV (December, 1949), 415-16.

A second question might be raised about the material that is used for purposes of instruction, such as is found in books, articles, and research papers. In seeking an answer to this question, it is necessary to recall that college courses in preparation for marriage have developed, not because wise administrators saw the need for them and added them to their educational programs, but because students demanded them. College courses on marriage and the family have sprung mostly from the "grass roots." As a result, much of our family literature has been developed to win and/or maintain popularity with young unmarried students. Thus it has emphasized the predominance of the romantic motive in marriage; the right of young people to choose their own mates, without benefit of parent, kinsman, or pastor; and the right to individualism—meaning the right to be and to please yourself. On the other hand, naturally too, there has been relatively little mention of the responsibilities of married life and parenthood, their sober realities, and possible techniques making for family happiness. Sex has often been unduly emphasized, important as it is in married life.

Bearing upon the nature of the family literature is the charge that much of it has been developed by people with little direct family experience, a point made by Professor Zimmerman of Harvard. Some of these are intellectuals, limited in their range of human contacts and experience; others are childless; still others have been warped by personal domestic experiences. Obviously there are those, too, to whom these comments do not apply.

This charge raises certain interesting questions in turn. What personal backgrounds and experiences tend to qualify or disqualify teachers in marriage courses? Is it the person whose entire family experience has been consistently happy? Is it a person who has been divorced and then happily remarried? Is childlessness a disqualifying condition? Does continued listening to family troubles qualify for insight into family happiness? How old should an instructor be, and for what particular group of students? Should a woman instruct male students and a man instruct women students? Is being married an absolute prerequisite? These are matters as yet not only unsettled but in many cases not considered.

A final question has to do with the specificity of education for marriage. In other words, how much should it deal with generalities, and how much should it get down to "brass tacks"? Education as magic tends to be a belief in its generalized efficacy. Yet nothing is so clearly taught by human experience than that generalizations are vague and patronizing. The problems of married life, in fact of all life, are specific. How specific, then, should education for family life be? What comparative weight should be given to romanticism, individualism, courtship, honeymoon behavior, sex, budgeting, finances, insurance, selection and preparation of foods, and child care?

The Magic of Science

Third is the modern belief in the magic of science. Science is the miracle-maker of modern society. Like magic, it is a technology, but it seeks to control through an understanding of cause and effect. The dividing line between the two seems clear enough, but contemporary man, because of his impatience with the arduous task of understanding cause and effect, or because of his need to ease the stresses of his social environment, develops various beliefs in the magic of science which differ in details but not in their essential nature from those of primitive man.

Our secular age fosters these beliefs in the magic of science in a variety of ways. Chief among them is the habit of identifying scientists with the innovators of the gadgets and other material changes in our culture. People are being told constantly of the research activities and expenditures of modern industry (four billion dollars is the present total bandied about), they see the new products that result, and advertising lauds their great improvements. Science thus comes to be thought of as a sort of magic for the creation of the new. Next, by a neat process of analogy, the old is labeled "unscientific" because it is old. To adhere to the old is to be hopelessly out of date—and inadequate.

To illustrate the prevailing attitude, we like an incident sketched on a television program shortly before Christmas. A customer came to buy a Christmas tree. The vendor tried to sell him all kinds of odd, bizarre, unusual Christmas trees. But the buyer persisted. "All I want is a regular green Christmas tree," to which the irritated vendor finally replied: "What's the matter with you? Are you a reactionary?"

Another turn of analogy implies that, since "science" creates new attractive gadgets, it will similarly give us social and spiritual values which are equally an improvement upon the old. Thus, for many people, science comes to be thought of as the creator of social innovations, never as the enshrinement of old values. Since science can produce shirts that need not be ironed, we can have marital happiness without effort. Because we can make white writing paper out of old rags, we can make an illiterate barmaid into an ideal wife for the president of a great university. Now that we can make Mazola out of corn, why not turn interracial marriages into perfect matrimonial unions? Particularly is this viewpoint palatable to the social rebel who, whenever he sees something he does not like, loudly proclaims that what we need is a reconstruction based upon a scientific analysis.

Although large sums of money are spent on the assumption that scientific research can perform miracles in reforming society, even as it has in the world of material objects, no one has yet proved this assumption, and few have dared to face and question it. Much of research in this latter area has but confirmed the obvious, and it may be that this will be the chief function of science in the field of human behavior. Or it may be that science in this area will underscore stubborn limitations rather than reveal dramatic possibilities for change. Brainwashing an eighteen-year-old boy may not be as effective or permanent as silver-plating a loving cup.

In Conclusion

We do not mean to depreciate the efforts which we have just described. The ability to put into words and talk out problems is a real help, and in various ways. Insight and tolerance are much needed in a world of mingling peoples and cultures. To a belief in the importance and value of education, we have dedicated our lives. Science has been the architect of much that is new, and some of it is good.

Our insistence is upon more modest claims for all of these. Judged by the acid test of experience, we have seen no evidence of magical power in any one of them, as the high tide of marital failure makes so very clear. It is our judgment that a reliance upon magic is of no help in the serious business of family relations, even when dressed up in modern garb. Happiness in marriage must be deserved. It is a structure that must be built, and our search must be for more enduring building materials and craftsmanship. These are to be found chiefly in the values which we accept as individuals and as a nation. Words, education, and science can help us, once we are clear on what we want in marriage, and then we can use them as means to those ends.

Perhaps our basic trouble is that too many Americans are not family-minded, by which we mean that they do not look upon family life as an end in itself. Marriage and the family to them are means to an end—an achieved status to achieve other statuses, a vehicle for the development of personality— instead of an end itself as a way of life. One need only drive along our city streets, look at the near-hovels in which people live, and contrast them with the late-model automobiles parked in front of them, to find the concrete proof.

Until the design for modern living is built around the family, both design and family would seem to be out of focus.