Marriage Problem Sitemap

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.

01. Marriage Is Serious - The last words of the wedding ceremony have been spoken. There is a temporary hush. Then the organ peals forth— clearly, joyously. The happy couple march down the aisle, the bride proudly clutching the arm of the groom. All eyes are turned on them—a few are dimmed with tears. Outside, a car is waiting, which whisks them to the reception that follows. Here there is much laughter, gaiety, eating, and drinking. The bride is flushed with excitement, radiant with happiness.

02. Marital Problems - John Smith and Betty Jones were married when they were twenty-seven and twenty-three years old, respectively, and settled down in a small town in which John had been reared and where he was now employed. He was the only son of parents with modest means. From early boyhood, he had been an outstanding student, and his parents, by dint of some sacrifices, had sent him through an excellent technical school, some considerable distance from home.

03. Courtship + Dating - This night, I called Sarah, my daughter, to my chamber and spoke to her of her forthcoming state of matrimony. It had concerned me, as I had imagined that Sarah entertained a preference which would have been wholly unsuitable to her complacency. The matter, nonetheless, was terminated to our mutual agreement.

Young John Gow had spoken this day. I informed Sarah, and congratulated her upon receiving the attentions of this sober and industrious young man. Upon hearing this information, Sarah evidenced some little obstinacy.

04. Romance Enough? - If one were to read all that is said about romantic love in the textbooks on marriage and family life and in the various manuals of advice for young people published during the past twenty years or so, one would get the impression that it is some kind of dangerous and contagious disease for which the scientists should find a vaccine.

05. Own Kind - "The one big trouble with my husband is that I have to put my mind in reverse to follow his mental processes. Personally, he's a fine guy, but there are just so many things about which we feel and think differently. We do compromise, we do defer to each other; but when you're married and raising two children, so many things come about which compromise goes decidedly against the grain. Much as my husband and I like each other in certain ways, I'm sure both of us would have been happier married to someone of our own kind." Thus spoke a thirty-five-year-old wife and mother, married to a man whose religion and national origin were different from her own.

06. How Old - Judy danced divinely, and Bob had a good line of light chatter. Beside being tall and handsome, he was very useful during the round of social activities which Judy's mother planned that spring when her daughter was graduating from a nearby private school. "Bob is such a nice boy," said Judy's mother. And so, although both were only eighteen, their engagement was announced at the time of the last scheduled social event. "Isn't it exciting," said Judy's girl friends, not entirely without envy.

07. The Individual - Ruth and Paul did not know it, but they were born in a country and at a time when they had many rights. If there were any truth to the idea of prenatal impressions (which there isn't), the right to be wanted and the right to be well born would have been written all over them at birth. Both were born in the same neighborhood to middle-class parents who had fully accepted the current ideas of the times. Both were raised by "the book," meaning according to the methods advocated by pediatricians, child psychologists, and child psychiatrists.

08. Open-Class System - In 1956, a young Philadelphia girl who had gained some prominence in the movies was married to a young man, hereditary prince in the smallest principality in Europe. The popular interest and the publicity given to it in the established news media of this country exceeded that accorded to the marriages of the children of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, and to the weddings of Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Grover Cleveland, combined

09. Become Parents - To one who reads the American literature on the family it is almost like revealing a secret to mention that husbands and wives become parents too. This is a facetious statement only if taken too literally. Actually there is a good deal of truth in it because the possibility and problems of parenthood have been rather neglected in books and articles used in education and preparation for marriage.

10. Family Group - Young people can find a lot of material on how to get married but very little on how to stay married. In these words a shrewd student once characterized the current literature on the family. There is much truth in this observation. Nowhere do our efforts to promote successful family life fail more conspicuously than in the lack of emphasis upon the family as a project in group living, and the effort to find and encourage techniques in family group living.

11. 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."

THE END