Student Attitudes on Marriage and the Family

Abstract

I N TIMES of economic and social stress, it is clear that our social institutions are compelled to readjust themselves in order to survive. This process of readjustment is usually most evident in those maintenanceinstitutions dealing intimately with man's struggle to exist or to achieve a certain standard of living, but sooner or later, after a varying degree of cultural lag, the other institutions must follow suit and readjust also. In latter category belongs marriage and the family. The sociologist is well aware of the many important changes occurring in field throughout the world: the testing of new methods and techniques in Russia; the reversion, however temporary, to Kirche, Kinder, und Kuche in the so-called Fascist societies; the increase in divorce (although an accurate and real divorce rate has not yet been computed), the alterations both static and dynamic within the family pattern, the gradual coming of age of a rational approach to sex, and other changes in America. Still, serious difficulties arise when we attempt to prognosticate future trends. Ogburn can list for us annually the important social variations and Wells can paint the outlines of the Things to Come, but we still depend largely on guesswork as to what will and what may happen. However, the investigation of the attitudes of youth on the subject of marriage and the family, and an analysis of changes in those attitudes from time to time, may give us some factual basis for our predictions. Attitudes as recorded here are regarded merely as indices to possible subsequent behavior. They are not confused with behavior itself, even though there are some who tell us this is the stuff that society is made of.' On the other hand, attitudes are part and parcel of the folkways and mores, as Sumner long since amply demonstrated. Ways of belief, thoughtways as Lundberg puts it, are as intrinsic to the cultural pattern as ways of action. Conditioned by the cultural environment, these attitudes, either when translated into action or when serving as taboo-obstacles to social variation, condition the social environment in turn. Hence, it is not merely defensible but necessary to study these data if we do it cautiously.

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