Marriage and the American Ideal

a selection from the beginning of the Preface: Anyone who sets out to write a functional textbook in the marriage and family fieldâthat is, a book designed to facilitate human actionâis forced by the nature of the assignment to accept some basic assumptions about the nature of man and the nature of marriage and the family. Regarding the nature of man, the author writing on marriage and family accepts the assumption that the personality of the reader is not âsetâ and that he is capable of personality growth and can benefit from new experience. If this were not the assumption of the author, he would not write the book. Secondly, the author assumes that people are not mere pawns at the mercy of forces outside themselves, but that they have the capacity to make decisions and to choose values and goals for living. If this were not so, a book designed to facilitate human action would be useless. Thirdly, the author assumes that people are at least in part rational creatures and that they choose values and goals for living on the basis of knowledge and insights available to themâknowledge and insights of the kind presented in this book. Regarding the nature of marriage and the family, the author accepts the assumption that there are things about marriage and the family which can be known and transmitted to others and that the discipline or disciplines the author represents possess such data. It is the assumption of this text that the empirical social sciences possess knowledge and insights about marriage and the family which are worthy of the readerâs time and attention. All of the above assumptions are basic. Their truthfulness cannot be absolutely demonstrated, as is the case with all basic assumptions. They must be accepted on faith. The writer accepts them for the purposes of his task, either implicitly or explicitly. In this book they are made explicit. But apparently these are the assumptions of most authors of books on marriage and family. What is it that makes this book different from the other marriage and family books on the market? This is a fair question, and we will attempt to answer it. No marriage and family text adequately covers its subject matter unless both the importance of values and the findings of empirical science are taken into account. Only the conviction that no text to date had adequately dealt with the first of theseâthe importance of values in the marriage and family decisions of individualsâcalled for adding another text to the array already available. Hence there are âfirstsâ in the text which will be apparent to the person familiar with other texts in the field, and the major âfirstâ is the conscious and explicit attempt to give place to values consistent with their place in the lives of people. The primary purpose of this book is to show how the major value themes in American culture and the findings of social science relate to problems and decisions of marriage and family living.

Author / Editor: Martinson, Floyd M.

Category: Psychology

DO NOT BUY, IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THE FREE MOBIPOCKET READER