Seventy years ago, when Harry Allen and Susie Robinson decided to get married, they did not have any books to help them. They had no professional premarital counseling. And yet they and their generation developed far more stable families than we do today, with all our books, counseling and scientific knowledge. Why?
In the first place, they had a much better chance of marrying "our kind of folks." In Grandpa's day the range of selection for most young folks was about as far as Dobbin could travel and get back the same day - probably less than ten miles. Within this radius there were only about twenty available girls among whom Harry Allen could choose. Most of these were from his general background. The few who were not, he knew about.
Today a girl from Portland, Oregon meets a boy from Portland, Maine while both are on vacation at Biloxi, Mississippi. Because so many of us now live in big cities, and because of greater possibilities for travel, the number of available mates a young person might meet runs into the hundreds. Furthermore, many of these are not suitable, because of very different backgrounds. Yet superficially they look, behave, and generally act alike. The problem of choice was certainly a whole lot simpler in Grandpa's day.
Secondly, both Harry and Susie understood what marriage meant at that time, far better than most young people know what it means now. When Susie said "Yes" to Harry, she knew what she was getting into. What is more important, she had learned from her mother how to handle it. She could not only bake a pie, Billy Boy, but also tend a garden, raise chickens, make clothing, and manage a household. She and Grandpa would never have dreamed of discussing sex. But both of them had been brought up on farms where animals were bred. In some ways they knew more about it than their less inhibited grandchildren.
They also knew each other and each other's families well long before they were called upon to "know" each other in the Biblical sense. Both their families had lived in the same town since before they were born. There was little about any family which was not publicly understood. Harry knew what the whole town knew, that Susie's Aunt Jane had run off with a man not her husband, and was now living some¬where in New York with her twelve-year-old son, supported in part by Brother Jo, who was Susie's father.
Harry's Aunt May, who was "not too bright," lived in the same town with an unmarried brother, with no attempt to conceal either her mental limitations or her relatedness. Everybody knew that Harry's mother had "not been the same" since her youngest son died, and that Susie's father sometimes drank too much hard cider and was not too reliable. Yes, our grandparents knew, not only the persons whom they married, but often the characters and even the emotions of their in-laws.
Finally and perhaps most important, they demanded far less of their marriages. Life was hard, and often a rather grim business. The most important task was to secure basic physical necessities. Marriage might have its moments of romance and emotional glow, but its main function was to produce things, especially things to eat. Husbands and wives no more thought of demanding glamor of each other, than a farmer of today would demand it of his tractor. They might appreciate beauty in each other, as in their animals and their land, but the function of them all was primarily to produce.
The relative stability, plus the romantic portrayals of marriage in the past, have caused many to overestimate the desirability of the "old-fashioned home." Yet the absence of divorce is not the same as success. There is another side to the picture. As Thornton Wilder has so skillfully portrayed, the atmosphere of Our Town was constricted and arid; its people emotionally malnourished. The peculiarities and personality quirks so vividly and truly described by such novelists as Dickens and Mark Twain were amusing to our fathers. But these authors themselves sensed what we are just now beginning to realize, that humor is often the distorted mask of tragedy. If they wrote truly of their times, serious personality distortion was tragically common. Of course personality, good and bad, is a product of an entire culture, not of the family alone, but the family is a major influence. Our ancestors were less successful in their family life than many have supposed. But we must get back to the problems of the people of today.
Harry Allen's grandson faces a far more difficult problem of mate selection. Within a ten-mile radius of Harry's home lived about twenty available girls. The grandson lives in a big city, and within a ten-mile radius of his home are more than twenty thousand marriageable girls. Furthermore, because of modern transportation, the size of the radius can be expanded indefinitely. Harry knew which of the girls were "his kind of folks." His grandson finds it very difficult to know the background and the family of the girls he meets, and how they look at, think and feel about life. Yet such knowledge of those whom we are considering marrying is as important as it ever was.
Young people of today have another problem which adds to their difficulties of selection. They expect so much more from marriage. Susie demanded only that Harry be reasonably decent and a "good provider." Harry demanded little more than competence in the garden and in the kitchen. We of today demand much more. We expect that the person whom we marry will be able to make us happy. Living in big cities among thousands of people who never really know us, makes us hungry for intimate companionship. When we marry we demand of each other a kind of intimate feeling interaction which is far more difficult to get than anything expected by our grandparents. And to complicate matters, Hollywood glamor pictures give us absurd ideas of the romantic bliss which we feel that marriage should give.
Yes, marriage selection today is difficult and full of challenge. How can you know what you will want in a wife or husband years from now? How can you know what he or she will be like at the very time when your mate will be most important to you? Furthermore, even if you do know what you may want, how can you know that you are getting it?
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