Marriage Education: Not by the Book

Courses in marriage and the family are failing college students all over thecountry, said psychologists at a symposium at the Institute for American Values in September. It's not that students are flunking the courses, but that the classes don't deliver a real education in family life. For one thing, said Norval D. Glenn. Ph.D., the textbooks used in most classes are inadequate. After scrutinizing 20 such tomes, the University of Texas sociologist called them a "national embarrassment," and detailed their shortcomings, which include:

a determinedly pessimistic view of marriage and its benefits, often achieved by omitting key information;

misguided attempts to avoid stigmatizing students from divorced, single-parent, or step families;

disregard for issues of child well-being;

glaring errors in the interpretation of research, which ricochet from book to book as authors borrow from each other, mistakes and all. "Students who use the information in these books as a basis for future decisions--is social workers, teachers, psychologists, and other professional custodians of the family--will have been consistently misled," Glenn found.

But not if their teachers can help it: many instructors at the symposium reported that they cobble together their own reading lists rather than use the subpar textbooks now available.

ILLUSTRATION