Those who want to do something to help young folk in this difficult matter of selection frequently go at the matter from the wrong end. They assume that they have an unencumbered field on which to work, when actually it is already covered with ideas, whether good, bad, or indifferent. For young folk do not, when they reach the marrying age, suddenly begin to study the characteristics most desirable in a mate. They have ideas on this subject, but they don't get them just at that time. Reading, talking with friends, discussion courses in college or voluntary organizations-all these give additional ideas and help to clear up uncertainties. But most of their ideas on the subject have been acquired from childhood up. They have been built into their whole system of life values by parents, teachers, friends, and companions, for successful marriage (to a considerable degree at least) depends upon the same rules as successful friendship.
From an early age, children are unconsciously influenced by the kind of playmates they are encouraged to play with and even the kind of adult friends their parents choose. This constitutes a process of selection, a continual choosing of persons with whom it is worth while to spend time, and the avoidance of those with whom one would waste time. This is much the same as saying that we choose as friends the people that we like and that we like them because they represent, in varying degrees, life values that comfortably coincide with our own.
In much the same way, one marries a person because one likes her-not because one has gone around with list in hand and checked her as the one who most nearly meets all specifications. Even those who temper romance with common sense are hardly that cold and analytical. We marry persons, not abstractions. This does not mean that a study of attributes which in general are most likely to make for success in marriage is not helpful; the emphasis of ideals is helpful at any age. But it does mean that the most strategic point of influence is long before the mating age and that the responsibility of education for marriage rests first on parents, teachers, and others who shape the ideals of children.
By the time young people have reached the marriageable age, their life values are pretty well established, which is to say that the general type of person they will marry is already determined, within reasonable bounds. Even then they may be influenced in certain crises by the counseling of elders whose wisdom and judgment they respect, but on the whole they are satisfied to follow what they consider to be their own ideas, little realizing that these ideas are not their own but have accrued from a hundred sources through many years. Any cross section, therefore, of their standards of selection would be to a considerable degree a reflection of the value patterns of the social milieu in which they grew up. Nevertheless, such a measure of youth's attitudes should be of interest.
No study has been made on this subject that includes proportional representation of all races, nationalities, religious faiths, and social and economic classes in the country, and hence no "all-American" standard can be determined. It would be easy to argue that such a study would mean little, for most people marry, at one time or another, and these of necessity include rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, generous and selfish, honest and dishonest, good cooks and poor cooks, and most of the opposites that could be mentioned. But it is possible to find the prevailing ideals of smaller groups, for example, those of a given locality, or of a selected class within a given locality.
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