Marital success factors, society, personality

Viewed broadly, marital success can be regarded as contingent upon two interrelated factors: (1) society, and (2) personality. Though these overlap and express themselves in an infinite variety of combinations, they can nevertheless be separated for purposes of analysis. In later chapters we shall deal with the personal elements. Here our focus is to be upon society as a factor in marriage and family stability.

Social institutions are in large part the products of their cultural environments. They are usually organized around certain biologically determined needs, it is true, which explains their universality. But they develop along a variety of lines according to the cultural and interactional patterns of the societies that provide their settings. Thus, every institution represents both unity and diversity, unity as to broad outline or general characteristics, and diversity as to detail. Furthermore, as circumstances change, institutions alter--either that or lose their functional usefulness and in time perish.

To all of this the family is no exception. It arose in response to basic and universal human needs; it has assumed a variety of culturally imposed forms; and it changes as society changes, though not always at the same rate or without disturbance.

Society is in a state of flux. It has always been so, for that matter, but the changes that have been affecting it in recent decades have been particularly violent. Most of these stem from the Industrial Revolution and the new mode of life it has ushered in. Gone are the days of isolation, self-sufficient economy, and hand production. Gone also are the simplicity and the slow tempo of living that were a part of the preindustrial age. Nearly everything is mass production now, and living in general has become more accelerated and complicated as a result.

Change itself is never bad, nor good, only inevitable. But it does require adjustment. Institutions quite naturally receive the impact of the social currents about them, and where they are able to adjust adequately they survive. Otherwise they may pass out of existence.

There is no implication here that society has been in a state of retrogression, or that man should return to the "good old days" when life was simple and almost everyone was supposedly happy. There is no reason why man should be less happy today than formerly; quite the opposite. Times are not worse, just different. The suggestion is that man and his institutions must adjust, always adjust, or they will lag and may be thrown off balance. Though there are special difficulties in the complexity and the unsettled nature of this transitional period, opportunities are probably greater for genuine accomplishment and satisfaction today, because knowledge is widespread, than in any other period of time. The potentials are here; it is now up to man to turn them into actualities.