MARRIAGE.

By Robert O. Blood Jr. '42.Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1962. 515 pp.$6.00.

At the present time, more than 1,000 institutions of allegedly higher learning in the United States offer instruction in marriage and family living. (This reviewer is happy to report, parenthetically, that Dartmouth has long been among this enlightened group.) These courses vary widely between institutions in scope, content, level, and aim.

Many large coeducational institutions are so convinced of the importance of this instruction that they make it a part of "their core curriculum at the junior college level. This practice is based upon two sound pedagogical assumptions:

(a) that a large, although undetermined, minority of the students (especially the female contingent) happily flock to the campus to find a mate: and

(b) that a somewhat smaller percentage of both sexes get no further than the freshman or sophomore year and, hence, any formal instruction in marriage must be gleaned before that time.

The present volume is an excellent addition to the growing number of textbooks written to supply this burgeoning market. The author is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan and has had extensive experience in both teaching and research in marriage and family relations.

A first edition, entitled Anticipating YourMarriage, was reviewed in this family journal for November, 1955. The revision is, for all practical purposes, a new book, incorporating as it does a representative sample of the hundreds of empirical investigations that annually pour from the typewriters of the professors and into the pages of the scholarly journals. A rough idea of the extent of this research can be gained from the author's statement that he has specifically incorporated the findings of some 250 (mostly) new books and articles in this revision.

The space at my disposal precludes any extensive summary of, let alone comment on, the contents of this valuable book. Suffice it to indicate that it deals, more or less extensively, with such topics as: the meaning of marriage, dating, choosing a partner, mixed marriage, love, emotional readiness for marriage, the roles (i.e., mutually expected behavior) of the spouses, divorce and its causes, remarriage after divorce, family planning, the birth and education of children, and family problem-solving. This is admittedly a large order. But those enquiring members of the Dartmouth family who would like to know the best that is being currently thought and said in this dynamic area will find this book a good place to look.