Marriage Bashing
College textbooks undermine a building block of our society
As appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on Tuesday, September 23, 1997

When it comes to marriage, we're teaching the next generation a lot of bunk. Marriage bashing flourishes in college textbooks, according to a new report from The Council on Families, part of the Institute for American Values.

The Council is a nonpartisan group convened to examine the status and future of the family as a social institution. It is not, as its name 'may suggest, a nest of right-wing idealogues. It includes nationally prominent scholars and family experts such as Judith Wallerstein, founder of the Center for the Family in Transition; Barbara DaFoe Whitehead, author and social historian; William Raspberry, syndicated columnist for The Washington Post, university professors, and even "Miss Manners" Judith Martin. "Closed Hearts, Closed Minds: The Textbook Story of Marriage," evaluates, book-by-book, the quality and content of 20 leading college-level textbooks on marriage and family life. The conclusion: Most current marriage and family textbooks offer a bleak view of marriage as an institution and as a commitment, says research director Norval Glenn of the University of Texas.

Here's a summary of the findings:

• Textbooks convey a pessimistic view of marriage. The costs of marriage, particularly to women, often are exaggerated, while benefits, to individuals and society, are downplayed or ignored.
• Almost all the texts shortchange children, devoting far more space to adult problems and relationships (such as "swinging" lifestyles).
• Textbooks "are typically full of glaring errors, distortions of research, omissions of important data and misattributions of scholarship."

So who cares about college textbooks? We should. Mr. Glenn points out that they represent "the distilled essence of the current conventional wisdom that informs the professionals who are the advisors and custodians of the family as an institution." The attitudes reverberate through our culture when ordinary folks turn to family professionals for personal advice or public policy. And textbooks are read by college students who view them as authoritative. At the very least, such flawed teaching cheats tuition-paying; students.

It's obvious to everyone except the textbook authors that stable marriages are good for adults, for children and for society. The battle for public opinion is over. But the "experts" are still out to lunch.

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