Family Attitudes of Denominational College and University Students, 1929 and 1936

Abstract

OCIOLOGICAL and popular interest in the study of attitudes toward sex, marriage, and family behavior goes on apparently unabated.' KJThe continued efforts of sociologists and psychologists to describe such attitudes scientifically, as well as the popular articles of journalists and public opinion analysts suggest that our culture does not have a more sensitive barometer than the mores, folkways, and values relating to sex, and that investigation in this field may furnish clues to cultural change. The present paper reports a portion of a study which, like numerous others in this field, utilized data obtained from college students, but which allowed certain types of comparisons not possible, so far as the writer knows, in other studies. A study of college and university students' ideals of marriage and family life was first made in i929 as a part of a larger study of population mobility. A questionnaire, the pertinent portions of which are herewith given,2 was presented to the entire student body of each of two small denominational colleges (one Presbyterian and one Methodist Episcopal) in Iowa and to some two hundred students in the sociology classes at the University of Iowa. In I936, those phases of the study here reported were repeated with the corresponding student groups currently enrolled, the cross-sectional pictures thus obtained presumably furnishing certain