The Coming of the Counsellors: The Development of Marriage Guidance in Australia

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Second World War, several factors came together in Australia to provide the context and motivation for the emergence of formal organisations offering help to couples experiencing marital difficulties. The marriage guidance move ment had already been established in the USA during the 1920s and in Britain in the late thirties. Models were already to hand, therefore, when the wartime pressures on family relationships led to increased concern in Australia too about problems of modern 'family life'. From its genesis in the late 1940s, to a resurgence of public interest in its role in the 1980s, marriage counselling and conciliation has received a mixed general response, but little serious attention from Australian social scientists. Although there have been some 'evaluative' studies (e.g., Krupinski and Marshall, 1967), the emergence of marriage guidance as one of a series of strategies aimed at personal life has been neglected. By discussing the movement's historical development in Australia, this paper suggests the direction in which a fuller analysis might proceed.1 Marital counselling organisations have been a significant part of a general process of redefining familial relationships during the twentieth century. The role of the new middle class in promoting 'modern' concepts of the individual and of the nature of social ties has received some attention in the theoretical literature, but I argue here that gender dynamics also warrant investigation.