THE
Good Housekeeping
MARRIAGE BOOK

Twelve Steps to a Happy Marriage



EDITED BY
William F. Bigelow
FORMER EDITOR Good Housekeeping MAGAZINE

FOREWORD
by Helen Judy Bond

GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC.
Garden City, New York

THE CONTRIBUTORS
Ernest R. Groves
James L. McConaughy
Ellsworth Huntington
Eleanor Roosevelt
Gladys Hoagland Groves
Elizabeth Bussing
Jessie Marshall
Hornell Hart
Frances Bruce Strain
William Lyon Phelps
Stanley G. Dickinson

Garden City Publishing Co. reprint edition, 1949, by special
arrangement with Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Copyright, 1938, by
PRENTICE-HALL, INC.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

William F. Bigelow

Introduction

The articles that are printed in this book made what was in my opinionthe most important, the most constructive, series on a single subjectthat Good Housekeeping has published in the quarter century and morethat I was its editor. And they might so easily never have beenwritten—just a little item in a newspaper missed, or its significanceoverlooked, and these sincere and helpful articles would still be lockedup in the minds and hearts of the men and women who wrote them. For itall happened just like that. Students in one of the larger Californiauniversities asked that a course in marriage relations be given—and aNew York newspaper heralded it with a stick of type over about page 10.

Somehow the item impressed me deeply. Here were thousands of students ofboth sexes, thinking of marriage, physically impelled toward marriage,admitting that they wanted more information about marriage beforeundertaking it. Add to these students the hundreds of thousands in othercolleges and to them the millions of young men and young women outsideof college—and there was Youth itself, visioning marriage as the GreatAdventure, which no one should miss, but about which there were gravereports.

I have heard lots about Youth in recent years—its lackadaisicalattitude toward all serious things, its tendency to look the moral codestraight in the eye and smash it, its belief that chastity isn't worthits cost or success in marriage worth working for. And I had disbelievedmuch that I had heard, it having been my privilege to work with and foryoung people in high school and college over a long period of years. Iknew that Youth is looking for something better than it is being givenin either precept or example. And so this request of a group of collegeyoung people seemed to me to be both a challenge and an opportunity.

I accepted the challenge. The next step was to find out how best to meetit. It seemed to me that to offer our young people anything less thanthe best that I could get would be letting them down. So I turned foradvice to several college men who had made a long study of the problemsinvolved in marriage, and from the various lists of subjects and authorssuggested—adding a few of my own—selected the group now presented inpermanent form in this book. If these articles make success in marriageseem something that must constantly be worked for, they at the same timeshow that success, plus the happiness that goes with it, can beachieved. Which is all, I think, that any man or woman has a right toask for.

William F. Bigelow

Helen Judy B