"A Special Relationship of Peculiar Intimacy": Marriage Education in the United States, 1920s-1960s

• Main Author: Guest, Lacey
• Other Authors: Herman, Ellen
• Language: en_US
• Published: University of Oregon 2018
• Subjects: Citizenship; Education; Eugenics; Family; Marriage; Sexuality
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1794/23808

Marriage education emerged in universities across the United States in the 1920s as a response to a perceived “marriage crisis.” Over the next several decades, marriage educators shaped marriage course content to reflect student interests and maintain relevance to students’ lives. With the goal of saving marriage from the abstract forces of modernity, faculty initially targeted a specific demographic: white, middle-class, college students. This thesis chronicles the trajectory of marriage education as it shifted from a mechanism of positive eugenics to a vehicle by which black students in the South could access rights of citizenship in the post-WWII period. What began as a method of civic exclusion with roots in the eugenic movement transformed into a means through which Southern black citizens asserted their rights to education, marriage, sexuality, and family. This democratization of education for citizenship reflected the diverse uses of marriage education from the 1920s through the 1960s.