Foreword
One of the most controversial and vitally important questions facing our modern society today is the complex relationship between what might be called a new permissiveness in contemporary standards of morality, and the alarming increase in marital problems: divorce, separations, and unhappy marriages. Whenever we pick up a magazine or a newspaper, it seems that these two phenomenon are being joined in a causal relationship the new morality usually being cast in the role of the villain, and being blamed for the increase in marital difficulties, as well as all manner of other ills that plague our modem world.
More often than not, this new morality is not examined closely enough to warrant a causal connection. What, after all, are we talking about when we talk about permissiveness? Certainly, the problem is too complicated to allow a cursory and incomplete interpretation; and yet, it is precisely this kind of treatment that causes the problem to become so confused in the mind of the general public. Just as certainly, the problem defies any generalized diagnosis: it must be considered in the light of every individual case it affects; it must be weighed against all the circumstances peculiar to the particular people involved.