The Groves Conference on Marriage and Family: History and Impact on Family Science

Family Diversity

In the book Contemporary Families and Alternative Lifestyles: Handbook on Research and Theory, a product of the 1981 Groves Conference, Macklin and Rubin (1983) used the term alternative lifestyles in documenting and synthesizing research on a wide range of emerging family forms and relationships. Although I continued to use the term in two subsequent publications (Rubin, 2001; Rubin, 2004), Coleman and Ganong (2001) recognized that the term alternative lifestyles had segued into family diversity as some pejoratively viewed relationship forms became more socially acceptable.

In 1965 “The One-Parent Family in the United States” was the theme for the Groves Conference in Philadelphia (Bell, 1965). This conference was an early recognition by Groves of major shifts in family composition. Chaired by Robert Bell, the conference covered such topics as the scope and significance of the one-parent family, matriarchy and lower-class families, child-rearing, and cross-cultural views. Benjamin Schlesinger, Hyman Rodman, Emily Mudd, Lee Rainwater, and Carlfred Broderick were among the participants. The genesis of interest among Groves members in studying family diversity is referred to in Sussman’s 1972 special issue publication for the National Council on Family Relations. Titled Nontraditional Family Forms in the 1970s its contributors described the increasing pluralism in family structures and the implications for social policy, laws, human services, and bureaucracies (Sussman, 1972a). The Groves Conferences in 1971 and 1972 served as the bases for Page  235Sussman’s edited work, and the 1973 conference continued the theme. In 1971 the Groves Conference was held in San Juan, Puerto Rico (Chilman, 1971). Titled “The Future of Marriage and Parenthood,” it was perhaps the first organized attempt by family scholars to begin cataloging the sweeping changes surrounding late-20th-century American family life. As Eleanor Macklin (2009) described, “....the conference was generated by papers that documented the evolving sexual mores and living patterns resulting from the massive societal changes of the 60s.” The need was apparent to 1971 attendee Robert Whitehurst, who pointed out that we did not have good terminology and that there existed a shortage of data on almost everything related to alternative lifestyles. Discussions included whether “the family” had a viable future, what future parenthood would look like, and—perhaps most significantly—an attempt to identify new interpersonal relations. Seminars included topics such as same-sex relationships, college student cohabitation, the affiliative family, androgyny, mate swapping, group marriage, and communal living. Intellectual debate was capped by presentations from some of the foremost family scholars of the time. Jessie Bernard distinguished marriage from lifestyle by emphasizing the specific socially framed parameters of marriage versus the greater freedom of establishment of any other forms of household arrangements.

Rustum Roy elaborated on the book he had written with his wife Della, Honest Sex: A Revolutionary New Sex Guide for the Now Generation of Christians (1969). In that book, Roy and Roy argued that traditional monogamy was obsolete and that loving one’s neighbors should be taken literally because traditional monogamy isolates individuals and families and does not facilitate the development of meaningful personal relationships. Not only did they challenge so-called biblical rules and treat the idea of one exclusive sex partner as an absurdity when universally applied but they even urged the legalization of bigamy. Duane Denfield and Michael Gordon, who had coined the expression “the family that swings together clings together” in a 1970 article, described the more positive aspects of mate swapping while recognizing that studies of dropouts from swinging had not yet been conducted (Gordon, 1978). The limited ability of architects to understand social and behavioral research and design living spaces conducive to communal lifestyles was criticized Page  236by George Trieschman, who condemned the lack of a humanistic architecture. Robert Ryder commented that the term commune was almost meaningless, as the variety of communal arrangements made them almost impossible to operationally define. Ryder raised the concern that communes and marriage might suffer from the same idealization, the belief that there was an institutional guarantee of success and happiness. He argued that communes require energy, resources such as money, and charismatic leaders to maintain them; those based primarily on loving will not last. Ethel Vatter and Sylvia Clavan raised awareness regarding the importance of older people in communes and of older single women adopting families to exchange emotional and material resources. They called this the affiliative family. Androgyny was introduced into the Groves discussion by Joy and Howard Osofsky, who defined it as a lifestyle with no sexual differentiation in roles. A plea for longitudinal studies of families came from Margaret Feldman. Eleanor Macklin led a pioneering discussion of a pilot study of cohabiting college students. Finally, among the issues and questions raised regarding this new area of research was a concern about American society’s responses to alternative lifestyles. Would there be a reactionary crackdown from legal and government sources, outright condemnation from religious authorities, and a consensus among unsympathetic counselors, therapists, and human service professionals that the practitioners of alternative lifestyles were ill? Catherine Chilman, David Olson, Marvin Sussman, Carlfred Broderick, Harold Feldman, Gladys Groves, Robert Harper, Lester Kirkendall, David and Vera Mace, Marie Peters, Gerhard Neubeck, James Ramey, Nena O’Neill, Rose Somerville, Roger Rubin and many other attendees would make contributions over the next 40 years examining the shifting parameters of American family life.

The 1972 Groves conference in Dallas, Texas, “Societal Planning for Family Pluralism,” continued justifying the study of alternative lifestyles (Sussman, 1972b). Presenter James Ramey, researcher and writer on group marriages and communes, extolled the practical advantages of communal living, particularly the pooling of resources. For example, fewer automobiles are needed when others can transport you; housing facilities may be of better quality than individuals and separate families could afford; caregiving Page  237for children and the elderly, the disabled, and other dependents increases with more adults present; children have additional adult role models; and collaborative financial investment strategies improve economic circumstances. Ramey described one commune composed of professionals with $51 million in assets that labeled itself an investment club. Their large housing complex provided day care and a communal dining area. On the downside, Ramey reported the fragility of group ventures that sometimes faltered due to the effect of career and personal problems that were related to demands from the greater society. The efficacy of group experiences for adults and children was questioned by other conference participants, including Nena and George O’Neill, coauthors of the best-selling book Open Marriage (1972). They expressed concern about rearing children age 5 and younger in group situations. They even criticized their own ideas by saying that the major weakness in opening the boundaries of permanent monogamous relationships was the inability of individuals to analyze and understand their own relationships. People carried role expectations, especially based on their parent’s marriages, into their own marriages, and these expectations were difficult to expel. In an open marriage, marriage should always be the primary relationship, and if extramarital sex did occur, it should be viewed as something feeding into the relationship and not threatening it. In other words extramarital sex was acceptable only when it filtered back positively into the marriage. Eleanor Macklin continued her leadership role in studying the dramatic increase in cohabitation by facilitating cooperation among those researchers interested in this topic. Two issues of a cohabitation newsletter were distributed to these individuals during 1972. Finally, the 1972 conference produced a number of predictions regarding the future course of American family life. Most of these were based on a perceived need for increased intimacy as mass culture grows and becomes more impersonal.

The 1973 Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Groves Conference maintained the previous two years’ momentum by examining changes in family living. However, it was subsumed under the broader topic of ideology and was titled “Letting Many Flowers Bloom: Implications of Ideology for Research and the Profession” (Ryder, 1973). The only plenary session was presented by Philip Page  238Slater, author of the influential book The Pursuit of Loneliness (1976). Small group meetings were established around “Family Forms,” “Research and Teaching,” and “Services and Public Policy.” The “Family Forms” groups discussed adult single living, strengths of the nuclear family, diversity among Black families, middle and older years, and nonmarital cohabitation. The latter was chaired by Eleanor Macklin who continued her seminal pursuit to advance research on this emerging lifestyle. The group sought to define cohabitation, determine its prevalence, describe cohabitants, explain why people cohabit, discover characteristics of the relationship, identify problems experienced, explore the effects of cohabitation, and make recommendations for policy and position statements. Reflecting back on chairing the conference, Robert Ryder wrote,

By 1979 Groves turned its attention to “The Well-Being of the Child in Various Family Forms” (Sussman & Marciano, 1979). This Washington, D.C. conference was chaired by Marvin Sussman and his associate Teresa Marciano. The location brought numerous federal government specialists to the meeting. They represented the Administration for Children, Youth, and Families; Project Head Start; the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Services; National Institute on Drug Abuse; Bureau of the Census; the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; the National Institute of Mental Health; the National Center on Child Abuse and Page  239Neglect, and the U.S. National Commission of the International Year of the Child. Intervention to improve children’s lives became the primary focus, rather than the structural arrangements of alternative lifestyles. However, Larry and Joan Constantine did present on “The Impact of Various Family Forms and Life Styles on Children,” and Harold Feldman and Donna Dempster discussed “Androgyny and Children: Prospects in a Sexist Society.”

Not until 1981 did alternative lifestyles again become the dominant theme of a Groves conference. The meeting at Mt. Pocono, Pennsylvania was titled “The Pursuit of Happiness: Progress and Prospects,” chaired by Eleanor Macklin (1981). She explicitly sought to build on the 1971 conference. The central question was what had we learned about alternative lifestyles over the ten year period and what were the possible implications for the future. Why is there a search for alternatives? What really is a new lifestyle? What was the present and predicted prevalence of a given lifestyle? What were the costs and benefits to individuals and society? What adaptations appear necessary for success? The conference again brought together some of the leading scholars associated with the study of alternative lifestyles: Nena O’Neill (open marriage), James Ramey (intimate friendships), Larry and Joan Constantine (group marriage), Roger Libby and Lonny Myers (extramarital sexuality), David Weis (multiple relationships), Bram Buunk (international alternative lifestyles), Charles Cole and Charles Hennon (nonmarital cohabitation), Peter Stein and Sharon Price (never-married singles), Naomi Gerstel and Harriet Gross (dual-career/worker marriages), Emily Brown (divorce), David Baptiste (stepfamilies), Patricia Gongla and Edward Thompson (single-parent families), Robyn Zeiger (same-sex intimate relationships), Harriette McAdoo and Marie Peters (alternative lifestyles in minority communities), Paula Dressel and Beth Hess (alternatives for the elderly), Gerry Brudenell (affiliated families and communities), Catherine Chilman (remarriage), Jean Veevers and Judith Fischer (child-free relationships), and many other leaders, including Robert Francoeur, Ira Reiss, Anthony Jurich, Mary Hicks, Sally Hansen, and Robert Whitehurst. Additional topics explored children and alternative lifestyles, engineered environments, and relationship contracts. Emily Mudd discussed the traditional nuclear family. Issues surrounding religious reactions Page  240to alternative lifestyles as well as implications for teaching, the law, clinical work, and international perspectives were included.

Many participants were not Groves members at the time. They were specifically invited to the conference to provide a rich opportunity for learning and discussion. In 2009 Macklin reflected back on the 1981 conference:

Mt. Pocono would be the last major family studies conference on alternative lifestyles until 2000 when the Groves Conference in Asheville, North Carolina, was chaired by Marilyn Coleman and Lawrence Ganong (2000). Asking what has happened to families in the last 30 years, they created the theme “Considering the Past and Contemplating the Future: Family Diversity in the New Millenium.” The conference reconnected with the Groves meetings of 1971, 1972, 1973, and 1981. For the field of family science, the 2000 conference reestablished the importance of studying a topic which with society may be least comfortable: The past, current, and future state of the American family was examined. Why have some alternative family lifestyles become almost mainstream? Were families and professionals aided by scholarship to adapt to the enormity of societal changes? Are extant theories and current research methods helping to learn and understand family diversity? Where is family scholarship heading? Professional, historical, and personal perspectives addressing these questions was presented by a panel of distinguished senior family scholars led by Marvin Sussman, Catherine Chilman, Margaret Feldman, Harriette McAdoo, Roger Rubin, and Robert Ryder. Another panel of doctoral students and Page  241new professionals shared their prognostications for family diversity over the next few decades. Among their concerns were the influence of the Internet and social media on relationships, implications of family and lifestyle instability, recognizing diversity among ethnic families, and the role of feminism. They asked if there are universal family values, how to reconcile conflicting values, what are the limits to tolerance, and how do we manage the information explosion? Finally, by the 2000 Asheville conference, considerable progress could be reported in discussing once controversial topics, such as homosexuality. A plenary session was presented by Lawrence Kurdek based upon his research comparing heterosexual married couples and cohabiting gay male and lesbian couples. His conclusions were that there were far more similarities than differences between heterosexual and same-sex couples and that “a couple is a couple is a couple.” Regardless of sexual orientation, couples deal with many of the same issues. The 2000 Groves conference produced two special issues of the Journal of Family Issues (September and October, 2001). A more comprehensive publication culminated in Coleman and Ganong’s edited book Handbook of Contemporary Families: Considering the Past, Contemplating the Future (2004). The editors purposely chose chapter topics traceable to previous decades to capture the evolution of family scholarship over time.