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

Catherine Street Chilman

Catherine Street Chilman was the first woman elected president of the Groves Conference, 1976-1978, and her mother was a founder of the Conference. Roger notes, "My first introduction to Catherine was at my first Groves in 1971 when she chaired the Puerto Rico meeting on The Future of Marriage and Parenthood." Barbara remembers,

Later, Dr.Chilman co-chaired with Dr. Margaret Feldman the 1992 Groves Conference titled "Families: The Cross-cutting Issue in Domestic Policy." Her policy concerns were also reflected through her participation in the National Council on Family Relation's Public Policy Committee, Family Action/Policy Section, and metropolitan Washington, D.C. affiliate. Barbara Settles and Roger Rubin were fellow participants in these activities and witnessed the deeply held convictions that motivated Catherine to action. Groves Lifetime and Academy Memberships were be awarded to Dr. Chilman in recognition of her outstanding contributions to family science and the Groves Conference.

Dr. Chilman's career started as a social worker. Her academic positions began as a faculty member in Home Economics at Syracuse University. In 1960, she moved to Washington, D.C. to work as a research specialist for the Children's Bureau, United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Catherine strongly believed in the role of government in improving child welfare. She was Dean of Faculty and Professor of Psychology at Hood College from 1969-1971 and from 1971-1972 served as Senior Research Associate and Curriculum Coordinator in the Schools of Social Work and Public Health at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. From 1972-1989 she was a Professor of Research and pioneered the teaching of public policy at the School of Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Following retirement, she returned to reside in Washington, D.C. Among her best known publications are "Growing Up Poor" and a five-volume series, "Families in Trouble," co-edited with Elam Nunnally and Fred Cox.

Born into a politically liberal, social activist, Quaker family, Dr. Chilman double majored in sociology and psychology and earned a B.A. at Oberlin College in 1935. She married in 1936 and eventually went on to obtain an M.A. in Social Work from the University of Chicago in 1938 and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Syracuse University in 1959. As a student in social work during the Great Depression her experiences working with the poor planted the roots for her lifelong dedication to social justice and the study of families and policy issues. Catherine Chilman passed away on January 27, 2011, at the age of 96. She will long be remembered as a significant figure in the Groves Conference and a major contributor to the evolution of family science.

Margaret H. Feldman

We both feel honored to have known Margaret Feldman as a mentor, colleague, and friend. Roger met Margaret in 1971 when she visited the University of Tennessee with her husband Harold Feldman. He was impressed with the Feldmans’ unassuming manner and warmth. Eventually, the relationships blossomed when Roger became an active member of the Groves Page  xiiiConference on Marriage and Family. Barbara met Margaret at the conferences when her husband Harold was president of Groves but truly realized Margaret’s leadership, contacts, and innovation in family policy when regularly attending the District of Columbia Metropolitan Council on Family Relations policy committee. An advocate of women’s and family issues, Margaret coined the term “sexism” in 1970. Her interests would expand to include domestic and international family policies related to sex education, family violence, and aging. Harold had become Groves President from 1973-1975, and she helped plan the meetings. This was when she felt she had joined the “family field.” She remarked that the 1975 Groves Conference in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia was a high point in her life.

Dr. Feldman was born into a family with parents who emphasized educational goals for their children and pursued their own professional endeavors working with deprived children. Clearly, social activism was in her future. She was the first woman to be elected student body president at Chapman College in California, from which she received a sociology B.A. in 1937. An M.S. in Social Work followed in 1939 from Case Western Reserve University and she returned to academe to gain a Ph.D. from Cornell University in educational psychology in 1968. She was a member of the faculty at Ithaca College.

The Groves Conference recognized Dr. Feldman’s leadership in advancing family science and her commitment to social change by awarding her Lifetime and Academy membership. The Feldmans’ values formally live on in the Feldman Fund, honoring Margaret and Harold Feldman. The fund provides an award that consists of a cash honorarium and reimbursement for conference attendance. Applicants must be an author or authors of a peer-reviewed journal article or book chapter published within the last five years that makes a significant social policy contribution related to ethnicity and/or gender and that is also supportive of the theme of the Groves Conference annual meeting.

Especially significant to us during the 1980s and ‘90s were all the public policy meetings we participated in for Groves and the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). These meetings gave Page  xivus the opportunity to watch Margaret in action. For many years Margaret served as NCFR’s Washington D.C. policy representative. In 1992 Dr. Feldman co-chaired, with Dr. Catherine Chilman, the Groves Conference titled “Families: The Cross-cutting Issue in Domestic Policy.” This conference arose from the previous conference year’s event of a boat excursion which could not get back to shore for awhile because of counter winds. Margaret got everyone working on a possible policy conference so that the delay became an asset. The conference explored the reasons that the United States lacked a comprehensive family policy. Health insurance and policy implementation were emphasized. At the time she also worked on the original version of the “Family and Medical Leave Act.” In 1995 Congress established the “Office of Family Policy” in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense. Dr. Feldman’s interest in coordinating military family issues, programs, and policies abetted the creation of this office. Margaret and Roger co-chaired the 2005 Groves Conference in Washington, D.C. with the American Indian policy theme titled “Native Americans Dealing with Change: Identity, Economics, Environment.” Her clarity of thinking, determination, and stamina at an advanced age was remarkable. She also devoted much of her retirement time to community activism in her own Washington, D.C. neighborhood.

Dr. Margaret Feldman passed away on November 7, 2009 at the age of 93. Margaret Feldman’s professionalism, decency, concern for the deprived and exploited, and critical, creative thinking is a legacy she leaves to family science and the Groves Conference.

Marvin B. Sussman

Knowing Marv was an exciting and sometimes frustrating experience. He had both highs and lows and often retreated to his own thoughts. His wide ranging interests, his ability to bring people together to be more than they thought they could be, and his sense that beauty and spiritual concerns were bread and butter issues meant neither he or you were bored. He had been active in the American Society of Friends before the World War II and served as a conscientious objector for three years. In later years he was active with other spiritual endeavors and viewed Jean Huston’s work with favor. He was a painter and had a collection of Indian jewelry. Marvin loved beauty both of the outdoors and shaped by the human hand. For the last 15 years of his life he resided in Sebastian, Florida with a wonderful view of the water where he was associated with the Kashi Ashram. While he was at University of Delaware he became a sailor and enjoyed belonging to the Columbia Sailing Association. His own boat was the Phoenix, which he saw as symbolizing the many lives he had enjoyed.

Dr. Marvin B. Sussman was not only a fascinating teacher but also a continuing mentor and sponsor of students and colleagues. He was particularly supportive of women, minorities, and older returning students at a time when these groups generally were ignored. He encouraged his colleagues to take risks and be creative. His research and writing was vast and broad in its conception and cross-disciplinary in its nature encompassing family, family law and policy, community, organizations, sociology of medicine and rehabilitation, intergenerational relationships, and aging. His energies and enthusiasms were directed to a holistic understanding of families and their social context and to providing better services, legal structures, and policies to advance human development across the life course.

Dr. Sussman made his first acquaintance with the Groves Conference when he was a graduate student at Yale in 1950. After a long correspondence back and forth with Reuben Hill, he accepted an invitation to present his work on intergenerational connectedness at the Groves meeting in 1953. In 1954 he received a Carnegie Foundation postdoctoral grant on general education at the University of Chicago. There, Nelson Foote had taken over Dr. Hill’s role with the Groves Conference, and Dr. Sussman was drawn into the process and structure of the organization. He became a regular participant part of the inner group that provided continuity from year to year. Dr. Sussman was largely responsible for the reorganization of the Groves Conference the features implementation of which began with the 1970 conference when it became a membership based group with voting privileges, nomination of new members, required regular dues and attendance at meetings, elected officers, and developed bylaws. He also put great energy into ambitious programs and encouraging others—such as Vera and David Mace, Catherine Chilman, Jesse Bernard, Robert Ryder, Joy and Howard Osofsky, and Lois and Paul Glasser—to provide leadership for in-depth and important conferences. He chose to devote himself to organizing Groves’ first international conference which was held in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia in the summer of 1975 and which featured sex roles as the unifying theme. Dr. Sussman had great hopes for the possible shaping of family policy around good research, practice, and theory and co-chaired two conferences in Washington, D.C. on family policy, involving close contacts with federal governmental professionals, and included politicians and advocates.

At the time of the 50th celebration of Groves conferences in 1984 Dr. Sussman felt that his reshaping of Groves in the late 1960s and early ‘70s was not well reflected in the remembrance volume and that his own brief article did not detail the process from his perspective. In his essay in the 50th anniversary volume, he credited Ruth Shonle Cavan, Murray Straus, and others in a Groves two-day workshop for their role in stimulating the two foundation papers he wrote with Lee Burchinal in 1962 and 1963 which challenged the Parsonian view of the nuclear family. We have tried to clarify his roles in many aspects of the Conference’s development and think he would not mind our dedication to him. He remained a strong force Page  xviiin the conference even into retirement, coming to many conferences and board meetings, presenting on the program, and enjoying the collegiality of the social scene. He contributed to developing an award fund and provided matching funds to help it get established. The Sussman Award currently recognizes the best research from a recent year that supports the theme of the Groves conference annual meeting. He also helped develop an award program for leaders of the organization with the formation of a life members’ category and the Groves Academy.

Dr. Sussman held many positions of leadership in family studies. Within Groves these included director, executive secretary, president, board member, program chair (six times), lifetime member, and member of the Groves Academy. He was also the editor of the Journal of Marriage and the Family, founding editor of Marriage and Family Review, and was active in national and international research and organizations, such as the Committee on Family Research of the International Sociological Association. Professor Sussman received the Burgess Award, the highest award for scholarship in family studies (1980), sponsored by the National Council on Family Relations and both the Distinguished Scholar Award, Family Division (1985) and the Lee Founders Award (1992) awarded by the Society for the Study of Social Problems. In 1986, he was elected to the National Senior Citizen Hall of Fame.

Professor Sussman received a bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1941, master’s degrees from George Williams College (1943) and Yale University (1949), and a doctorate from Yale in 1951. His first college appointment was at Union College in New York. He held the Selah Chamberlain Professor of Sociology, Case Western Reserve University, and Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Medical Social Sciences at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Wake Forest University. Dr. Marvin B. Sussman was the Unidel Professor of Human Behavior, Emeritus, at the University of Delaware. He continued to sponsor graduate students at Union Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio. He passed away on August 4, 2007, at the age of 88.