Lipscomb prof appears on Channel 2 discussing marriage trends on Valentine's Day

Recent national coverage on attitudes toward marriage and Valentine’s Day combined Monday to make the perfect television news spot for the Lipscomb Department of Family and Consumer Sciences.

 

John Conger, professor of family and consumer sciences, and several Lipscomb students will appear tonight on the 6 p.m. newscast of Nashville's WKRN Channel 2, discussing their views of love and marriage. The story can be found online after the broadcast at www.wkrn.com.

 

With the Pew Research Center marriage study released in November still fresh in the minds of Americans, Conger discussed why Americans are waiting longer to get married and the rise in skepticism among young people that marriages can actually sustain long-term.

 

However, Conger is optimistic when he talks to Lipscomb students. Each semester he conducts an informal survey of marriage attitudes in his sociology class. Over the past few years, as tolerance of non-traditional relationships has steadily grown in the population overall, Lipscomb students still want to get married, consider their spouse’s moral character to be of prime importance and believe it is reasonable for a marriage to last 50 years or more, he said.

 

Conger is the executive director of the Nashville Healthy Marriage Network and conducts research on the effectiveness of churches marriage resources and enrichment programs.