The Only thought couples usually give to their respective careers at the time they decide to marry is whether there will be enough income to support them. Actually, the type of work the groom does may produce irritations that may ruin the union. Or if the bride wants to continue her career after marriage, that may cause trouble if not handled carefully.
Let’s take the problem of the bride first. Should she continue her career or devote all her energy to managing a home? There is, of course, no final answer. We know of many married couples who have worked out excellent relationships while the wife continues her career. But we also know that such an arrangement is not normal and that it often produces difficulties because of psychological factors. It is apt to be a blow to the husband’s sense of mastery of his own home if the bride decides that he can’t support her properly on his salary. It deprives the wife of the opportunity to win the husband’s affection and appreciation for her homemaking skill. Believe it or not, one very important appeal of marriage to a man is to have his favorite dishes home-cooked and waiting for him when he comes home from work. If the wife has a career, the couple usually ends up eating out or eating warmed-up delicatessen specials. Finally a career makes it difficult for a wife to bear and rear children, and children are another of the big values of marriage that hold couples together.
Homemaking is a definite career, and if there are children, a full-time career. There is far more to making a home than the housekeeping end of it. A homemaker is a physician when the husband or child is sick; she is an interior decorator; she must be a good cook and dietitian; she must be an expert on clothing repair; she must be a good teacher and an expert on the psychology of handling children; she must often be a judge in settling arguments; she must be an expert purchasing agent because she will spend at least eighty per cent of the family’s income; she must be some sort of bookkeeper if she keeps the budget and pays the bills; she must be a repair man who can replace a fuse, repair an electric light cord, put oil on a squeaking hinge.
If the average husband gave as mediocre a performance on his job as many wives do as homemakers he would be fired. Unquestionably one of the reasons why divorce is on the increase is that careers and other diversions prevent wives from giving as much attention and care to the art of homemaking as they once did. Why do married women work? Here are the main reasons:
—Pure necessity.
—To enable themselves to have more luxurious and extra comforts than the husband’s income alone could afford.
—Because marriage is not too satisfying to them and they are bored.
—Because they do not want children.
—Because they want to be independent financially.
—Because they would rather hire somebody to do the housework than to do it themselves.
—Because they want an independent career.
Virtually all studies made show that the happiest married women are those who do not work after marriage. In the study by Dr. G. V. Hamilton, A Research in Marriage, only forty-five per cent of the women working after marriage had a “satisfactory” to “very satisfactory” marriage compared to some fifty-five per cent of the women not working after marriage who were happy in marriage.
Once a wife starts working, she may resolve to stop at the end of a specific period, but by the time the deadline arrives she usually finds a reason why she should continue a little longer. Frequently she and her husband have bought things like an automobile that prevent them from attaining enough stability financially to permit her to stop working. She continues to work, thereby putting off having children and perhaps never has them.
But now let’s take up the greater—and less understood—dangers involved in the types of work the groom does. Many wives today think they are dissatisfied with their husbands when actually they are dissatisfied with his working habits or his job.
For example, some jobs carry more social prestige than others. Here are some twenty-four occupations rated by college students (1940) on their prestige, with those with the highest prestige at the top and those with the least prestige at the bottom:
| 1. | Physician | 13. | Farmer (owner) |
| 2. | Clergyman | 14. | Insurance agent |
| 3. | Lawyer | 15. | Salesman |
| 4. | College professor | 16. | Bookkeeper |
| 5. | Manufacturer | 17. | Machinist |
| 6. | Banker | 18. | Carpenter |
| 7. | Artist or author | 19. | Barber |
| 8. | Man of leisure | 20. | Factory operative |
| 9. | Engineer (college trained) | 21. | Blacksmith |
| 10. | Factory superintendent | 22. | Soldier |
| 11. | School teacher | 23. | Truck driver |
| 12. | Storekeeper | 24. | Ditch digger |
Richard O. Lang, as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, made a study of marriage happiness based upon ratings made by acquaintances of more than seventeen thousand married couples. On the basis of his findings here is how fifty different occupations rated on the descending scale of marital happiness. The happiest are at the top and the least happy are at the bottom. Here is the approximate order:
One interesting statistic is that while eighty per cent of the clergy had happy or very happy marriages (as assessed by their friends) only forty per cent of salesmen had marriages at least as happy or very happy, again as assessed by friends. Only eleven per cent of the clergy seemed to be really unhappy in marriage while thirty-six of the salesmen were.
Obviously education is not the determining factor in an occupation’s happiness quota because physicians, lawyers and dentists, who require more schooling than almost any other group, are definitely less happy in marriage than engineers, teachers and ministers. Musicians rate very low, coming between truck drivers and real estate salesmen, apparently because of the mobility and impermanence of their jobs.
There are seven types of work that seem to be the major vocational troublemakers. They don’t need to produce trouble. In fact if both the man and wife are aware of the potential dangers involved and act accordingly trouble rarely occurs. But if they don’t possess such awareness, they may find it increasingly difficult to find happiness through marriage. Both will be resentful without knowing why. We don’t advise girls to avoid marrying men in these types of work. That would be ridiculous. But we do suggest that they take the job into consideration. Then, if they go ahead and marry the man, they will do it with their eyes wide open and with a plan to remove the danger by normalizing their married life as much as possible despite the job.
With that thought in mind let’s take up the seven big troublemakers.
The Man Who Travels a Lot. This includes not only the traveling salesman, whose reputation for waywardness has a great deal of basis in fact, but also traveling entertainers, truck drivers, professional soldiers, casual laborers, railroad workers, air pilots. There are also multitudes of others whose work requires stopovers or prolonged stays away from home. It is the mobility of the job rather than the fact that unreliable characters work in them that produces the trouble. Lonesome and dissatisfied, the mobile person seeks substitutes which create strife at home when they are learned of, and feelings of guilt with the man even when they aren’t. Such a mobile person is more likely to come in contact with other women who may seem very attractive to him since he is denied the companionship and daily affection of his family. There seems to be absolutely no doubt that those occupations which are somewhat fixed, that is, which require little or no traveling, provide happier marriages, other things being equal.
Wives can counteract the danger by frequently arranging to accompany the husbands on trips they may make. Even though the wife may have children, there are many trips on which she can accompany her husband. In most cases the husband, far from resenting her presence, welcomes it because he does get lonely and bored traveling in strange towns.
Even though the wife is busy she should take time out to accompany her husband over his entire territory so that she sees some of the problems he faces and meets some of the people he has to work with. In doing this she serves two purposes: she is better able to talk to her husband intelligently about his work if she knows the operation and the people involved. This will encourage him to unburden his occupational problems to her rather than think she is just a dumb housewife and take them elsewhere or brood over them. The second purpose is that by letting his associates on the route see her she makes them more aware of the fact that he is a happily married man and they will thus be less likely to put temptations in his way.
In taking normalizing actions such as these, a girl can more safely choose a mate whose work keeps him mobile and with less fear that the marriage will be hazardous.
The Man Nobody Knows. If the groom earns his income outside the community where you will live and is seen very little there, he will feel less desire for social approval of his conduct. To put it in sociological terms, he will not be under close “community scrutiny.” Thus he is more susceptible to the temptation of heavy drinking, gambling, or other women than the man whose job does come under community scrutiny. Examples of the latter are teachers, ministers, storekeepers, and town officials. These men all come into a great deal of daily contact with the members of the community and thus are more concerned about “keeping up appearances.” Other things being equal, the greater the degree of social control exerted, the greater the happiness of the marriage.
If a girl does marry a man who doesn’t come under this scrutiny, she can to some extent bring him under it by being seen with her husband at many public places, encouraging him to join with her in participating in many community activities, by introducing her husband to many different people and letting them know the kind of work he does.
The Man Who Works at Abnormal Hours. During the war we came to hear a lot about the swing shifters. But in war or peace there are millions of men who keep unusual hours—policemen, newspapermen working on morning newspapers, bartenders, night watchmen, etc. They can make it difficult for a wife, particularly if she is a mother, to adapt her daily routine of living to the shifting hours of work. This is destructive to happiness because husband and wife have too little opportunity to be with each other. Furthermore not many men can change their hours of sleep from week to week without becoming irritable. If he has children he is denied the normal opportunities to play with them. All the evidence we have indicates that occupations which require working late are not as likely to be associated with marital happiness as those occupations which permit working during the daylight hours.
In one case a couple married seven years were on the verge of divorce within four months after the husband took a night job. He had become lonely because he missed all his normal associations and finally had fallen in love with a waitress at an all-night lunchroom where he ate. Happily the wife kept her senses and instead of agreeing to the divorce merely asked for a postponement of the decision for a few months. Meanwhile she got busy and made a greater effort to make home a more appealing place to him. She rearranged the schedule of the children so they could be with their father an hour every day, she began paying more attention to her own grooming and arranged her own schedule so that she could sleep at the same time her husband did two days a week. Soon the husband lost interest in the other woman.
The Man Whose Income Is Irregular. This includes all salesmen working on commission, free-lance writers, small business owners, seasonal workers, lawyers, physicians, brokers, plumbers, architects, etc. One fact that has been noticed repeatedly in marriage studies is that regularity of income has a considerable influence upon marriage happiness. Apparently couples having regular incomes are better able to plan their expenditures and savings, to be neither flush at one time nor impoverished at another, and are better able to work out long-term financial plans. At any rate there seems to be a good deal less bickering where the income is regular. To live happily with a man with a fluctuating income the mates need to show the wisdom of the Biblical Joseph, by saving during fat months for lean months, and by keeping an unusually rigorous eye on the accounts. If they can save up a real backlog, and can take a philosophical attitude toward the whimsies of his income, they should have no more trouble than the average couple. The savings will provide a psychological cushion as well as a real one.
The Man Whose Work Is Dirty or Nerve-racking. We know a farmer who says his wife is so annoyed by his dirty clothes that she won’t touch them and won’t let him inside her house until he puts on dress shoes. Such wives should remember that dirt is an honorable mark of a farmer’s, a mechanic’s, or a coal miner’s occupation. And perhaps if approached good-naturedly, he can be persuaded to change to clean clothes before leaving the site of his work.
Other husbands have jobs whose work is noisy, tense, or exacting. This includes steeplejacks, tunnel builders, foundry workers, pilots, etc. The jobs leave the husband emotionally exhausted and highly irritable. The wife of such a man will find herself involved in repeated quarreling and sniping unless she realizes the husband’s state of mind when he comes home and sees to it that he has a warm bath and an hour of rest and relaxation before she disturbs him or approaches him with any family problems.
The Man Who Feels Insecure in His Job. Job security, like regularity of income, is an important factor in marriage happiness. A number of studies have shown that the most contented and satisfied men are those who feel secure in their job. The assurance of permanence enables the man to be serene. When a man feels insecure in his job he is more likely to change jobs frequently, hoping to improve his tenure. This constant changing of not only jobs but the accompanying new neighborhoods and school systems for the family produce frayed nerves and many annoying problems. Loss of work, even though it is temporary, brings worry over where the next meal is coming from, brings in the possibility of public relief, lowers the man’s self-respect and may decrease his wife’s confidence in him as a worth-while husband and provider. Undoubtedly one of the reasons for the rise of the divorce rate after the great depression was the tension engendered by threat of unemployment which placed great strains upon family living.
If a girl marries a man in such a status she should be prepared to help her husband by not being critical of his work and by not throwing it up to him that he is unable to get a permanent job. She can even encourage, and sympathetically help him get some specialized training that may prepare him for a better job which offers greater security. Perhaps he can do it at night or by correspondence courses. Far more men than do would seek to improve their vocational skills if their wives would encourage and inspire them to become more competent.
The Man Who is Not Proud of His Job. Social prestige of an occupation is an intangible factor that nevertheless has a great deal to do with marital happiness. A man is more likely to work out a happy marriage when he is engaged in work that is approved and respected by the community. If the man is a gravedigger or bill collector or dogcatcher the wife, and particularly the children, may be sensitive about the lack of prestige involved. If such a marriage is to succeed, the wife must realize that her man is performing an essential function in the community. Further, she should realize that if such a family seems to live happily together, if they are active in church and community affairs and lead respected lives, they will be accepted for what they are and not for what the man’s occupation happens to be. One of the happiest, most respected men we know is the garbage collector in a New England town.
We repeat, the seven types of men we have just discussed are not necessarily to be shunned as mates. But girls marrying them should realize the problems that may be involved.