A House-to-House Canvass Of British Married Happiness

Southland Times, Issue 23740, 11 February 1939, Page 17

A House-to-House Canvass Of British Married Happiness

Disregarding a remark made long ago by Mr George Bernard Shaw to the effect that marital statistics were impracticable because married people could never be got to speak the truth about their own marriages, Dr Julius Smithson has devoted the past three years to a house-to-house investigation of British married happiness, says a writer in The Manchester Guardian. He may proceed to make a parallel inquiry which would enable British couples to discover in another three years just where they stand by comparison with couples in the more or less united states on the other side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile all interested persons are invited to study the figures provided by an inquiry covering the private lives of 3500 couples on this side.

Precisely what queries were contained in the inquiry is not revealed, neither is it divulged wherein, the differences, if any, lay between those addressed to wives and those to husbands. It would appear that they were not put by word of Dr Smithson’s mouth,

hut were simply “sent to thousands of homes” containing'spouses of all matrimonial ages and possessed of incomes ranging from the dole to £lO,OOO a year. _

As to whether the communications were marked strictly private and separately addressed there is again no available information, though it may be surmised that Dr Smithson, being a psychologist, directed the husband’s dossier to office or workshop and timed the wife’s to arrive with her afternoon tea. PERCENTAGE OF HAPPINESS From the replies elicited it is ascertained that among British husbands 26 per cent, and among wives 24 per cent, rate their condition as “very happy.” Similarly, 44 per cent, of husbands and 46 per cent, of wives give it out that they are “more or less happy.” “Unhappy” ones are 19 per cent, of husbands to 23 per cent, of wives, and “unbearably unhappy” betray a reversed discrepancy with 11 per cent, of husbands to 7 per cent, of wives. Problems obtrude. Dr Smithson gives the assurance that discrepant couples are never farther removed than by a single rating. Wives, he says, incline more, by 4 per cent, to make “more or less” the best of a bad job and the merely bad of an “unbearable” one. But he throws no light on the two per cent, of wives who are absentees from the highest class, nor does he volunteer any percentage of wives self-included in this class only because they are striving to parade as “very happies” when they know full well that they are “more or lesses.” QUESTIONS NOT ANSWERED Such questions are not answered in Dr Smithson’s summing up, wherein he reveals that “in 98 per cent, of the happy marriages the husband kissed his wife both on leaving for work and on every other possible occasion.” True, this sheds some light upon the nature of the’’inquiry, but it raises yet another question. What of the two per cent, of couples who remain obstinately happy without this requirement being fulfilled by the husband? Does this two per cent of husbands kiss its wives only when going to work, only when returning from work, or—with a rare stroke of husbandly genius—on impossible occasions? Surely it would be helpful to the married and to those about to marry could they receive precise instructions concerning such vital points. Unhappily, nobody can enlighten them, except, possibly, Dr Smithson himself, and he is even now on his way back to inspect the more or less united states in America.

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