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.