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.