It’s not Valentine’s Day anymore, but here at Good Feed we always have room for a little romance.
Enter the marital rating scale. Courtesy of Dr. George W. Crane, these charts were part of a 1930s project meant to help husbands and wives exchange “constructive feedback” and end marital discord by cataloging frequent sources of irritation.
According to The Atlantic:
In the 1930s, [Crane] went around to a bunch of husbands and said, “Hey husband, what does your wife do that annoys you?” And then he added all those complaints up and created a handy chart that let you rate your spouse against the generic ideal/anti-ideal. That’s what you see in the chart above.
And in the American Psychological Association’s magazine:
Although most people who read the test today find it humorous and obviously dated, Crane did attempt to make it scientific. His method was to interview 600 husbands on their wives’ positive and negative qualities. Then he listed the 50 demerits and merits that arose most frequently. Crane did admit to using a personal bias in weighting the items that he thought were most important in marriage.
Oh, and check out the husband’s chart after the jump.
About Lu Fong
things haven’t changed much, my husband gives me demerits when I am “slow in coming to bed”, I however, wait until my husband is “fully” asleep!
“Very poor.”
Red nail polish? I feel like such a tart now.
I love the last bit…”Crane did attempt to make it scientific….(but) …admitted to using personal bias in weighting the items he thought most important in marriage.’ No wonder no one these days believes scientists when they talk about global warming…
How else am I suppose to get my feet warm??
The only hose I have is in the garden!
What is really interesting about this is what it says about how men and women think differently: Notice that out of the 12 merits, only two in the chart the husband fills in are actually to do with the husband interacting with his wife, whereas eleven out of the twelve things wives thought were important are about personal interactions. It’s a clear demonstration of how impoverished male socialisation was back then. Has it improved in the 21st Century?
The seams in my wife’s hose are almost always crooked, and she darns my socks very infrequently and, when she does, rather poorly. I am forced to demerit this shit out of her.
I just counted the highest possible scores for husbands and wives and guess what? Husbands can get a max. merit score of 146 (if they take their wife out on date 4 times a week), while wives can only reach 120 (if they have 4 children to take care of). It´s of course the opposite with demerit scores: Husbands can fail with 90, while wives can reach a fail of 102. Subtract the numbers and we have a balance of 18:56. So, according to the score system alone, husbands are generally 3 times more superior to wives. Good work Dr. W. Crane, Ph.D., M.D.!