The younger generation was marrying earlier than their parents; the Lynds wondered if this was due to changing attitudes to contraception.
There was a “heavy taboo” about sex before marriage, although less so amongst the younger generation. They observed that “there is an increasing aggressiveness on the part of the girls in [sexual] activity preliminary to marriage”
In 1890 there had been 25 brothels in the town; by 1925 “there are reported to be only two or three fly-by-night, furtively conducted, houses of prostitution, catering exclusively to the working class, but a comparison with 1890 on this point is fruitless because ‘the automobile as become a house of prostitution on wheels’”
Marriage was forbidden by law to “an insane person, an imbecile or epileptic, a person having a transmissible disease, or a male who has within five years been a public charge”. In Indiana miscegenation (marriage between different races) was also forbidden.
A man was expected to support his wife, to be sober and faithful, and not cruel. Foremost among other requirements for marriage was “the demand for romantic love as the only valid basis for marriage”.
Many people read the local newspaper ‘agony aunt’, Dorothy Dix. Some of her weekly advice included:
"The woman makes the family's social status. . . . The old idea used to be that the way for a woman to help her husband was by being thrifty and industrious, by .. . peeling the potatoes a little thinner, and . . . making over her old hats and frocks. .. . But the woman who makes of herself nothing but a domestic drudge .. . is not a help to her husband. She is a hindrance . .. and . . . a man's wife is the show window where he exhibits the measure of his achievement. . . . The biggest deals are put across over luncheon tables; . . . we meet at dinner the people who can push our fortunes. . . . The woman who cultivates a circle of worth-while people, who belongs to clubs, who makes herself interesting and agreeable . . . is a help to her husband. . . . Good looks are a girls trump card … dress well and thereby appear 50% better-looking than you are … make yourself charming … cultivate bridge and dancing, the ability to play jazz and a few outdoor sports”
The Lynds found that:
“Emphasis upon the function of the man in marriage as "a good provider" and of the woman as home-maker, child-rearer, and, among the bulk of the business group, social pace-setter, is far-reaching as affecting the attitude of the sexes toward each other. In general, ‘brains’ tend to be regarded as of small importance in a wife.”
In terms of self-concept:
“Middletown wives appear in part to accept the impression of them that many of their husbands have. ‘Men are God's trees; women are his flowers,’ and ‘True womanliness is the greatest charm of woman,’ the recent mottoes of two of the local federated women's clubs, suggest little change from the prevailing attitude reflected in a commencement essay in 1891, ‘Woman Is Most Perfect When Most Womanly’."
The maintenance of moral standards and respectability within the family was largely seen as the responsibility of women.
“At a local political dinner the talk about one of the tables turned to women's smoking and a woman politician said with an air of finality: ‘Women have to be morally better than men. It is they who pull men up or cause their downfall.’ Women, on the other hand, are frequently heard to express the opinion, accompanied by a knowing smile, that ‘Men are nothing but big little boys who have never grown up and must be treated as such.’”
Women’s primary responsibility was domestic
work, which included cooking, cleaning, and maintaining the household:
“Among the chief qualifications sought by these mothers, beyond the mutual attraction of the two young people for each other, are, in a potential husband, the ability to provide a good living, and, in a wife of the business class, the ability, not only to "make a home" for her husband and children, but to set them in a secure social position. In a world dominated by credit this social function of the wife becomes, among the business group, more subtle and important; the emphasis upon it shades down as we descend in the social scale until among the rank and file of the working class the traditional ability to be a good cook and housekeeper ranks first.
Women's social activities were largely centered around the home, with women expected to manage the home and care for children, and limited involvement in public life or the workforce:
“the men do most of the talking and the women largely listen. Even since women have been allowed to vote with men some tendency persists for women of all classes to depend in such practical matters upon the opinions of their husbands.
“My husband, my children, and what community work I have time for after them are my job. I have gradually withdrawn from the social activities of the wives of my husband's business associates because most of these women seem absorbed in activities that do not include their husbands. That is just the sort of thing that leads to the break-up of families and I don't see why I and my family should be exempt from the things that befall other people."
Marriages in Middletown seem not generally to have been blissfully happy:
“In general, a high degree of companionship is not regarded as essential for marriage. One of the commonest joint pursuits of husbands and wives is playing cards with friends. A few read aloud together, but this is relatively rare, as literature and art have tended to disappear today as male interests. More usual is the situation described by one prominent woman: "My husband never reads anything but newspapers or the American Magazine. He is very busy all day and when he gets home at night he just settles down with the paper and his cigar and the radio and just rests…
"Among the working class
... not infrequently husband and wife meet each other at the end of a day's work too tired or inert to play or go anywhere together; many of them have few if any close friends."
“In a number of cases, after the interviewer had succeeded in breaking through an apparently impenetrable wall of reserve or of embarrassed fear, the housewife would say at the close of the talk, "I wish you could come often. I never have any one to talk to," or "My husband never goes any place and never does anything but work. You can talk to him, but he never says anything. In the evenings he comes home and sits down and says nothing. I like to talk and be sociable, but I can hardly ever get anything out of him."
The Lynds found that trips out in the automobile were helping marriages by providing something that the husband and wife could do together.
Contraception was frowned upon, and a number of couples who had tried it had been unsuccessful in preventing a further pregnancy:
“One
'hopes to heaven' she'll have no more children. She said that people talked to her about contraceptives sometimes, and she told ‘him’ what they said, but lie said it was none of their business. She had never dared ask him what he thought about birth control, but thought he disapproved of it. She would ‘die’ if she had any more children but is doing nothing to prevent it.”
Divorce was relatively rare and carried a significant social stigma, but was becoming more common, especially among the
working women:
“With the spread of the habit of married women’s working, women are less willing to continue an unsatisfactory marital arrangement”
“The growing independence of women was succinctly described by a dismayed citizen recently divorced by his ‘woman’:
'Everybody's getting a divorce. Why should a woman stay married if she don't like a man and can get a job? Why, there's so many working it's getting so a man can't get a woman to fry him a piece of meat or bake a pie!'
The Lynds suggested that changes in social expectations were placing strains upon marriages:
“The way in which these antecedents of divorce are imbedded in the whole complex of Middletown's culture touching the adjustments between a man and his wife is suggested by comparing what Middletown regards as minimum essentials of marriage with conditions actually existing in many Middletown homes…. The husband must ‘support’ his family, but recurrent ‘hard times’ make support of their families periodically impossible for many workers; the wife must make a home for her husband and care for her children, but she is increasingly spending her days in gainful employment outside the home; husband and wife must cleave to each other in the sex relation, but fear of pregnancy frequently makes this relation a dread for one or both of them; affection between the two is regarded as the basis of marriage, but sometimes in the day-after-day struggle this seems to be a memory rather than a present help.”
