How to Work Out What Provisions Should be Made for Adjustment if a Wife is Smarter than her Husband

If a wife is smarter than her husband what provisions should be made for adjust­ment?

Over and over we hear it said that men do not want wives who are too intelligent. Girls who consult with us frequently complain that they do not dare let their boy friends discover that they have brains. Many feel that if a boy finds out that a girl is smarter than he is, he will lose interest. Therefore some groups of women deliberately play the "sweet but helpless" role. Girls are taught to flatter a man, and to make as their main appeal, their need for his brilliance and strength. How sound is this policy? How true is the popular notion that men demand that their women be inferior?

Certainly there have been and are men who regard their wives as they do their fine houses, their memberships in ex­clusive clubs, their liveried chauffeurs and other symbols of wealth and position. The main job of such a wife was to look beautiful in expensive clothes, to appear as a charming hostess to the "right" people, and at all times and places to say the right things while little intelligence was necessary. It might prove a decided disadvantage. A woman with brains might have ideas of her own, which would never do. To supply this demand there have been and continue to be, women who are glad for a life of luxury and ease, even under such conditions. Some women see nothing more desirable for themselves than to be private ornaments for men of wealth and position.

Yet men who cannot afford social ornaments sometimes want inferior wives. Why? Often because they harbor a great sense of inferiority. Therefore at all economic levels there are some men who want apparently weak and docile women whom they can dominate completely, who will not put up any arguments, and who will do as they are told without any "ifs," "ands," or "buts." Likewise there are women who either want to be dominated, or who are so eager to marry that they will do so under such circumstances.

What about the "ordinary man" who has no serious feel­ings of inadequacy, and who cannot afford, and does not desire a social ornament? Does he demand that his wife not have too many brains? Certainly he wants her to be intelli­gent enough to do her job well. He does not want to feel ashamed of her because of her stupidity. Actually, too, the marriage will turn out more successfully if the wife is smart enough to be interesting, and to help develop satisfying per­sonal relationships.

Still, the man usually does not want to feel inferior to his wife. But feeling inferior is not the same as being inferior. Some men have a quiet pride in a wife who is smarter, pro­vided that she is smart enough not to make him appear and feel inferior, especially in front of his friends.

Some men, like some women, want others to run things for them. This desire may result from an unwillingness to assume responsibilities. It may come from a deep-seated de­sire to be dominated. Whatever its basis, there are men who want to be dominated by their wives. In such cases, both of them should know it in advance.
The problem is not limited to what men in general, or this man in particular, may want. There is also social de­mand. The boy and the girl who plan marriage should have a clear understanding of what the entire situation actually is, including its contradictions which they must somehow resolve. Our culture expects the husband to be intellectually superior to his wife. Yet actually, he is not and in many cases cannot be. By the law of chances, there will be almost as many wives who are superior to their husbands, as husbands who are superior to their wives. So what to do?

In actual life the situation does not work out too badly. Vocationally, the wife usually becomes side-tracked while she is bearing and rearing the children. With a twenty-year advantage, even a relatively inferior husband can usually manage to keep ahead. And as a result of the differences in what society expects, the wife usually runs with the throttle only partly open. While the husband is advancing himself vocationally, or rising in his union, the wife busies herself getting up church suppers and organizing flower shows which consume her time and energy, but do not show up in either the pay check or her vocational standing.

Yet such advantages are not always enough to keep the husband ahead. If the difference in ability is marked, it speedily becomes known. In Gone with the Wind even the lowliest slave knew that the real boss of Tara was not Mr. O'Hara, but his far more competent wife. Such a situation may be concealed by a polite little conspiracy to maintain the fiction of male superiority, but everyone knows to whom to go, to get things done. In our day this fiction is becoming more difficult to maintain. More and more wives are going back to work as soon as their children are old enough to be left by themselves, and are getting real money and recogni­tion. In some instances, the wife will outstrip her husband. The problem often becomes a real issue at the time when her income exceeds his.

Our feeling is that the soundest marriages are those in which husband and wife are on about the same level of intelligence. We may think that the problem will be serious, only if the girl is markedly superior, but this is by no means necessarily true. The girl who marries a man who is intellectually far superior may face problems quite as serious. She will be safer if she chooses a man more nearly on her own level, so that through the years the relationship can most easily be maintained.

There is just as much chance that the wife will be superior to the husband, as the other way around. All who marry should face this fact. Actually there is no more justi­fication for a man feeling embarrassed because his wife is superior, than there is for a wife to feel embarrassed because her husband excels her. In any case, character and personality are far more important, provided each of the couple is intelligent enough to do a good job.

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