Marital Rating Scale
In 2008, after two years of failing to make a child organically, we learned the doom Kathy had already been feeling for more than a year was justified: I was diagnosed with male-factor infertility. Our only real chance to move forward would be in vitro fertilization. We couldn’t afford it; we couldn’t afford not to do it. One way we tried to work through that diagnosis, our anger, and our options was to start a secret infertility blog, “Less Than a Million.” This post and what comments from 2008 that are attached to it come from that blog.—gb
We completed George Crane’s “Marital Rating Scale“ as the sun set over the laundromat last night. If you happened to read it, you can probably guess that I fared much better than K: I hit 73 points for a “Superior” rating; with 45 points, K was only “Average.” Of course, she had a much higher standard to reach. She received only one point for “Can carry on an interesting conversation”; meanwhile, even though she keeps our finances in order, I received five points each for “Gives wife ample allowance or turns pay check over to her” and “Carries adequate insurance for family.” She did receive points for “Tries to become acquainted with husband’s business or trade,” “Likes educational or cultural things,” and “A good hostess—even to unexpected guests,” but the only way she could match the 20 points I get for being an “ardent lover” (laydeez) would be to care for four (!) children (“5 points each,” according to the scale)—the existence of which would negate the point of this blog.
Crane’s scales, which are dated 1939, are products of a national catching-of-the-breath, the very “What have we done?” moment that Betty Friedan describes brilliantly in The Feminine Mystique. Forget that World War II loomed ahead—the Great Depression was not far past, and who could blame more than a few men and women for pulling up short from the promise that universal suffrage had offered? And because there are always those who want to pull back from the brink anyway, more than a few others found ways to take advantage of the hard times past to wrench all those flappers back under the protective roof of the home. Crane’s scales represent to me that pulling away. What makes a woman successful by that standard is her ability to remain invested in one thing only—the home.
As I dutifully rated my own wife—a woman whom I have loved for much better reasons than her skill for sewing buttons and feigning interest in my work—I wondered how many women only came in at average on that test because they longed to be something other than that woman who must dress to cook breakfast, else her husband would look on her with disapproval? How many wanted their husbands to see them as flesh and blood and heart and bone, as someone who mattered for her own sake, and not as a misplaced symbol? The questions are not rhetorical—you and I both know the answer: too, too many.
