Feminist sociologist Jessie Bernard, one of the iconic feminist figures during the 60's and 70's claimed in her book, " Future of Marriage", that married men fared better than married women emotionally and psychologically. She even went as far as calling happily married women "slightly ill mentally", which she justified by using flawed studies of the times. Despite many scientific studies debunking the correlation of marriage with the mental and emotional instability of women, gender studies professors continued to use her theories as part of the curriculum. Below are her claims that married women suffer more from psychological and emotional disorders than single women, despite her bold claim, she could not explain what tied those disorders to women as genders and marital status. It's impressive that a book filled with cognitive somersaults and unanswered questions, became a best seller and was prominent in academia and passed as truth. You can read this on
Here in page 53 of her book, Bernard goes as far as to claim that married women should literally have their cake and eat it too, declaring that women should be less "constrained" by the responsibilities of marriage, which she claims are causing the psychological and emotional detriment of married women.
Her double-think throughout her book, is blatantly observable, that despite her claiming married women suffer more mental illnesses (page 50) and anti-social behaviors (page 35-36) in comparison to unmarried women ,
she previously cited a comprehensive study by R.R Wilsoughby that concluded exactly the opposite in page 31-32, of what she asserted after in the above pages
Bernard (as we can see), dealt with the whole issue of marriage in such subjective, relativistic sophistry, that one clearly feels gaslighted by such contradictory and indecisive jargon. She never gets to an objective point, and certainly her solutions end being as she previously stated, that women should have their cake and eat it too. This is the type of insipid poison that is permeating academia since those times and it's time we finally put down the myth of the mentally ill housewife Bernard wanted us to believe. And to put this argument to rest, let's explore the most extensive study on the welfare of married men and women from La Trobe University in Australia. Here's what The St. Augustine Record, reported on it. They go as far as calling out the studies Bernard used in her book "flawed" as they point out, that many scientists pointed out when she received criticism for her work:
"Emotional problems are equally common among husbands and wives, new research shows -- a finding that challenges the long-standing feminist belief that marriage makes men much happier but women more miserable.
The results of the largest study to investigate the question were published in the current issue of the Australian journal Family Matters
Feminist scholar Jessie Bernard was among the first to to postulate that men benefitted emotionally from marriage while women suffered. Her research, published in a 1972 best seller 'The Future of Marriage,' fed into the evolving feminist belief that the institution of marriage oppressed women.
The theory has persisted, despite scientists' subsequent findings that her studies were flawed, and more recent research that has contradicted the 30-year-old results. But the latest research -- involving 10,641 people -- is the largest, and particularly rigorous.
'This view of the effect of marriage on men and women has been enormously influential and has become part of the 'common knowledge' about marriage,' said David De Vaus, a professor of sociology at La Trobe University in Melbourne, who conducted the latest study.
'But the patterns that were suggested by people like Jessie Bernard .... (are) just not true. The evidence is unequivocal,' he said.
'What the early studies did was center largely on typical female disorders -- anxiety, depression, phobias,' De Vaus said. 'What they ignored are the types of mental illness more common in men, such as drug and alcohol abuse.'
Bernard, who died in 1996, found that married women were more depressed than married men or single women. Married men, by contrast, were less depressed than bachelors.
De Vaus' study involved 10,641 Australian adults who were interviewed personally to establish the state of their mentalhealth.
The survey classified people as having a mental disorder based on the World Health Organization definition after asking whether certain symptoms and incidents had occurred in the 12 months leading up to the interview.
'What's very clear ... is that if you look at male typical and female typical disorders and combine them, then men and women in marriage have the same rates of mental disorders. They just have different disorders,' De Vaus said.
David Popenoe, co-director of the Family Research Project at Rutgers University, said U.S. researchers have reached similar conclusions but the scale of the Australian study was particularly impressive. Popenoe was not involved in the Australian study.
The study found mental illness in 16 percent of the women and 16 percent of the men. Depression and anxiety were more common among women, while drug and alcohol abuse tended to afflict men.
Divorced people fared the worst, with 25 percent of both the women and the men suffering emotional problems.
Singletons fared slightly better, with 22 percent of women and 26 percent of men afflicted with mental disorders.
Married people were best off, with only 13 percent of women and 13 percent of men suffering emotional disorders.
Experts say that while it is now clear that married people are emotionally better off than divorced or single people, it remains to be proven that marriage itself reduces the risk of an emotional disorder.
It could be that people with better mental health are more likely to get married, while those with problems shy away from marriage, are not able to attract partners or end up divorced.
'Certainly that's a factor, but it's not just that,' said Popenoe, a professor of sociology.'"
Sources for the study: Research Design in Social Research By D. A. De Vaus, Professor David de Vaus
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