Doesn’t getting many responses from one group such as the Dope invalidate the accuracy of the sample? I thought surveys had to be scientifically random to avoid just being a collection of interesting anecdotes.
I didn’t think of that. As long as I’m a good partner in my relationship, I’d define that as being a good wife. If they didn’t say that they were looking for “traditional” wives, what’s the problem? Who is a traditional wife these days? (Says the SAHM) What does that even mean anyway?
I guess the only thing that bothered me was that there seemed to be a rather strong assumption that all wives have children. I realize that probably is a majority, but the subset of married couples without children is larger than it used to be. And WHY people do or don’t have children and how they feel about it would interesting to know.
Well, I’m childless by choice, but that certainly isn’t the default. So I guess the assumption that (most) wives have children didn’t *bother * me. But I would have been *interested * to have had those questions asked, as well.
My guess is that wife researcher is going for a correlation between children number of children ages and marriage happiness. Are people without kids, with young kids, with older kids, with grown kids happier/less happy in their marriage. Does this correlate with your perception of being a good wife or a good mother?
She has a hypothesis she is testing with these questions. Which apparently isn’t “why don’t you have children.”
Hey, that was neat! I literally teared up at one point from reflecting on how fantastic my family life is. (OK, I’m 9 months pregnant and super hormonal, but still, my life is freaking awesome.) This reminds me of a happiness study I heard about where they had participants write a letter of gratitude to someone - even if they didn’t send it, it made their “happiness quotient” go up and stay up.
I couldn’t resist giving her some shit over differentiating between “working” and being a homemaker. I’m not employed, but honey, I work!
I had a different problem with the cheating question. Technically, my answer would have to be “never say never,” because I believe that anyone can get really stupid if they let themselves get into a situation where hormones start raging. But the answer seemed to imply some actual desire to keep the option open, when my attitude is the opposite - because you can never say never, you have to be vigilant not to get in those hormone-soaked situations. So I said Never.
I’m under the impression that despite the fact we have the Dope in common, we come from all walks of life.
Thanks. 
And, btw, PMs are on now.
Good point, WhyNot. Maybe the question should be:
Have you ever engaged in or thought about engaging in behavior that you or your spouse considers cheating?
To everyone who filled out the survey, thank you.
I see there are a lot of questions and comments, some good, some not so good, but that’s great. It means the questions evoked emotions, thoughts and conversation.
The purpose of the study is to get a snapshot of wives today; how they feel about themselves, their spouses, marriage, sex, etc. It is not going to be a “tabloid” book although some of the findings may be about sex and cheating. But that will be because those things are part of marriage. We will also talk about women who are spectacularly happy and why. For example, if a wife rated her husband a 9 or a 10, what made her rate him that way? In the end we hope that this book will help women look at themselves, their husbands and their marriages in a different way. It will give wives (and ex wives) a (almost) 360 view of marriage from different perspectives. We also have a psychotherapist on our team who will give advice when appropriate.
As far as having too many responses from one specific place, I can tell you that at this point, over 600 are not from this site. They are from multiple places as the survey has appeared in magazines, on on-line talk shows, in forums, etc. And, looking at the demographic information, women from all ages, number of years married, different occupations, from different parts of the country, income levels, etc. have participated.
The survey was reviewed by other researchers besides my colleague and I, and although some of you may disagree with the way the questions were asked, you just can’t please all the people all the time. I can tell you that from the (now) close to 800 surveys we received, we’ve only had about 3 respondents who were annoyed by the survey and many more who were happy and enlightened to have taken it.
Should anyone want to email me privately, please feel free: sue@thetruthaboutwives.com and thanks again. I appreciate the time everyone took to take the survey. Sue
Yeah, I had the same reaction.
I also thought that a couple of the questions were damned silly, or else just clumsily worded. “Do you feel like the man or the woman?” Well, I AM a woman, so WTF else would I feel like?
I’m a little paranoid about not being a ‘good wife’… I actually got told once by a psychologist (of all people!) that I was a bad wife because I didn’t ‘look after (my) husband properly’… :dubious: … because I worked part-time and didn’t spend every spare minute cooking and cleaning.
Now, bear in mind I was seeing her because I was deeply depressed and finding it hard to even get out of bed, so it’s pretty clear she’s a shitty psychologist - my husband just about fell off his chair when I told him what she’d said, and insisted I stop going to her since she was obviously doing more harm than good! - but when you have an authority figure tell you in no uncertain terms that you suck as a wife, it does tend to stick with you. Obviously there are plenty of people, like her, who think that a wifely role is defined entirely by home-related achievements; I don’t know whether that’s the attitude taken by this survey, but the amount of questions that presumed children seem to indicate a very traditional outlook. So it made me unsure about how to answer.
Sorry for the long-winded response to a short question, but I didn’t want you thinking that my reluctance to answer was based from a dismissive attitude towards SAHMs when it’s actually insecurity on my part.
One thing that bothered me about the survey was the assumption that all wives are mothers. Uh, no, we’re not. Some families consist of a man and a woman (and various pets) and we’re good with that (and we do consider ourselves families, too). I didn’t like the way all the questions were worded, either - some of them looked like they went for glib instead of accurate, and one thing I remember from all my test-taking days is you want to make your questions as hard to mis-interpret as possible.
The survey did get me thinking about a few things - like what makes a good wife, if I am one, if I have a good husband and why, things like that.
My husband was told by his doctor that I was a bad wife and a bad influence on him because I didn’t cook him three nutritious meals a day and force him to eat right and exercise. His heart attack, apparently, was my fault even though I hadn’t met him when he had it.
She was a woman, by the way. I’d like to think that if she had said those things to my face I would have done something, said something very wise or witty. I probably just would have barfed on her shoes from stress or something!
Oh gosh, no, I didn’t think that at all. I’m so sorry you had that experience! 
Heh - my husband has jokingly said that my influence in cooking and bringing food into the house is what has caused him to gain 15 pounds since we met. I have noticed, however, that he used to go to the 7-11 and buy a Slurpee/Big Gulp and a big bag of Doritos most days - I’m not taking the heat for my (mostly) healthy cooking and occasionally unhealthy snacks (I’m one of those people who eats a bag of chips over the course of a week - for him, all snack foods come in single-serving sizes).
Regarding the question “Do you feel like a man or a woman in your relationship?” which I thought was pretty straight-forward, received the most varied responses. Don’t assume all women feel the same, especially in this area. It goes from one extreme to the other, like all the responses do for all the questions. There’s NEVER a stock answer. That’s the beauty of it. Getting surveys from 1000 women, in the end, is 1000 different lives, situations, etc. Wife Researcher (Sue)
Actually I should explain that the reason I said “(Said the SAHM)” is that yeah, SAHMing is pretty traditional, but it’s not normal. It’s not like you just fall into it because that’s what’s always been done–I don’t know if anything is like that any more. And even if SAHMing is traditional, no one does it the old way any more anyway.
My personal idea of a traditional wife is someone who spins and weaves her own cloth to clothe her family, keeps a garden, fowl, and bees, and manages the home as an economic unit. She’s a financial asset to the family. Of course, that no longer exists, but it was traditional for far longer than anything else!
I found the questions interesting and enjoyed answering. Two thumbs up. Would answer again A++++++++++++++++++
I would like to see questions regarding Inlaws.
I’ve seen such a huge range of different inlaws and how some of them can just poison a marriage.
You forgot: Grinds her own bread from her own organically grown wheat furrowed in feilds she plowed herself with a baby strapped to her back and her own horse. And her children are called Starshine, Jebidiah, Obadiah and Malachy.
Yeah. When his doctor made this comment, my husband was the one doing all of the cooking.
Even years later I’m still furious about that.