Science: Marriage & Happiness

In the 1920s, domestic court judges and psychiatrists were popular U. S. oracles on marriage. Their pronouncements usually were guesses, often contradicted each other. While some commentators, for example, said adultery was the chief cause of divorce, others contended it was poverty, low mentality, drink, nagging. Gynecologist T. H. Van de Velde spurned such simple explanations, went so far as to assert that mating should be between "a cyclothymic pycnic woman and a schizothymeleptosome man."†

In the 1930s, these oracles have been supplanted by a new group—educators and psychologists, who try to eliminate emotional...