Testing Bernard’s Thesis of His and Hers Marriage Using Marital Satisfaction Research Published Between 1929 and 1950

Results from 17 studies published between 1929 and 1950 with 36 effect sizes for marital adjustment, happiness, or satisfaction were subjected to a meta-analysis to test Jessie Bernard’s thesis about “his” and “hers” marriage as it may have applied to early family research in the USA. While the meta-analysis did not support the hypotheses that wives would report lower levels of or greater variation in marital adjustment, it was found that wives accounted for a much larger percentage of low satisfaction scores at the lowest levels of marital adjustment or when there were large differences in marital adjustment, using paired data between them and their husbands. Thus, this research, despite being derived from much older data, provides partial support for Bernard’s thesis, largely in agreement with more recent research and meta-analyses concerning the same hypotheses. However, even though some recent meta-analyses have found stronger support for all three of Bernard’s hypotheses, most meta-analyses on this topic did not control for marital social desirability, nor did they consider research published between 1951 and 1969, leaving room for future research to further verify or reject Bernard’s thesis.