Fascinating Insights on the State of Sex and Marriage 100 Years Ago

When we imagine the love lives of previous generations, we tend to hypothesize along two lines.

We think that things were more idyllic in the past, that people were more moral, took the vows of marriage more seriously, and were happier and more faithful as a result.

Or, we tend to take a more cynical view, positing that the people of yesteryear didn’t live up to the standards that were culturally espoused, were more likely to be trapped in unsatisfying relationships, and weren’t as fulfilled as we are in our modern, evolved, liberated time.

Actual historical data belies either neat narrative.

In the 1920s, the psychiatrist Gilbert Van Tassel Hamilton began one of the earliest studies of sex and marriage. At the time, research on the subject, even of the scientific variety, was still considered taboo, and university academics were limited in the things they could examine and publish.

Hamilton set out to conduct a pioneering methodological study that gathered data on what was actually happening in America’s homes and bedrooms by extensively interviewing 100 married men and 100 married women. Their ages ranged from twenty-two to sixty-two, but most were in their thirties and forties. A quarter were childless, while half had two or more children.

In order to avoid any interference from the examiner, the participants were given a stack of notecards upon which 400 questions, designed “to explore every aspect of the married relationship in a systematic way,” had been typewritten. Participants picked up the cards one at a time, read off the question, and then answered it as the examiner transcribed their responses. These sessions lasted for hours and even days, and generated 80,000 dutifully recorded reactions in all.

Hamilton did not choose the study’s participants at random. Because much of what was then theorized about sex and marriage was based on what psychologists and psychiatrists saw in their practices, and the patients most likely to visit a doctor were those already experiencing mental and marital difficulties, Hamilton wanted to study people he considered “normal” rather than “neurotic” — the “well” rather than the “sick.”

Because he needed participants who were able to reflect on complex inner and intimate matters and analyze and articulate their feelings and thoughts in a precise and thorough way, Hamilton further selected for those who were intelligent and better educated. 90% of the men and 73% of the women had at least some college education; 78% of the men and 46% of the women had obtained their degrees. All of the men and 45% of the women held personal professions, and they worked in a variety of fields; the group included doctors, lawyers, teachers, artists, pastors, editors, architects, and more.

Hamilton wasn’t seeking a cross-section of humanity and acknowledged that the responses of his middle-to-upper-class participants were not necessarily reflective of the state of marriage across broader society. His findings are further limited by the small sample size, and the fact that the veracity of the data rests on the truthfulness of the participants. Yet, on that latter score, Hamilton believed the participants were, by and large, very truthful. The length and breadth of the interviews developed a great deal of comfort between the examiner and the participant, and Hamilton actually found the participants to be quite eager to unburden themselves of the private details of their lives; they treated the interviews like free therapy sessions. As Hamilton notes, “Most of us like nothing better than to talk about ourselves—intimately and at great length—if we can do it under conditions that make it a safe and dignified thing.”

All in all, though Hamilton’s study does not offer a general picture of marriage in the 1920s, it does give us a look at what proportions of people within a certain class dealt with various issues and opens a fascinating window into another time. The study was hailed as “the best approach and the most objective approach we have so far to the study of marriage,” and as Hamilton noted, while its findings “are not typical, but they are extremely significant and suggestive.”

Hamilton published his findings as an academic book, A Research in Marriage, in 1929. The following year, he and his co-author, Kenneth MacGowan, published select findings in a book aimed at a popular audience, What Is Wrong With Marriage. Below, we share some of the most interesting facts and figures from Hamilton’s work.

Sexual Experience Before Marriage

Having fewer romantic (sexual or non-sexual) relationships before marriage was correlated with a higher chance of a happy marriage.

46% of men and 65% of women were virgins at marriage.

76% of men and 86% of women had only had a single sex partner — their spouse. 30% of men and 21% of women had sex with their spouse-to-be, before they walked down the aisle, but had had no other sex partners. When these proportions are added to those who were virgins at marriage, only 14% of married women and 24% of married men had had sex with someone other than their spouse.

The men and women who were virgins at marriage were more likely to have happy marriages. 57% of virgin men were happily married compared to the 51% average for marital happiness for men. 49% of virgin women were happy compared to the 45% average for martial happiness for women.

Both those who had had sex before marriage with the partner they later married, and those who had had sex with others besides the person they later married, were below the average of married happiness.

Every participant in the study had used birth control at some time except for those who knew they were sterile. This statistic is noteworthy because the sale and distribution of birth control was heavily restricted at the time. Because of censorship issues, Hamilton did not detail the kinds of contraceptives the participants had used, but noted that “Only half of them felt that the contraceptives they used were safe. Less than a third of the women and less than a quarter of the men had found satisfactory contraceptives.” 

21% of the women had had an abortion. “Two more had used drugs that may or may not have discontinued suspected pregnancies.” The percentage of women who had had an abortion was about the same as it is today,

Sex During Marriage

46% of women had never experienced an orgasm through sexual intercourse. All of the men had reached climax in sexual intercourse. (Hamilton never defines “sexual intercourse,” but it was presumably vaginal intercourse). As to the low number of women who had climaxed from intercourse, he comments: “Science is peculiarly ignorant on this subject. It has been very little studied—possibly because the majority of researchers in sex are men—and there is practically no material of value relating to either the physiological or the psychological aspects.”

Modern statistics vary on this subject: 15% to 25% of modern women report being able to orgasm consistently from vaginal intercourse alone, without any other stimulation; 50% to 70% of women say they need clitoral stimulation, either during or in addition to intercourse, to reach orgasm; 10% to 20% of women report rarely or never having orgasms from intercourse; 10-15% of women have never had an orgasm whether from intercourse or otherwise. A recent study done with both straight and gay singles asked, “When having sexual intercourse in general [‘sexual intercourse’ was not further defined], what percentage of the time do you usually have an orgasm?” Male participants put their percentage at 70-85%; female participants at 46-58%.

About the same proportion of women who married virginal versus sexually experienced men had an orgasm in the first year of marriage. However, a higher percentage of women who had never had an orgasm in the years-long history of their marriage had married virginal versus experienced men.

A capacity for reaching orgasm through intercourse can be developed by the woman/the couple over time. 18 women who did not experience orgasms from sex in the first year of marriage were able to do so later on.

Investment in foreplay was not correlated with a woman’s chance of orgasm in intercourse. “Our figures show that for the whole two hundred men and women the amount of attention paid to erotic preparation and variety of sexual play had no bearing on the matter. Those who learned to take a great deal of preliminary trouble over the act and those who did not turned in the same proportion of climaxes.”

Women who had climaxed through sex with their husbands were more likely to say they loved their husbands. “68% percent of those who declared they loved their husbands had reached climax, against 53% of those who did not love them. Almost half the women who did not love their husbands never had found the full satisfaction of the climax, against only 32 percent of those who did love their husbands.”

Women whose parents were open and comfortable talking about sex when they were growing up were more likely to experience orgasm during sex. Of the women whose childhood questions about sex were “met with encouragement” by her parents, 73% had climaxed during sex. Of the women who had had her childhood questions about sex met with “embarrassment and evasion,” only 42% had experienced an orgasm during sex.

Only one of the 18 women who did not experience orgasm until after the first year of marriage “had met with encouragement when she asked her parents questions about sex.”

74% of women had masturbated, but female masturbation was not correlated with a higher chance of being able to orgasm through sexual intercourse. Among the three-quarters of women who had masturbated, 51% had climaxed through sex; among the 26% who had never masturbated, 62% had climaxed from sex.

The ability to achieve orgasm through sex was not strongly correlated with a woman’s marital happiness. “The happily married women were only 7% more climatic than the unhappy and “42% of the happy marriages were happy despite the woman not having climatic sex.”

Less than a quarter of men and women said the desire for sex was always mutual. 23% of men and 21% said so. 39% of men and 27% of women said that the desire for sex was “usually mutual” but that “the wife occasionally submits.” 11 men and 29 women said that the wife usually or always “submitted” to the husbands’s desire.

7 men and 3 women said that the husband sometimes “submits” to the wife’s desire for sex. The submissive men were all over thirty-seven years old.

When asked, “Is your spouse willing to have the physical relation with you as frequently as you wish to have it?” 64% of men and 60% of women said  “Yes,” or Yes, usually.”

35% of men had experienced “some degree of impotence” while having sex with their wives.

85% of men still found their wives sexually attractive. “Six of these said they had increased in attractiveness.” Two men had never found their wives sexually attractive.

66% of women still found their husbands sexually attractive. Five women had never found their husbands sexually attractive.

28% of men and 24% of women had had an extramarital affair. Only 29% of the men and 17% of the women who had an affair were in happy marriages.

An additional 17 women and one man admitted to extramarital affairs/attachments that were emotional rather than physical.

The number of affairs markedly increased around the time the participants turned 40, particularly amongst women.

Almost two-thirds of the women who had affairs had been unable to orgasm from intercourse with their husbands. While the lack of climax in sex wasn’t strongly correlated with women’s marital happiness, it was with affairs. Hamilton theorizes that “This void in their lives appeared to drive them to other men in search of a fuller experience.” However, almost none of the women who were unable to climax with their husbands were able to climax with their extramarital partner.

Happiness in Marriage

Around 50% of participants were happily or relatively happily married. One-quarter of participants described their marriage as having no serious dissatisfactions or discontents. Another quarter of the participants found some elements of dissatisfaction with their spouses, but regarded them as “overbalanced by the satisfactory features.” Another 13-14% of couples had persistent problems but nonetheless high attachment. The rest, nearly 40%, were in “intolerably bad marriages.”

Men were more happily married than women. 29% of the men and 21% of the women were unequivocally happily married; 22% of men and 24% of the women were happily married with the qualifications mentioned above. So that overall, 51% of the men and 45% of the women reported being unequivocally happy or relatively happy in their marriage.

Despite only around half of participants being in successful marriages, when asked other questions, they showed a greater attachment to the marriage than that statistic might suggest:

• When asked, “Do you wish to go on living with your spouse . . . because you love him/her?” 78% of men said “Yes.” 75% of women said the same.
• When asked, “If by some miracle you could press a button and find that you had never been married to your spouse, would you press that button?” 66% of men and 64% of women gave a definite “No.” The rest said “Yes,” or were uncertain.

More women than men classified their marriages as “failures.” 53% to 37%.

Men grew dissatisfied with their marriage earlier than women. A little over a third “found themselves seriously dissatisfied with their wives before the first year of marriage had passed.” 15% said they had begun to be “seriously dissatisfied with any lack or shortcoming” in their wife when they were still engaged or “from the beginning.” Only 26% of women found dissatisfaction in the first year of marriage, and only one woman had doubts during the engagement period. From the second to sixth year, however, “three times as many women as men began to be unhappy, and it was not until after the sixth year that the men began to catch up.”

The chance for married happiness increased with the age at marriage, up to age thirty-five. Participants who had married before age twenty-five had the lowest percentage of happy marriages. The happiness of participants then increased the later they had gotten married, up to age thirty-five, at which point the rate of married happiness declined. Though almost half of the women had married before age twenty-five (more than in any other five-year period), they were “far and away the unhappiest group”; only 28% were happily married compared to 63% of women who had married between 30 and 34.

Men whose wives were better educated than they were were more happily married. 78% of men whose wives had a superior education were happily married (versus the 51% average). But the women who were better educated than their husbands were less happily married (32% versus the 45% average). Wives whose husbands had a superior education were about average for marital happiness, while husbands who were better educated than their wives were less happily married (39%). “Superior education made those men and women unhappy whose mates did not have it.”

In marriages where the wife was a wage-earner, the husbands were less happily married, and so were the wives. 61% of husbands with non-working wives were happy, versus 44% of men with working wives. 63% of “dependent” wives had happy marriages, while only 25% of the wage-earning women were satisfied with theirs.

Fewer women than men believed that a married couple should tolerate an unsatisfying marriage for the sake of the children. 53% to 62%.

Conflict in Marriage

Women were more critical of their husbands than husbands were of their wives. When asked to name their dissatisfactions with their spouse, 39% of men had no serious complaints to offer about their wives, while only 25% of women said the same of their husbands. “61 men and 75 women found something ‘especially unsatisfactory’ in their spouse.”

When asked what changes, if any, they would make to their wives’ mental and behavioral habits, 21% of men answered “Nothing” on the first score, and 45% wanted nothing changed on the second. Only 14% and 36% of women didn’t want to change anything about the respective behavioral and mental habits of their husbands.

When asked to describe their spouses’ disposition as well as they could, 29% of the men and 17% of the women made “no allusion to an undesirable trait.” And while each man mentioned an average of one negative trait when describing his wife, each woman mentioned an average of three negative traits when describing her husband.

However, women not only named more negative traits in their husbands, they also named more positive ones as well; the wives brought up 3X as many positive traits in describing their husbands as husbands did in describing their wives.

Hamilton notes: “Thus the women betrayed an ability to particularize which repeated itself all through the research.”

The men were only more critical of their wives than the wives were of their husbands in terms of physical appearance. When asked what physical changes, if any, they would make to their spouse, 45% of women said “Nothing,” versus 38% of men who said the same.

When asked about the sources of dissatisfaction in their marriage, both men and women were more likely to cite temperamental than sexual difficulties. Temperamental dissatisfactions were complained of by 37% of women and 49% of men; sexual dissatisfactions were complained of by 30% of women and 39% of men.

More on common complaints:

• The third most commonly cited source of marital dissatisfaction was “domestic slavery/lack of freedom,” which was a complaint registered by 18 women and 10 men.
• “Economic troubles” was only the fourth most commonly cited source of marital dissatisfaction, brought up by just 16 women and 8 men. While financial issues are often thought of as a main source of marital tension, Hamilton’s analysis of the participants’ autobiographies “strongly suggested that friction over money is usually a symptom of something else wrong with the marriage,” rather than “the cause of the trouble.”
• When asked to name the sources of dissatisfaction in the marriage, 10 women said, “Everything is wrong.” Only 2 men gave the same answer.

The personal quality men most wished to change in their wives was their temper. When asked which changes, if any, they would make to their wife’s qualities, the most common answer, given by 28% of men, was that they wished their wives had a better temper. (The word “temper” back then included not only a tendency toward anger, but a person’s overall mood and disposition.) The other most common changes men wished for in their wives were:

• More intelligence: 27%
• More passion/physical desire: 25%
• Less scolding: 24%

The personal quality women most wished to change in their husbands was also temper. 36 women wanted to change their husbands’ temper; while 29 women wanted their husbands to be more even-keeled, 7 wished they were more fiery and less placid and submissive. The other most common changes women wished for in their husbands were:

• Less selfish: 34% (“A number cite moroseness and sullenness as evidence of selfishness” and included within selfishness “pretty nearly every other vice”)
• More talkative: 30%
• More affectionate: 26%

Final Notes

It’s impossible to directly compare these statistics to modern ones, as research data on these topics varies greatly according to the questions asked and the population studied (remember, again, that Hamilton’s participants were not representative of broader society).

For example, on the question of general marital happiness, the percentage of people who report being happily married today typically falls between 40% and 60%, depending on the study. Gallup Polls often find that about 56% of married individuals in the U.S. report being “very happy” with their marriage. But then it must be considered that divorces were much more difficult to obtain in the 1920s, resulting in a 10-15% divorce rate, whereas today the divorce rate is around 40% for first marriages. The rate of happiness in modern marriages will therefore be influenced by the fact that more people who would have remained in unhappy marriages a century ago have already split.

Thus, it is left to the reader to draw their own conclusions as to what has, or hasn’t, changed about sex and marriage in the last 100 years.

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