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> Fewer than one-third of women born since 1910 and only one-eighth of men were without sex experience at marriage, compared to nearly nine-tenths of the women and one-half the men born before 1890. If this trend continues at the same rate virginity at marriage will approach the vanishing point in about 20 years. Virginal couples have slightly higher chances for a happy marriage than others.
> Most important sex factors in marriage (but less important than personality and background factors) are the relative strength of a husband's and wife's sex drive and ability of a wife to experience sexual satisfaction. But many marriages in which other psychological adjustments are satisfactory rank in the highest category of happiness despite the wife's failure in the latter respect. One wife in three rarely or never reaches such enjoyment. Only one in five always does so. This failure causes the husband unhappiness almost as often as the wife. If this failure is not overcome in the first year of marriage, it is unlikely ever to be. Its causes are probably biological rather than psychological.
Professor Terman admits that his findings are merely straws in the wind, by no means conclusive. Much of his evidence is colored by his subjects' feelings and reticence. Moreover, he points out that findings might differ in other States than California, other groups than the middle class. But he holds that his test for predicting marital happiness has this much reliability: if an individual scores in the top quarter on the test, the chances are four out of five that his marriage will be average or above average in happiness.
† Rough English translation: a stocky, extrovert woman and a slender introvert man. * PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS IN MARITAL HAPPINESS—McGraw-Hill Book Co. ($4).