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Even among the few firms that insist on formal interviews, the general feeling is that a wife affects her husband's advancement only when their home life is so strained that it harms his work—and even then he is not necessarily disqualified. "Anything that a company might do to imply that advancement depends on the wife's activities," says Henry Arnest, assistant vice president of the grocery products division of the Carnation Co., "is a kiss of death to the whole idea of better understanding in the company."
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Most executives think—and their wives agree—that the executive wife should be moderately informed about her husband's business, yet not so concerned that she meddles in his work or tries to push him. (The wife of a $30,000-a-year Detroit executive recently got ulcers while sweating out a promotion for her husband; he came through fine.) Qualities of tact, graciousness and amiability are important if the company is in a small town or if the husband is a sales executive who must entertain frequently.
But few top executives really expect wives to conform to any stereo. typed image. Said Joseph E. Adams, vice president of White Motor Co.: "Consider the nation's top executives. How many of them would have been hired if wives had been a factor in the selection? Some men need a psychiatrist at home who will listen to their problems. Others need frivolous wives to distract them. Some need wives who are prominent in civic activities, some not. You can't type a wife."
Again and again executive wives themselves state firmly that the only sensible approach to the goal of being an ideal executive wife is to relax and forget about emulating a prototype. As Mrs. Charles Vychopen, wife of the traffic director of Slick Airways, put it: "You can't afford to get too inhuman about everything, and you can't be too sophisticated about how you act. The best thing is just to try to be yourself."