The findings of this research really suck:
When Seattle oncologist Dr. Marc Chamberlain was treating his brain cancer patients, he noticed an alarming pattern. His male patients were typically receiving much needed support from their wives. But a number of his female patients were going it alone, ending up separated or divorced after receiving a brain tumor diagnosis.
Dr. Chamberlain, chief of the neuro-oncology division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, had heard similar stories from his colleagues. To find out if these observations were based in fact, he embarked on a study with Dr. Michael J. Glantz of the University of Utah Huntsman Cancer Institute and colleagues from three other institutions who began to collect data on 515 patients diagnosed with brain tumors or multiple sclerosis from 2001 through 2006.
The results were shocking. Women in the study who were diagnosed with a serious illness were six times more likely to become separated or divorced than men with similar health problems, according to the report published in the journal Cancer.
I’m really not sure how some people live with themselves.
General Winfield Stuck
Me neither/ Let’s ask Newt Gingrich and John Mccain how they did it.
geg6
I will allow this thread to go past me without commenting on it. Because my take on this will probably get me banned. ;-)
At the very least, it will make more people here mad at me.
/patting self on back for my moderation
Emily
When I was diagnosed with stage 1 cancer, my husband was the the most kind, loving, supportive person in the world. And when I later told him what Newt did, he was plenty pissed off that someone could act like that.
Randy P
Friend of ours went through this with breast cancer. The husband even tried to claim she was faking it. His lawyer apologized for even putting it on the table.
General Winfield Stuck
And I would add John Edwards, amongst others.
Faux News
General you beat me to it! Don’t forget Newt served his divorce papers to wife #1 while she was in the hosptial fighting cancer! Ah yes, Republican Family values.
Laura W
Ha. This just reminded me that in my (long ago) past I’ve had two men that I had broken up with tell me they had cancer so I would reconcile with them. (Liars, both, in big and small things.)
Top THAT geg6!
Dave
I don’t know how anyone could do that. And it always disgusts me when it does.
Michael
My sister in law just went through chemo and a double mast. In a recent doc’s visit, her idiot husband (also a doc) kept interrupting to ask for referrals on something he wants to have done, and asked repeatedly when she’ll be well enough to take care of him for what he wants done.
I’m thinking that it won’t be long until she’s single again.
El Tiburon
I think Newt just tore off his mic and stormed off the set.
Zifnab
I had a friend who, when her father went into the hospital with brain cancer, kinda wigged out and didn’t want anything to do with the situation. It took a while to convince her to even go visit.
Some people just can’t handle disease.
Others – McCain, Gingrich – are just assholes.
Xenos
I bet there is a big difference between community-property states (like Washington and California) and equitable-distribution states. Filing for divorce against a wife with brain cancer would be a good way to lose a lot more than 50% of the marital estate where any sense of equity applies.
Zoogz
Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but just to relate that it can happen:
1) Met spouse as a high-school romance (11th grade)
2) I then went to college. She stayed at home, 300 miles away.
3) While I was at school, spouse (at age 20) was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
4) At the exact same time as the diagnosis, I was in Japan doing a study abroad program.
The good news was that she was in remission in six months, and I was able to be with her at the end. We married the next year. We have three children at home currently, which is pretty amazing considering the chemo she underwent.
This isn’t to say that it was without a hitch; there were a couple times that breaking it off was talked about. But, two people can pull together through a crisis sometimes.
I suppose this shows my (and her) age somewhat, but her 10-year remission anniversary is next June. Can’t wait to celebrate.
Martin
When my son was born, I held someone I imagined camping and throwing a ball with. When my daughter was born, I held someone I knew I would worry about until I died. Things like this is why.
kommrade reproductive vigor
This is excellent news for … Oh wait, no it isn’t.
People really do suck.
Raenelle
Perhaps men find physical courage easier, and women have the edge in emotional courage.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Laura W:
Well that proves it, all men are pigs.
I’ve even heard that some men will claim to be pregnant to get a woman to do what they want her to do.
Rob C.
My dad’s girlfriend battled breast cancer some years back (doing OK now, thank God). During this period she met several women, all fellow patients, whose husbands or boyfriends had ditched them in their time of need, including one scumbag who told his wife that he was leaving her because after her breasts’ removal, she wasn’t a real woman anymore.
Makes me ashamed to be a man.
slippy
@El Tiburon: I’d pay to see that. The taste of such self-pwnage would be scrumptious.
some guy
Guess it’s called a “dick move” for a reason.
General Winfield Stuck
@Raenelle:
And maybe the penus is an idiot. Not mine of course:)
Leelee for Obama
@Martin: As the Mother of one of each, and Grandmother to 3 girls and 1 boy, I can tell you, it’s like that for Moms too. You worry about the boys, but you figure, somehow, they’ll be fine. With the girls, you already know from your own life that that ain’t the way it goes, and you know that you’ll worry for them until someone throws dirt on top of you.
Punchy
Divorce her? I find it’s just that much easier to cheat on her and sleep around with the rich blonde floozy while she’s on the hospital cancer floor, hooked up to IV drips, and then let the percentages run their course and hope death can do the divorce for me.
Signed,
J. McCain
Just Some Fuckhead
This is why I will never marry a man.
geg6
@Laura W:
Wow. Can’t say I can. What assholes.
In good news on this, my own father was the most wonderful, tender caregiver to my mother throughout her 15 year battle with breast cancer. My brother-in-law married my sister knowing all about her Crohn’s disease and all the difficulties associated with that. One of my best male friends, Flip, still lives and cares for his girlfriend of 25 years who is in the final stages of MS. Men whose examples shine through all the assholery of so many of their compatriots.
Little Dreamer
Of course, just because someone is diagnosed with a disease and the spouse of said person is expected to stay in the marriage doesn’t mean that there never were any problems in the marriage, or that staying in a dead marriage is healthy for the spouse.
What if staying is unhealthy? What if the person doing the leaving didn’t always leave simply because the spouse was ill, but because they realized the marriage was not working? I don’t see any statistics here that tell me how many of these marriages were happy or had problems prior to diagnosis. I also don’t see any statistics stating how long the spouses took to decide the marriage was over. Perhaps these guys did leave simply because their wives illnesses were difficult to deal with, or perhaps not.
Violet
A friend was diagnosed with MS. Husband had affair after her diagnosis and left her. She died last year.
That kind of behavior is pretty typical. What’s shocking is that it took until now for doctors to figure it out. Pretty much any woman could have told them that. Men, of course, have to do a a study. Can’t trust what women tell them.
Violet
@Laura W:
I had one tell me he was going to kill himself if I didn’t get back together with him. And he meant it. He also was going to kill me, but that’s another story.
slag
My father’s a complete rightwing asshat, but he stayed with my mother through 15 years of various cancer combinations. Brushed her teeth for her on the day she died. The way he loves his ladies is the single most respectable thing about him. But he still happily soaks up any bilge Newt spills out in spite of Newt’s notoriously hypocritical personal weaknesses. There are asshats and then there are asshats.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Little Dreamer:
Critical thinking, cool-headed empiricism, and pointed questions will get you nowhere when there is a bandwagon to be jumped on, love.
Sue
Gotta say I haven’t seen that among the men I know. Those dealing with a spouse’s illness were uniformly terrified but stepped up as best they could.
What I would like to know from this study is how many women left their husbands at this time, instead of the other way around, because they had an actual life-affirming realization that life’s too short to stay with an asshole. Not many, I’d guess, if they needed the husband’s insurance. Yet another argument for a public option!
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You meant “again,” right?
slag
@Little Dreamer: I don’t mean this in the way you may take it, but I highly recommend you take a couple of statistics courses. I suggest them to a lot of people for everything from understanding the subject matter to understanding the basics of scientific methodology.
slag
@AngusTheGodOfMeat: And you seem to be kind of a moron. At least as far as this subject’s concerned. And I do mean that in the way you may take it.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@slag:
Just stay away from The Bell Curve.
Or, not, as you prefer.
Please send for my informative booklet, “Correlation Is Fucking Causation, After All, Bitches” which is price-reduced as a Barnes and Noble e-book to just $0.99 US.
Anne Laurie
But you don’t understaaaaaaand, John — these poor men are the Real Victims(tm)! Their partners selfishly chose to get sick & ugly & useless to them, frequently just as the poor darlings were reaching their mid-life-crisis years! (Which for some men, seems to start around age 28 and extend until they’re in their 80s). If only us women could appreciate how haaaaard it is for our partners when we refuse to live up to our responsibilities…
Rook
This is a well known statistic in the substance abuse field. We’ve had statistics for decades showing that more women stand by their men who are going through treatment and recovery then men will stand by their women who are doing the same. I am not surprised.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@slag:
I’m a meat god. I don’t have to answer to you.
Svensker
@Violet:
This. Ask any woman what she’s like when her hub has a cold or the flu. Then ask her what he’s like when SHE has a cold or the flu.
My dad used to disappear into the basement on a “critical project” whenever my mom had a bad cold. Time spent taking care of her meant that the “critical project” wasn’t getting the attention it needed! OMG! But, when she got cancer, he was right there, loyal and loving to the end.
Mark
It can go even worse for women. A friend of mine in college was dating this guy who was about 10 years older than her. He was a total jerk, and he was also in the closet. All of her friends were begging her to break up him.
Then one day, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She was definitely not the type of person who would turn against someone in need. She was right there with him through everything – operation, recovery. They got married as soon as she graduated from college…And a few years later, he came out of the closet.
Little Dreamer
I hear some people leave their spouses when there’s no illness involved also. Imagine that.
Comrade Darkness
I blame the women who marry men for completely the wrong reasons. They ignore the quiet introverts who would worship them forever in favor of the outgoing superficial bastards. And yes, there is data to support this. Too lazy to look it up since it’s lunchtime.
Anne Laurie
@Rook:
Well, John McCain seems to have “stood by” Cindy during her little-issues-with-prescription-painkillers problems — but of course, it’s Cindy’s money that’s given John the freedom to forget exactly how many houses he (co)owns.
Tim Cooper
Look, it’s in the same category as the statistics that show my gender is more likely to commit violent acts and sexual abuse. It is sad, it is horrifying and it is just another thing a decent and good man must know exists and recognize is beyond the pale. It would help though if others would shun them for their behavior.
Scott de B.
Then why wouldn’t it happen to men with cancer just as often?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Darkness: This. Nothing forced a woman to marry a bastard, if by nothing we don’t include the forces of evolutionary biology.
soonergrunt
@General Winfield Stuck: THIS!
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Svensker:
Men are all different. All the women in my life will tell you that I wait on them hand and foot when they are sick. Literally.
And I was raised by a parent (whose gender doesn’t matter here) that wanted the sick people to go to their rooms and stay out of sight and mind until they got better. Which included me, when I was a kid.
So there you go. People are just different. There are caregivers, and there are the others.
kay
I’ve noticed this myself.
I’ve also noticed something else: how the woman’s “birth family” are sort of assumed to have the duty to care for the sick wife, while the same is not true of the husband’s birth family. Instead the wife is the assumed caretaker when the husband is sick, not the husband’s mother.
So maybe this goes back to some really old ideas about marriage, where the woman retained only the rights that came through her birth family, and got no rights as an adult apart from or in addition to those, when she married.
Little Dreamer
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
I can vouch for this.
MBunge
If these men are such dicks, why did these women marry them in the first place?
Mike
soonergrunt
I’ll note that my dad stayed with my mother right to the end last July. Her cancer almost killed him too.
My mother and I had a complicated relationship. We loved each other, but we didn’t like each other very much. I will always revere my father for taking care of her and loving her to the end.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Little Dreamer:
Is alcoholism an illness?
Heh. I know, we don’t have the answer yet.
But I can tell you this: Having an alcoholic spouse sure as hell made ME sick.
Little Dreamer
@Scott de B.:
Well, IMHO (and only IMHO) someone said it above, women have different socioeconomic factors that make it harder to end marriages (and I say this as a woman who has dealt with such socioeconomic conditions that made it harder to leave a marriage).
Just Some Fuckhead
I retract my tongue-in-cheek comment now that the mbunge troll has made it seem dirty and anti-woman.
scav
@Little Dreamer: all of which says nothing about the means of the respective distributions or their behavior over time and/or in specific subsets of the population.
asiangrrlMN
@Little Dreamer: Snark all you want, but six times is pretty significant. Of course there are other issues involved, but it doesn’t negate the fact that if a woman has a terminal illness, her husband is much more likely to leave her than if he’s the one diagnosed. Sometimes, a gender (such as male) does tend to act in one way more than the other (such as female). To state this is not to be sexist.
@Raenelle: I think you got the second half of that correct, anyway.
kay
@Tim Cooper:
I once read a (real) account of a mass shooting, where the author replaced all of the “he” with “she”, just to make a point.
” Apparently unprovoked, she fired a total of 16 shots into the crowd….”
It was amazing how startling it was.
slag
@AngusTheGodOfMeat: Therapy. Consider it.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@kay:
Wow, not that hits a nerve for me. In my recent marriage, my in-laws acted as if only I, and never they, had any responsibility to care for their relative (my spouse). The whole subject was a sore spot between me and them over many years.
That particular family has an issue with a genetically carried health problem, and they act as if they never heard of it before, every time somebody in the family turns out to be ill. I cannot understand how in this day and age of widely available information a whole family can remain ignorant of the information they need to take care of themselves and each other.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@slag:
Go fuck yourself. Consider it.
Violet
@Little Dreamer:
And some people leave their spouses because they got sick. In the case of my friend who had MS, their marriage was fine until she got sick. Then he had the affair and left her. And he told her he did all of it because she got sick and he couldn’t handle it.
Ash
It’s common knowledge among womenfolk that (most) men are complete pussies when it comes to illnesses. When they get sick, they can’t handle it on their own, and when others get sick, they can’t handle it on their own.
Cat Lady
I just think men more than women are generally wired to believe in solutions to problems, and they don’t do helpless and not in control very well. My guess is that the majority of the ones who leave don’t leave because they don’t care what happens, but that they can’t confront their inability to effect a favorable outcome day in and day out. It’s really hard to watch someone you care about suffer – we all want to look away from pain and suffering, and apparently men are more inclined to act on it.
And some are just Newt level assholes.
Comrade Darkness
@Just Some Fuckhead: I should add that those men are in the relationship for the “wrong” reason as well, but they are on the power side of the equation and don’t matter, until they abandon their post.
Little Dreamer
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Yes, having an alcoholic parent made me sick too.
My father stayed with his alcoholic wife, despite knowing that she was both difficult and dangerous (she was a mean drunk, and had no compunctions about getting into a car and driving when drunk). He gave her everything. When he got cancer and she stayed with him, she verbally made it clear everyday how difficult it was on her and at the very moment that the phone call from the nursing home came stating he had died, she said “Oh, Thank God!”.
Personally, I think he should have left her.
slag
@AngusTheGodOfMeat: Keep going. You’re only proving my point.
asiangrrlMN
@Little Dreamer: Granted. It’s not always economically feasible for a woman to leave a marriage. I think we can say, whether for societal reasons or biological reasons that women are more often the caretakers in the family. No one is saying that all men are unfeeling cads or all women are emotionally nurturing (and, let’s face it, sometimes women do it for selfish reasons), but it’s not heresy to suggest that overall, this is the case.
Yes, everyone is an individual. But, there are common traits that define groups. There is sexism in this country and defined sex roles and so on and so forth. Bottom line: Men feel less compelled to stay with a spouse/partner is dying than women do.
asiangrrlMN
@asiangrrlMN: who is dying. Man. My typing sure has deteriorated since the loss of the edit function.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@slag:
You have a point? What would that be?
Capri
This is going to come off very sexist (and probably racist), but here goes….
My first, unscientific take, is that these researchers accurately described a tree, but missed the forest. I’d want to know who does most of the care-taking when anyone gets sick in most human societies. I’d wager it’s a female – either a mother, daughter, or some other female relative. In some societies with very close family groups, it’s easy to arrange for a female to take care of a sick relative because they already live in the same house or at least in the same town. This allows the man to maintain his breadwinner role without a huge amount of personal adjustment.
In the U.S. – not so much. Many of us live far away from our closest family members, and everyone works and can’t drop their own comittments to help assist a sick relative. In my own case, my mother, 2 siblings, 3 kids, and I live in 7 different states in the northeast, midwest, and south.
When I got sick several years ago and couldn’t walk for 2 weeks, my husband at the time was a basket case until his mother arrived to help out with my care and around the house. If 1) his mother wasn’t retired thus available to help out and 2) I wouldn’t be able to walk ever again rather than only 2 weeks – he’d have probably left. He actually said to me it bothered him that people expressed sympathy to me and hoped I got better soon, but never expressed sympathy to him for having to both take care of me and do all the stuff I usually did. (He was a jerk, though, and I’ve since divorced him).
If the man in a relationship gets gravely ill, his wife or other female relative will shoulder the responsibility of caring for them. A gravely ill woman won’t upset the apple cart if there’s a mother, sister, or daughter to help out, but having an available female relative occurs less and less frequently. Many males in isolation just freak out – and either leave the relationship, cheat, or do something else to distance themselves from the sick person.
I’d also wager that this happens less often in Hispanic families as they have stronger family ties than most other ethic groups in this country.
Little Dreamer
@scav:
He took care of me when I was sick and he was very good to me during that time, why does that need a statistic? I was merely pointing out that he was telling the truth.
soonergrunt
@Little Dreamer:
Probably a lot like all of the women who leave or cheat on their husbands during a military deployment.
I know lots of guys who ended up getting divorced after coming home to empty houses and bank accounts or houses full of all sorts of shit the wife bought on credit or some other guy driving his car around and so on.
Deployments or prolonged illnesses don’t end healthy marriages, but they do end marriages that were in bad shape or shaky to begin with.
Shinobi
Seriously though you guys, we totally don’t need feminism anymore, what are those crazy bitches talking about, Gender Equality Achieved!
One of my parents friend’s divorced his wife while she was dying of breast cancer. (I was only vaguely aware of this.)
But it makes me feel lucky that my dad stuck around and took such good care of my mom after a massive car accident and subsequent brain damage and then 20 years later a major stroke. The joke is that he’s really on his third wife.
Comrade Darkness
@asiangrrlMN: Even more interesting is the divorce rate when the man was sick DROPPED to 3% and went up to 21% when the woman was sick. Leaving the average for the whole one-ill-spouse population the same as the general population.
Not only are women less likely to leave, they glue things together, which is really stunning. That a 4 times difference right there, just compared to the control.
Little Dreamer
@asiangrrlMN:
There is sexism on this very thread.
Also, there is a representative population for everything under the sun. There are spouses of both genders who leave marriages when their partner becomes sick, there are spouses of both genders who don’t. There are people of all different sorts in this world.
It is my personal belief that women would leave just as much if they had the means to do so.
gypsy howell
Jeez, 68 comments in and no one has asked the obvious follow-up question? How many of these men are republicans?
anonymous for this post only
Been there. My wife had cancer, and I stayed with her, but it was hard. She survived, and we’re still together, but things were said in the face of death that permanently changed the relationship, and not in a good way. I would not presume to judge anyone who couldn’t get through that.
PK
I don’t think its just cancer. I know a few women with sick (or special needs kids) where the husbands had an affair and just left. They are willing to take financial responsibility but not be a part of the kids lives. The women on the other hand don’t have that choice. Very few women will leave a sick child for a boyfriend.
I think its biology.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Little Dreamer:
I know. I grew up with two alcoholics in the house, one male and one female.
On balance, the female one was meaner, in her own way, but the male one left the deeper scars.
The bottom line on all this is that there are deeply dysfunctional families out there and we are all touched by their effects in one way or another.
Also, WRT to the thread’s core topic, I would be interested in knowing to what extent financial security is a part of the tilted stats that John refers to. To what extent are women staying with a bad marriage for financial reasons, while men are less inclined to stay for that reason?
I don’t know, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a connection of some sort. It’s an interesting subject, but here in the Land of Snark, we are not likely to discover much real meaning about it. Eh?
Little Dreamer
@soonergrunt:
My father came back from WWII to a woman who had a long term affair with one of his relatives, kept the affair going for years after, and eventually produced a child from that coupling.
kay
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
I see your point, but that’s a little attenuated for me. I go by sort of a strict “order”, myself, but I’m like that.
You’d be first, sorry to say. I think you got the duty when you got the benefit of marriage. It’s nice to have help, but, really, you’re on your own.
My sibs and I are are currently pitching in to support one of my sisters who is a single parent and unemployed. The child’s father, my nephew, (never her husband) is dead. It’s working out really well, but it was sort of elaborate to set up, because we had to do proportionate contributions based on income.
I did not do the math, but I mediated some really mean email exchanges, about why certain people have less income than other people, etc. I thought we’d get lost in those sorts of after the fact second-guessing, because, really, what does it matter? You’re either in or out.
gypsy howell
mr thurston howell says the obvious conclusion is “the wives don’t notice any difference when big parts of their husband’s brains are missing”
kay
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
The child is of course my nephew, not the child’s father, just so we don’t make this more complicated than it already is.
Comrade Darkness
@Little Dreamer: 12% of women would have left if there were no illness, but only 3% did. Something else is going on.
Personally, I think men and women get into marriage for vastly different reasons, something society wallpapers over, to the detriment of both sexes. There may very well be biological reasons for the different reasons, but I prefer to think humans have some logical input into their actions, so biology or not people need to choose their mates better.
Ash
@Capri:
Uhm, I think this negates most of your point and pretty much proves that men (again, not all) just don’t know how to be caretakers and are jerks when it comes to doing things they don’t understand.
catclub
“I’m really not sure how some people live with themselves.”
Far too well.
It’s living with other people that is the challenge.
Ash
@soonergrunt:
That’s a problem too, and I’m sure a statistical analysis can be done on that. I tangentially know a crazy bitch whose husband was deployed and then she went out screwing every man she could find. That’s not related to this particular issue, though.
Brachiator
515 patients. A pretty good number.
But no breakdown (at least in the abstract I just read) by income level, age or political affiliation (so the The Gingrich Effect title is a fun shot, but not necessarily accurate). No cross analysis by religion or any other measure of ethical values.
Age or length of marriage might have a relationship as well.
Also, no analysis (and this would be hard to do) of other aspects of the relationship after the illness was known (e.g., love affairs vs divorce or separation).
Still, it’s pretty troubling.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@kay:
Your point is taken, but the situation (like most real ones) is a lot more complicated than we are giving it room for here.
Let me put it this way: After literally decades of wrestling with a family-wide health problem mostly by trying to sweep it under the nearest rug …. this family stood by while I married into it and never said a word to me about the whole thing. I discovered the issue later, blindsided by it, and single-handedly got a proper diagnosis for the ill person, got the right treatment, fought the system and the public agencies to get it for her, and paid for it (another long and complicated story in itself). Meanwhile her family has never lifted a finger. Nor do they lift a finger for their other brothers and sisters who may face the same issues. Nor do the educate themselves about the illness, nor pass information along to others in the family who may need it, nor provide any support other than “be sure and pray for so and so” once in a while.
If it were my family I would be bombarding them with information and useful advice. In fact, I have bombarded them with information and useful advice, all to deaf ears.
Svensker
@Cat Lady:
Yes.
Obviously, all these things are generalizations. People are individuals. But, as asiangirl says, there are group traits and this is definitely one of them.
Tsulagi
Hear you.
Not brain cancer, but 10 years ago mom had a very aggressive serious case of breast cancer. Statistically her odds of not making it were in double digits.
Unlike family values champion Newt, dad never left her side. In addition to being there for the surgeries, radiation and other treatments, he drove her and stayed with her during twice weekly intravenous chemo sessions. Mom bonded with some of her chemo buddies there. Sadly, like this study, mom found spouses leaving during their treatment was not uncommon.
Cannot understand that. Even if your marriage or relationship was shaky or you were thinking of ending it before the cancer diagnosis, you don’t leave them behind like that. Mom, and even her lead oncologist, credits dad with being a big reason for her survival.
Persia
@Violet: Happened to a woman I know, too, and they had a son.
aimai
I’d like to add to this discussion by pointing out that the first thing to think when reading the original post isn’t “how can I make this all about how misunderstood men, or my male friends, are?” Its astonishing to me the number of people on the original comment thread, and even on this one, who feel the need to argue that “maybe divorce is life affirming and its the woman’s choice!”
I’m totally sure that plenty of people, men as well as women, when they realize that there is only X amount of time in their lives may wish to make a major change. But why divorce? Divorce is a hugely complex and ugly undertaking that severs one partner from financial and social stability, and cuts them off from the physical and social care that their partner is usually thought to give them when they are sick. If you were in a loving relationship with a man and you decided you wanted to move on for your last six months to a year why would you, or he, want you to go through divorce at that point? Why not just separate. Or, as so many women have done, simply continue to live together and work together and care for each other platonically during this time of need?
The doctors were seeing people who were *abandoned* through divorce, not liberated through divorce.
I’ve got nothing against men. I love ’em. I love my father, brother, grandparents, husband. I sincerely think they are wonderful and there’s no way my husband would abandon me if I got sick–or I him. But lets get real. Divorce of a sick person comes about because the non sick person isn’t capable of selflessly carrying out all the complex emotional and physical tasks associated with caring for the sick. And its generally the men in the relationship who can’t handle that side of things. Take a look at parents who grapple with the illness or death of a child. Their divorce rates are exceptionally high, as well. Because the ordinary give and take of their relationship (whatever it was) is disrupted by the anger and the neediness of one or both parties.
aimai
kay
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Okay. But had you had information prior would you have made a different decision?
Because what you’re describing could happen after. Maybe you were sort of hoodwinked into marrying someone, but that presupposes that her physical, um, potential was a deciding factor. Was it?
It’s also okay if it was, but we’re getting a little close to checking her teeth and testing her bicep here, for me, anyway.
The Populist
Newtie knows all about this type of thing. Didn’t he divorce two wives who got sick?
Little Dreamer
People have been reciting marriage vows, for decades at least, that ask if the person would take their intended “in sickness and in health” – so I think this situation was known long ago. Why is it so startling now? Oh, that’s right, we live in a moralistic society where fallible humans are expected to be perfect.
pcbedamned
My husband is of the ‘can’t handle sickness’ variety. But I have known this this our first year of marriage (will be 16 in Dec.) when I got pregnant with our first and every time I threw up, so did he – just hearing me gagging would send him running. He cannot stand the thought of vomit or blood. I do sometimes wonder what would happen?!? He swears that he would be there, and has even joked? that he would hire someone to take of me. Mind you, he a constantly worrier and has a tremendous fear that some illness will ‘take me away from him’. I think that is the fear that most men have, and rather than dealing with the loss of the loved one, they take the easy way out and just leave. JMO.
different church-lady
Well, the good news here is: Gingrich is human.
I really wasn’t sure about that for quite some time.
AkaDad
Oh good, I didn’t miss the man-bashing thread.
;-)
Joel
i wonder — in the broader scheme of things — if this is any different than the statistically higher likelihood that men are going to commit violent crimes and other dubious acts…
MNPundit
It’s biological though right? Once your mate becomes ineffective at well, reproduction the biological imperative is to move to someone that does until you are no longer capable of it.
It’s stupid to let that rule us in the current age but there you go.
Shinobi
I think this also has some important bearing on the whole “Sanctity of Marriage” concept. That is, is marriage still a really valuable social institution when 20% of people faced with a situation like this will find a way out of their contract? It’s not like “In sickness and in health” gets slipped into the vows at the last minute.
People just don’t feel any compulsion to keep their promises anymore. I understand that divorce happens and relationships end and all that, but then why have we set up this insane institution that demands that people partner themselves for ever only to have it fail 1/5 times when it is really needed the most?
EconWatcher
A friend of mine found out in college that his girlfriend was diagnosed with MS. He promptly married her. He has devoted his life to taking care of her since then.
I’ve often asked myself what I would have done. I’m afraid I probably would not have lived up to the standard he set.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@kay:
No, I really don’t feel that I was hoodwinked. I just think that her family is in denial and is perfectly happy to let everyone fend for himself and herself. Honestly, I think they are just lazy and don’t want to do the work required to deal with things like this.
I traveled all the way to Pittsburgh (2500 miles) to go to a national symposium on this health problem. Nobody in her family has ever even googled the damn thing.
seanogar
How do they live with themselves? One word: rationalization.
By the way the sexism in this thread is appalling. Change the word “man” to “Muslim” or “Jew” or “African-American” etal and you’d be ashamed of yourselves. Lots of men are jerks, sure – but you’ll find plenty of SOBs in every group of people. I think one poster above hits the nail on the head: far more women would leave if they could afford to do so. That’s a product of tradition and societal convention, not any one gender’s fault specifically.
scav
@Little Dreamer: um, but what I *was* pointing out is that one man being good doesn’t invalidate the statistical description of the group. I’m not denying there are exceptions but there seems to be a hell of tendency in the population, this current population, as a whole. The ACTUAL population, not your well-if-all-things-are theoretically-equal population which is at best a theory until we actually get one of those. I don’t buy your all women will dump sick men in a blink assumed ideal any more than the all women are angels assumed ideal. No evidence in either case. And your snipe about “humans being expected to be perfect now” just smells of desperation, frankly.
Little Dreamer
Marriage is a religious construct for moralistic control. It’s only popular because people become attracted to each other and decide that encasing themselves into concrete together would be fun, for awhile, and then they quite often start looking for a jackhammer.
Little Dreamer
@scav:
kindly point out where I said that, or go fuck yourself.
soonergrunt
@Ash:
But it is related. Spouses do not support their stressed spouse (particularly when that form of stress leads to loss of marital relations) when the marriage is not what it should be from their perspective.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@kay:
I don’t know what decision I would have made, but if I had had information, I could have made better decisions and sooner than I was able to do under fire and pretty ignorant of the whole health issue. It took me six months to get a handle on it and that was only after fighting like a rat to get that handle. I could have been ready to deal effectively much sooner if only I had known what the hell was going on.
Meanwhile here we are 15 years later and her family STILL takes no proactive stance, still has no real knowledge beyond the easiest and most superficial, even though around 20% of the people in that family are susceptible to a life threatening illness. That’s just mind boggling to me.
Let me put this in more personal terms. Many here who have kept in touch off-the-blog know that I have an adorable granddaughter that I have doted on for years. Well, that child has a 20% chance of getting sick with a dangerous condition later in her life. But her parents, who know this, have done NOTHING to educate themselves about the subject and take any proactive stance whatever. They pretend that it can’t happen to them.
Aaaaarrrrghhhhhhhhhh.
Brachiator
@asiangrrlMN:
Here I’m going to be cold-headed and cold-hearted (and I am addressing this to everybody, not just singling out asiangrrlMN):
Is this really sexism? And is this really just how the US works, vs differences in the way that men and women look at things? And note here that I am not making a nature/nurture hard claim.
Are the women just being saps? And if it is society’s fault, then aren’t women being double saps to take care of men who would dump them in a similar circumstance?
I once mentioned to a woman friend that I believed that, other things being equal, I had observed that while a woman might care about all her children more or less equally, a man often would care more about the children of a woman that he loved even more than his own biological children. My woman friend went nuts over this. And blamed sexism.
And on this specific thread’s topic, I recall another woman friend who married a man she clearly and emphatically did not love, because he had a substantial income and provided security for her and her son. However, when he became ill with a lingering and terminal illness, she nursed him day and night and behaved honorably toward him until he passed away. But she was able to land this guy in the first place because she was young and hot.
By the way, I know of some gay relationships where one partner bolted when the other became ill, and others that became stronger than any straight marriage in the face of the trials of an illness. Here I got no clue about odds or statistics.
Still, just saying that life is messy and complicated.
Svensker
@Little Dreamer:
Wow. Your world is different than my world.
Flugelhorn
@Anne Laurie:
Actually, you have that a little backwards. Mid-life crisis is not about the age of men. It is about the age/condition of the women they are with. There is a certain biological drive that causes men to have this “Mid-life” crisis when their mates are no longer viable “breeders” so to speak. It is the same biology that drives many women to lust after the “Bad-boy” and often stay with bad men far longer than they should. Biological they are seen as suitable mates that can not only care for their off-spring but can pass on these genes that will help to insure that the offspring will be able to care for themselves. At these these are largely accepted theories on the subjects.
Of course,it is up to reason to overcome the “lizard-brain”. Some people just lack the capacity.
Flugelhorn
@Flugelhorn: You know, it would be awesome if you could go back and edit your posts. Nice software.
Little Dreamer
@Brachiator:
exactly!
soonergrunt
@soonergrunt: And further to my last, I have no real doubt that if the phenomenon we have both observed were studied again (it has been before) and that the data were normed for the gender of the stay-at-home spouse, that men would still act disproportionately “dickish.”
scav
@Little Dreamer: granted, an overstatement, but you do assume they will dump their sick spouses to the exact same degree that men will under similar economic conditions, *which is an assumption*. There do seem to be biologically-based differences between the sexes (in cognition as well as reactions to drugs which are the ones I can remember studies on off-hand) that still need to be examined. Not that I’m assuming that this particular case will end up either way, I’m just pointing out that statistically, your good fortune proves nada.
Little Dreamer
@Svensker:
Divorce statistics would show that my world is more indicative of Earth, late 20th/ early 21st centuries.
aimai
This is a discussion of a particular, well observed but perhaps not well understood phenomenon. Apparently there is lots of both good data and anecdotal data from commenters that some of the time men willingly choose to marry, or stay with, damaged or ill women. There is also lots of good data–like that from the original study–that early in marriage men are significantly more likely to leave ill wives than women are likely to leave sick husbands. This tracks people’s anecdotal information very, very, well since lots of people came on to talk about their own experiences and those of their acquaintances and friends.
Its not about man bashing. The object of the discussion is not to make men feel bad–and why should you? If you would never do such a thing, and don’t know anyone who ever has–more power to you! Alas for the women in the world who have a completely different experience of men, dating, marriage, and divorce.
Men and women go into the marriage market with different expectations and different assets. They also proceed through it with different expectations and resources. And they can exit it with different resources and life chances. Given those differences its not surprising that when faced with a major illness/impairment of the relationship, plus loss of consortium, plus loss of income, plus loss of social networks, men and women handle the crisis differently from each other but in gender specific ways.
Look at the elderly people you know? Do elderly men and elderly women inhabit the same social space? Do they get remarried at the same rate? Why would this be any different for younger men and women? For divorced men and women? Its trivially true that a divorced dying woman may have her own reasons for leaving a husband–and ditto a divorced dying man–but the fact of the matter is that the one who divorces and is healthy is in a totally different situation if they are a man or if they are a woman, and ditto the sick one. Just as men in prison get married to women outside of prison at a greater rate than women in prison marry men outside of the prison. Expectations of marriage are gendered. Why fight so hard against the obvious fact that expectations of caretaking are also gendered?
aimai
Anne Laurie
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Choosing to remain ‘ignorant’, as in ignoring, vital medical information about each other is kind of the definition of alcoholism as a family disease. That’s why the term codependant is so important to our current understanding. People who grow up with alcoholic parents, even if they never drink themselves, have literally been trained (trained themselves) to support their partners’ craziness. Even when we’re not aware of it, we speak the same language, and it’s kind of a relief to be involved with someone who knows the secret code.
slag
Al Gore uses science to tell me that the earth is warming. But I can see for myself that it’s cold outside. Therefore, Al Gore is a liar. That is all.
Little Dreamer
@scav:
The exact same degree? Please point to where I said that.
No, I stated that there may be other underlying factors that weren’t factored in, simply that and nothing more. I don’t know whether men would leave a sick spouse more than women, and I’m not stating they would or wouldn’t, I’m simply saying I don’t see enough info here to make that determination because I see other factors that could come into play that were left out of the study.
licensed to kill time
There are a couple of things that really test relationships. One is traveling – if you can travel with your partner without considering the odds of being caught and tried for murder vs. abandonment of said partner in a foreign land, you may have passed the test.
The second is weathering a serious illness together. How you treat/are treated will remain with you for a very long time and can make or break your relationship. I have been lucky to be have been through and passed both tests in my lifetime.
scav
@Little Dreamer: and statistics don’t prove your interpretation of what marriage *is*. Oddly enough, it’s a definition in flux and messy to boot.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Brachiator:
Interesting sub-subject. Biological children versus stepchildren.
I have been closer to my step-daughter and granddaughter than I ever was to my own kid. No sexism involved. It has mostly to do with the circumstances of my life being drastically different.
In the first case, with my own kid, I was busy trying to escape from his mother, and scrambling to make ends meet and make the child support payments, and moving out of state to do it, and lost a lot of time with the youngster in the early years.
In the latter case, my life was more settled and I had more time to spend with the stepchild and later with her kids than I ever did with my biological child.
I really like my (grown up) kid, he is a good dad and a good guy and I admire him greatly. But we were never that close until he was an adult. His mother smothered him until then and I stayed away mostly to avoid her.
Anoniminous
From an evolutionary biology POV the results of the study makes prefect sense. A sick female can’t bear and nurture offspring so dumping her for one that can gives a male a chance at passing his genes onto the next generation. From the female’s POV it’s kinda hard to pass on your genes to the next generation if you’re dead so she will want all the care-giving she can get but in most primate species that care comes from her female relatives. From her relatives POV, since they all share a goodly amount of genetic material, and since females spend a huge amount of energy raising offspring to maturity, it’s in their interest to provide the care.
Of course from an evolutionary biology POV it makes no difference if you are sitting in a restaurant eating a medium rare steak or sitting in a tree gnawing on a hunk of deer meat. The above is indicative, not determinative, and needs to be glossed and nuanced by “culture” and the expectations of individual action(s) within that “culture.”
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Anne Laurie:
Yes, but I may have confused you. The illness I am referring to is not alcoholism. Alcoholism is a separate issue that pertains to that marriage.
Therefore, my remarks on the illness in that family are not about alcoholism. They are about something else which I really cannot mention without going TMI.
scav
@Little Dreamer: comment 76 “It is my personal belief that women would leave just as much if they had the means to do so.”
Little Dreamer
@scav:
I didn’t say I had a statistic to prove what marriage is, I alluded to the fact that we have a high divorce rate. Would you like to link to a study that proves otherwise? I’d be quite surprised to see anyone state we have low divorce rates these days.
Little Dreamer
@scav:
well, I wasn’t saying I have 23 green beans and my male friends have the same. I was saying it would happen more often, that’s all. I apologize if you seemed to think I was trying to “even” the score. That was not my intention. You are correct, I should choose more careful words from now on. Didn’t mean to leave anyone with the assumption that I was counting anything. The odds of having the exact same number would for both males and females would be pretty amazing, I think. I still think if women had more economic equality, they would leave much more often than they do.
scav
@Little Dreamer: so? There’s a long long history of marital abandonment. We don’t have the data to know for sure. Just like we can’t be entirely sure if rates of breast cancer survival are going up because of better treatment or in part because of earlier detection and some tumors just going away naturally.
scav
@Little Dreamer: I get fussy about statistics and reasoning, that’s all.
Brachiator
@Anoniminous:
I’m not sure that this holds up. We don’t know the ages of the people involved or whether they already have children. And a sick male is not going to be able to pass his genes on, so why would a woman stick with him if it were simply a matter or biological imperative?
By the way, this reminds me of a recent story that suggests that women are programmed to prefer their son’s daughters to their other grandchildren.
Somewhat plausible, but easy to poke holes at.
DBrown
Since the topic is also about health and (esp. breast cancer) this bit of infro should be written over and over – 1000 IU Vitamin D ( and 1.1 mg Ca but the study did not require this for benifits) reduced the risk of getting breast cancer by 60%! Stranger still, the study should that all cancers were reduced by this amount. Numerous other studies point to Vitamin D having this powerful anticancer property and many medical studies also indicate that correct blood levels improve resistance to colds and secondary infections (see Wiki on the subject about Vit D.)
Vitamin D is safe (but still, OD’ing on the stuff is a never a good idea.) Since over 90% of the people tested are way under the amount they should have in their blood stream I would think everyone (children and especially females) should take enough to get their Vit-D up to required levels. Why wait until cancer strikes? Fight back now and prevent! (Aside – Milk will never provide enough Vit D so this was not a paid accouchement by the American Dairy Assoc.)
Little Dreamer
@scav:
Seems you don’t have any trouble accepting the statistic on this thread topic without considering other factors.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Svensker:
Well, marriage is a lot of things. To some people, it appears to be an attempt to lock up One Man with One Woman and throw away the key forever. For.Ever.
Don’t laugh, we even have a law for it here, the Covenant Marriage, with its own special Covenant Marriage License, and of course, higher license fee. Heh.
But anyway, the whole idea that some narrow view of marriage has to define what families can be is just horrifying to me. How in the world do we let ourselves be talked into letting the government define what a family is?
And we do this spurred on by people who say (a) family is everything, and (b) marriage is the family, and then {c} the government owns the marriage rules, and oh by the way, (d) we want smaller less intrusive government.
ACK!
noncarborundum
@asiangrrlMN: It’s probably worth pointing out that, according to Discovery Health*, two thirds of divorces are initiated by women. This makes the 6-to-1** disparity in the other direction even more striking. If divorces on account of ill health are just divorces that would have happened anyway in the fullness of time, one would expect the wives to do most of the leaving.***
—–
* This can’t be a worse reference than WikiPedia, can it? There’s probably a more respectable source available online, but I’m too lazy to look for it.
** assume that by “six times more likely” the NYT actually meant “six times as likely.” Otherwise the disparity is 7-to-1.
*** Apologies if this point has already been made. I came to the thread late and haven’t read the whole thing (see note “*” above.
Suzan
I hate to say it but I had two ex-boyfriends who had left their terminally ill wives upon hearing of their prognoses.
Somehow I found them quite a bit less attractive then, and headed out the door myself.
I’ve never known a woman to do the same.
S
Women in the study who were diagnosed with a serious illness were six times more likely to become separated or divorced than men with similar health problems
noncarborundum
@noncarborundum: Will I never learn? NEVER include special characters if you don’t know what BJ will do with them.
geg6
@MBunge:
First, women outnumber men as a portion of the population. So already, we start out with a shortage of men. And then, assuming it’s readily detectable that a man is an asshole, that shortage just gets all the more difficult. If a woman isn’t a lesbian, she just has to take the chance that the guy she (hopefully) carefully vetted before marrying doesn’t turn out to be one of these assholes.
The odds of getting it right, for a woman, are worse than your odds of hitting it big in Vegas (yes, an exaggeration, but not as much as one might think). It’s a miracle it ever happens.
kuvasz
i find it laughable that a “man” would find this surprizing. John, how do you live in the world with only one eye open? For all that women have gained culturally over the last generation they are still men’s niggers. They do the thankless tasks that act as the glue for a society that is whirling away to chaos. and in return we beat them, surpress them, demand that they turn over their womb to men, and pay them a pitiance compared to men.
and you wonder why women gravitate to the democratic party?
Anne Laurie
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
No, I understood that you were referring to an illness other than alcoholism, but in “alcoholic families” ALL family habits tend to be warped by/around the original alcoholism. If everyone in the clan has spent decades Not Seeing that granpa’s habitual brawling, granny’s ‘moods’, daddy’s spotty employment history and mommy’s habit of taking up with abusive men are all based in their relatives’ substance-abuse problems, Not Seeing other medical problems — especially genetic medical problems — is literally the easy way out. If the family understanding (usually unspoken) is that when sixty percent of the adult kinfolk have multiple drunk-driving convictions it’s just a coincidence, then it’s very easy to believe that a twenty percent chance of having a(nother) genetic disease is also a coincidence. Of course, when “outsiders” insist on talking smack about such coincidences, it proves that those outsiders are rude judgement bigots and authoritarians, reinforcing the family conviction that everyone else is against them & it’s safer to keep everyone’s business in the family. Adult children of alcoholics joke about having a secret mark on their foreheads that only other ACOAs can see, because certain habits and patterns of behavior are so ingrained that ACOAs are as self-selecting as Mormons.
FoxinSocks
I think a lot of the difference has to do with upbringing. I was raised since I was little to take care of my younger siblings. My brother, who’s only two years younger than me, was never asked or expected to do the same.
When my mother hurt her knee last year, I started helping around the house. I didn’t even have to be asked. My brother didn’t get why I would do such a thing, neither did my younger sister who being the baby of the family didn’t have to help run the household. My ex-boyfriend even told me I should charge my mother for all the work I was doing.
I think some men also feel that they can leave the emotionally tough stuff to the women, that we’re good at that. When my mother re-injured her knee and needed to go to the emergency room, my brother, who was there, called me to come. I asked him why he couldn’t do it, since he was there, and he admitted that he was scared. Well, I was scared too, but I came anyways.
GeneJockey
Been there, didn’t do that. My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer 5 years ago (5 years cancer-free this month WOOHOO!), and I would no more have left her then than I’d cut my leg off.
I can, however, understand the urge to leave or cheat.
My son had a severe case of RSV when he was 2 that had us in the ER with him gasping for breath, and me almost completely overwhelmed by the crushing weight of worry. I could understand why someone would find it too much to bear, and might run away.
Consider that most women grow up being trained as nurturers of one kind or another – mothers, teachers, nurses, etc. And I think it’s hardwired into the gender.
Men? Well, we’re trained to bring home the bacon, and that, too, I think is hardwired – when my son was born I suddenly felt the weight of responsibility for providing for my family all the way to my core. I don’t think it’s just learned behavior. But we’re not trained, or hardwired to nurture or deal with taking care of a sick, or FSM-forbid DYING partner.
So, no, all men are not pigs. A lot of guys who skip out on a cancer-stricken wife may well have been willing to take a bullet for her, but were simply not prepared to face the emotions that caring for her bring up. But that’s the trip you sign up for when you marry.
So, while I can understand, and even have some measure of sympathy for the ones who skip out, I have little or no respect for them as men.
Little Dreamer
@Anne Laurie:
I don’t think it’s even a visual sign, it’s more about how we interact based on that secret code you mentioned earlier.
TZ and I are both ACOA, we didn’t know this until we were already talking privately in email and getting to know each other. He and I both dealt with the situation in a way that we acknowledge it and face it head on. Neither of us liked the family secrets. I’m the only one in my family still living that acknowledges the problem. The rest of my siblings would rather have a lobotomy than talk about it openly.
Calouste
I wonder if there have been similar studies done in other countries and whether the results were any different.
gex
@Little Dreamer: Okay, Little Dreamer, let me know if makes sense. The outcome of the marriage affected by the cancer differ greatly on whether it is the husband or wife gets the cancer. You would think that the shape of the marriage is a factor that is roughly balanced out across those two sub-populations, thus accounting for whether or not there were problems in the marriage before the illness.
Or, as you seem to be implying, it might be that women who get cancer are in worse marriages than men who get cancer. I suppose it could be that too. /snark
Little Dreamer
@gex:
I never said women who get cancer are in worse marriages, simply that people leave marriages for many different reasons and sometimes simultaneously at the same time that an illness might be happening.While an illness may exist, the reason that the person left may be for some other recently completely different.
The argument that other reasons might exist makes more sense to me than the idea that people leave due to illness. I’m sure some do leave due to illness (male or female) and I’m also sure that sometimes other factors exist. If other factors exist that are not accounted for in the study, the statistic is wrong.
Nothing is completely cut and dried in this world, except perhaps maybe bellybuttons.
Little Dreamer
@Little Dreamer:
recently – should be reason (apologies).
kay
@geg6:
Absolutely. You start to think about that, and all of a sudden, all elaborate planning looks silly.
“Roll the dice!” :)
Children are the same way, IMO. Complete crapshoot.
Elizabelle
Fabulous headline.
I hope it gets noticed elsewhere.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Anne Laurie:
Your point is taken, thanks.
Mayken
@AngusTheGodOfMeat: I’m guessing mental illness? I could be wrong on that but it sounds a lot like my mother’s family. Blind-sided my dad, too, who stayed with my mom through thick and thin for 25 years until death took him from us. But then, his family is a lot more functional than hers.
Svensker
@Little Dreamer:
I’m not saying that a lot of marriages aren’t shitty. That’s true in both our worlds. What I’m saying is that marriage is a way for societies to codify legally who and what belongs to whom. Which is why gays want “marriage” — they want to be able to go to a hospital when a spouse is in ICU unconscious and say, “that is my husband, I have a right to be here,” and the hospital will agree. Or if a spouse dies, to be able to claim property without a will. Or to be able to decide who has the right to control what happens to a child. Some sort of legal framework is needed for all these things, and “marriage” is a very good way to do it. If the word “marriage” scares you, then call it “egunbanay,” if it makes you feel better, but the institution is both necessary and handy to help societies function smoothly.
I also believe that there is an emotional and spiritual difference between cohabiting and being married, at least for most people (obviously YMMV). Having experienced both states, both for fairly long periods, I’d say that the commitment of marriage and being in a sense “one flesh” when facing the world is qualitatively different from living together.
At least, that’s what my world is like.
Hypatia
@kuvasz wrote:
It was worth wading through more than 140 comments to read this. John Lennon got it right over 30 years ago.
Recently I read something about how many lesbians got involved with helping/taking care of gay men with AIDS in the 80s. IMO
one gender is either genetically programmed or socialized from birth to consider putting someone else first. It might be an offspring, a partner, a friend, or a stranger.
A thought experiment: If women murdered men with the same frequency that men murder women, do you think women would ever have been “given the vote” by men? There is an asymmetry in the relations between and behavior towards members of the opposite sex.
noncarborundum
@Little Dreamer: Reiterating a post of mine above, 2/3 of divorces overall are initiated by women, If 6/7 of divorces involving serious illness are in fact initiated by men, you simply can’t argue that the gender disparity is largely due to factors other than the illness, unless those other factors are themselves strongly correlated with the presence of illness, or the factors leading to divorce in the general case are negated by the presence of illness.
Hypatia
ON AVERAGE was supposed to be bolded, not block quoted.
moe99
My younger sister went through breast cancer 16 years ago and her husband left her. Anecdote is not data.
If doctors who provide this type of care are seeing it across the board, and did a statistical study which seems to bear out their observations, then the only way to effectively attack it is by producing another statistical study. Not by giving your own personal opinion as to what is left out or basing it on your own personal experience.
Luckily my ex left me ten years ago, so I don’t have to worry about what he’s doing as I go through chemo for lung cancer.
Rebecca
@Comrade Darkness:
… WTF, dude. Are you really blaming women for their husbands being selfish dicks, just because you believe Nice Guys Never Get Laid (TM)?
If women marry assholes, that’s probably because the assholes actually bother to ASK THEM. Or even ask them on a date in the first place. (Instead of freaking out that she’ll turn them down and deciding that he’ll just sit quietly on the sidelines and hope that if she gets miserable enough with her life that she’ll turn to him.)
Brighidg
@Comrade Darkness: How very nice guy of you.
And what an amazing way to prove that you’re a jerk too, just a quieter one, by making this all about your dating woes.
Little Dreamer
@Svensker:
Marriage is only necessary for those things to function because the powers that be made it so.
Why shouldn’t someone who is close to an individual be allowed in the hospital room if the patient wants them there? Because someone decided the idea was an affront to them and had to make sure others lived by their standards.
Marriage is only necessary because human society allowed it to be that way.
Amanda Hugginkiss
160+ comments and no one has mention “man cold” yet? Pity.
Personally, I’m willing to believe that this has to do with how women are raised to be comfortable in the caretaker role and men are not, along with the greater likelihood that a woman would be financially dependent on her spouse than a man would. Baloney on hard-wired differences.
I don’t underestimate either gender’s ability to behave atrociously selfish, in short.
Brighidg
I’m glad to see this discussion has descended into ways to blame the sick woman in the relationship, rants on why marriage isn’t needed and other topic-changers, and some pointless mansplaining.
Good show, everyone.
Brachiator
@Hypatia:
Once you expand the terms to “putting someone else first,” then the genders become equal. Men regularly put their lives at risk to protect their families. In fact, there may be a complex twist at work here in that some men may be willing to die for a woman, but are not as willing to take care of that woman if she becomes sick. Weird.
The asymmetry works in all kinds of directions, and not consistently to the detriment of women, or of men.
GeneJockey
I used to think that, too. But then my son was born and my wife joined a bunch of other women setting up a playgroup. These were all women in their 30s, all feminists, who were taking time from their careers to give their kids a good start.
They all bought their daughters toy trucks or their sons dolls to play with, because they all KNEW that the differences between boys and girls were all just socialization.
The result?
Well, by the age of 2, the girls were all speaking in sentences, and the boys were monsyllabic ‘point-and-grunt’. The girls were all toilet trained by 2 1/2, and the boys were STILL not by the age of 3.
And the girls invited their toy trucks to their tea parties, and the boys used their dolls as clubs.
There’s a surprising amount of stuff hardwired into us by our evolutionary heritage. It’s not fate, but it’s what Experience is given to work with.
Mike
I’ve been a caregiver for my wife for years, through liver cancer, chemo, a transplant, and continuing health problems. It helps that she is a great
person, and I’m not trying to pat myself on the back either, but I
really am baffled by this statistic as well.
Isn’t it a requirement of manhood to be the hero for your damsel
in distress? Forget the “requirements” of marriage, doesn’t it seem
that a serious illness is a great opportunity to “step up to the plate”,
or “come through in the clutch” or “sacrifice for the team” or whatever
manly cliche you might prefer?
Caregiving is an opportunity to become a better human being, and people
of both sexes should welcome the chance.
I do agree however, that a seriously flawed relationship probably won’t survive
a long term serious illness, there’s just too much pressure on both parties.
Anne Laurie
@Mayken: Well, there’s also the term “self-medicating”. Epidemiologists can tell us that statistically, certain mental illnesses & substance abuse problems tend to occur across multiple generations, with the frequency and severity increasing as each new age cohort finds similarly challenged families to intermarry. What they can’t tell us is how an individual from one of these families is going to express, or explain, their own weaknesses — of the flesh, or for sexual partners that “get” their “family style”. My father’s family had a history of alcohol abuse, while my mother’s family had a history of clinical depression, which “proved” they were better people because at least they didn’t sink to using booze as a crutch. Except that since the 1960s there have been alcoholics among my maternal relatives, because that’s when it became “permissible” for working-class Irish-American women to start drinking in public, and some women among the last couple generations have chosen to be noisy public drunks instead of quietly spending months at a time in bed with “nerves” (and sometimes a bottle of 100-proof nerve tonic). And there are plenty of men who don’t mind being labelled alcoholics, but who will threaten violence if anyone suggests they might have… issues. Look at Dubya Bush, for example.
Hypatia
@Brachiator wrote:
I agree.
General Winfield Stuck
It was a purely empirical study that didn’t delve into causation as far as I can tell, so it is scientifically incomplete,. But at a 6 to 1 ration it is a powerful empirical study that is somewhat surprising to me.
The causation, or since it’s about human behaviour, motivation behind the choices to stay or go would likely be several and varied. Though no doubt to me, none being reasons to be particularly proud of.
Amanda Hugginkiss
GeneJockey,
I am sure there are differences, but to the point that a man is “hard-wired” to abandon his wife because evolutionary instinct demands he finds a healthy, fertile partner (as some have suggested upstream)? That’s a bridge too far for me.
As a parent myself, I totally understand what you are saying, but I often wonder how much reinforcement of social norms is going on without our seeing it (school, day care) or even realizing it?
I remember how shocked I was when my daughter wanted to put lipstick on (at around 18 months of age). And then I realized that’s something she’s seen mommy do just about every morning, so of course she wants to imitate. But I didn’t take it as a sign that girls are inherently preoccupied with their looks or girly things, which is how I know some would have interpreted it.
grendelkhan
Ugh. One would think we’ve seen enough substitution of common sense or folk wisdom for actual empiricism over the last decade to tide us over, but no, apparently not.
One wonders why the female author on the study bothered to do science, when she could have just told the male authors, being Closer To Earth, and all.
GeneJockey
And that’s not a bridge I was encouraging you to cross.
‘Nuturer’ and ‘Provider’ are, I believe, part of gender-specific genetic heritage. Think of it as two overlapping Poisson distributions.
But as I said, the hardwiring isn’t fate, just the raw materials that Experience has to work with. And IMO any guy who tries to use ‘hardwiring’ to excuse his cheating on or abandoning a cancer-stricken wife is a lowlife scumbag.
BTW, this is of course all anecdotal, and of course the plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data’. The ‘playgroup’ experience, however, was eye-opening.
grendelkhan
Yes, of course. How could I forget those ancient toy trucks recently discovered in the Lascaux caves?
Have you ever had to care for someone who was ill? Perhaps my experience is a bit different because my partner had, at the time, a mental illness, but going through that didn’t make me a better person, it didn’t make me feel manlier, and it wasn’t particularly gratifying; when we finally got her meds right, it was more of a relief than anything else, and it took us a long time to get over all the damage it caused to our relationship. It was worth it, of course, and it would have been very, very wrong to have abandoned her, but I assure you, the kind of naïve ideas one has about rescuing distressed damsels have sweet fairy fuck-all to do with the actual day-in, day-out ordeal of living with a sick partner.
It’s one thing to man up and do something difficult. It’s another thing entirely to do it when it won’t acquire prestige, when it’s thankless, and when it goes on and on. I suppose this gels with the standard male attitude toward doing dishes or changing diapers.
grendelkhan
Well, perhaps it was eye-opening in that you attributed the differing results for male and female children to their innate natures, not (for example) an excess of attention or love lavished on the female children over the male children, or to other differences in the way they were brought up, other than the toys they were given.
GeneJockey
*rolls eyes*
Little Dreamer
@General Winfield Stuck:
Divorce under any circumstances is normally not something to be proud of. I can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone say they were proud that they got a divorce. There are people in this world who would get a divorce if they thought it wouldn’t be considered a shameful event to themselves and/or their family. Divorce is not something to be applauded.
Tim I
Ask Newt Gingrich.
noncarborundum
@Little Dreamer:
You ignore the distressingly common case in which the patient is unable to express his or her wishes. What then?
General Winfield Stuck
@Little Dreamer:
Well, we are not talking about divorce here as a general issue. The study was for a precise time frame from when a spouse became ill and who left and who stayed during that time frame. And all else being equal woman stayed around at much higher rates than men. There is much individual variations like always, but it involved enough subjects to be a general indicator that woman stayed around to care give, or whatever the reason may have been when their spouse got sick. Though they may have despised the man and wanted a divorce, which makes sense in that most studies on marital happiness favor men as generally happier being married than women.
Brachiator
@GeneJockey:
Increasingly, the “hardwired” stuff is not found to really wash. That is, people talk a lot about hardwired this and that, but they can rarely point to any genes for either this or that when it comes to behavior.
Case in point here. Lay people always like to talk about humans as hunters or hunter-gatherers. But for most of human evolution, we were at best opportunistic scavengers, sucking the bone marrow out of carcasses killed by lions and other predators. This “heritage” would have to be imprinted as deeply as the later hunting stage. Also, in the past there was an accidental bias as scientists studied stone tools and weapons used by some early humans. What they did not have a good idea about until recently was the amount of wood, cloth and string implements used by women to provide for early groups.
In short, while men were bringing home the bacon, women (and children) were bringing home fish, fruit, edible shrubs, small game, etc. There is some suggestion that in European and Middle Eastern societies, women were almost exclusively responsible for brewing fermented drinks.
And a lot of behavior is a messy modern adaptation of early general traits present in both men and women.
Mike
Grendelkhan
I thought the first paragraph of my post made it clear that I have
cared for someone who is ill, (my wife) for many years, and
continue to do so gladly. It goes on and on, I don’t acquire
prestige, etc. The thanks I get from my wife is my reward, along
with the satisfaction of being a good husband who is living
up to his marriage vows, recognizing that she would do no
less for me if our roles were reversed. I also recognize that
she is the one doing the suffering and no matter how much caregiving
I do, my role is still easy compared to hers.
I think you are confusing the abstract “man up” concept I
mentioned with the personal experiences of caregivers,
which can certainly vary widely.
By the way I do dishes and have changed diapers…
Xenos
@grendelkhan: Have you ever spent much time with mixed groups of preschoolers? Sure, any differences between the sexes can be greatly exaggerated by parents and socializing influences, and a lot of kids don’t fit neatly into their gender type. But you can, even after adjusting for non-biological factors, discern some fairly consistent differences between little boys and girls.
Large amounts of testosterone can change brain structures in utero. We see this play out with little kids. Cultural effects on the sexes are much more interesting to study, but there are definitely some biological ones, too.
General Winfield Stuck
Hardwired is too hard a word to describe what is biological predisposition. Hormones play a big role, and less understood genetic ones do also. Though, I do believe in some areas of general personality traits there is such a thing as hardwiring. But those don’t necessarily fall along gender lines imo.
I am certain as I can be without scientific proof, that some wingnuts are wired the way they are, and pop out with loopy loop thinking ready to be fed the short bread of crazy. They scarf it up like rats on a hunka cheese and squeal for more.
GeneJockey
Right. Just like nobody’s found the Gay Gene, so homosexuality must be a choice.
Note, I’m not saying that’s your position, but behavior is incredibly different to map to single genes – because it’s almost invariably NOT a single-gene trait. Also because virtually every behavior is the result of BOTH heritage and environment.
Perhaps I’ve misled you as to my point by using the term ‘hardwired’. Try ‘genetically predisposed’ instead. If I said that males were genetically predisposed to be providers while females were genetically predisposed to be nurturers, would that sit better?
GeneJockey
General Winfield Stuck beat me to the point.
pcbedamned
@GeneJockey:
As a female of our species, I agree with you. My comments on the subject are likely to get me severely bashed on this particular board, so I will just leave it at that.
General Winfield Stuck
We spent gazillions of dollars in research money for decades to make the astounding discovery that boys and girls are different. Next topic please. The eighties are over thank thee lard.
GeneJockey
I, OTOH, have spent lots of money for decades BECAUSE boys and girls are different, in delightful ways.
Brachiator
@GeneJockey:
Not really, because it does not agree with the historical and the anthropological evidence.
One problem when this stuff comes up is that people look at contemporary Western society, sometimes even specifically modern American society, and then make backwards speculations about evolution.
Humans are not only complex, but a lot of stuff in men and women overlap. In societies where large numbers of men are wiped out because of war or women wiped out because of disease, the other sex finds a way to act as providers or nurturers.
I am not militantly opposed to notions of predisposition, but still there ain’t no genes for it, and human societies have found all kinds of ways to deal with what is supposedly “predisposed.” Upper class Edwardians didn’t think that wives could act as competent nurturers and so shipped kids off to a succession of nannies, governesses and boarding schools. Gentlemen were not expected to really bring home the bacon as much as to attend to its cultivation by the lower classes.
GeneJockey
Brachiator, read the paragraph above the one you quoted, please.
General Winfield Stuck
@Brachiator:
Of course society can create ways to overcome predisposition, at least up to a point. Environment – social and physical, is a powerfully malleable force in human development and behavior. Still doesn’t change the fact that left in a vacuum boys and girls are powerfully predisposed to certain types of emotional and physical functions to cope with daily living. As far as genetic mental reasons for this being largely unknown, that is true, but doesn’t mean they don’t exist. And the physical differences genetically are obvious.
Hypatia
@General Winfield Stuck wrote:
How about the discovery that boys and girls get treated differently? I recall a study where the researchers at a baby care facility dressed the girls in blue and the boys in pink and tracked the different treatments they got from adults.
Getting treated differently can lead to acting differently.
It’s very hard to eliminate socialization from the picture unless we keep the babies completely isolated from others for a very long time…not an experiment I’d feel comfortable doing.
Hypatia
@General Winfield Stuck wrote:
Oh, no, you’re gonna isolate them in a vacuum!
I said I wasn’t comfortable with that. ;=)
General Winfield Stuck
@Hypatia:
Aside from the nefarious socializing of girls to be dependent and demure and other depersonalizing social strictures left over the the Victorians, and that also includes some that leave menfolk poorly adept at coping with certain emotional stresses life throws about, what I am talking about are baseline predispositions. Not all socializations are nefarious, many are for innate reasons of division of labor and physical and emotional, like early infant care. We men can do this, but not really all that well, especially the mothers milk thingy. And then there is all the physical stuff with the same result, women can do them, but not all that well (OVERALL), with most, dare I say, innately not desiring too. And that’s not getting into all the differences of mating and attraction.
What I am saying that what we have come to understand with the truce that is the war between the sexes, that there are shared challenges to daily living that women are more equipped for, and likewise for men. But that doesn’t mean neither cannot perform those chores, just that by convenience and general comfort from predisposition physically and hormonally and for specific tasks emotionally, we accept roles we are best suited for.
At least I hope so. Don’t want to live thru another feminist war, though there still exists some more negotiations to make things better for all.
General Winfield Stuck
@Hypatia:
A theoretical vacuum. :)
tom p
don’t often comment here because by the time I read a thread it is usually 200+… But I have to give a shout out to my ex-brother in-law:
My little sis was diagnosed with a brain tumor in her late twenties. They were living on the rez in AZ when she started having seizures. They came home for a visit that summer and my mother insisted they go see the neurologists at Wash U in STL. They did. A tumor was found. Surgery was scheduled within days. After the surgery (the Doc said: “I would have taken more, but I felt like I was leaving too big a hole in her head.”) she went thru several months of radiation. Thru out all this, they lived with my parents. I loved my parents but live with them? Toby never left her side. (he punched a hole thru a door once after an argument with her)(I understood, if it had been me… what can I say, she is my little sis)
After they went back to AZ, our oldest sister died. My little sis, realizing how lucky she had been to have her family around her during her time of need, and realizing how fragile a thing “family” is… decided she wanted to come back home.
This was no small thing. Toby had never wanted to move to AZ to begin with. But did so because he loved my little sis. Once there, he found that he loved it. Now she wanted to come back?
He loved my little sis… They came back. And moved in with my parents… again… Eventually he found a job that would support them (with insurance)(she was on SS disability) and they bought a house and moved out.
HE NEVER LEFT HER THROUGHOUT ALL THIS. Indeed, he quite often disagreed with her, but he always loved her and never abandoned her.
At least not until he came down with a very agressive form of colon cancer. He fought the good fight, experimental chemo and all that, and eventually just could not take it any more. Which is why he is now my “ex” brother in law.
So, Tobias Bohnert, you are one of my all time heroes, and always, you are my brother. I can only hope to live up to your measuring stick.
mai naem
I have a friend whose husband left her during her treatment for breast cancer. She had to have a mastectomy and he let her know because it was because of the mastectomy. But, I also know that quadriplegics(vast majority are male) have a huge divorce rate – high eighties but it’s also a very difficult condition to deal with. I can also say on a strictly anecdotal evidence that there’s a difference in illness related divorce rates and race. I see a lot more black and hispanic couples stick it out but that, I guess, could also be related to economics.
Rook
@Anne Laurie:
Yeah, but it might also explain why he treats her like dirt in front of others. Lots of anger. Probably due to his feeling trapped because of his desire for her money and being disgusted because of her “sickness.”
Brachiator
@GeneJockey:
Read it. “Genetic predisposition” and the interaction of “heritage” (whatever that means) and environment are not necessarily as complementary as you want to believe. To say that multiple genes are involved in human behavior still begs the question of which genes, and how they work to express different behavior in men and women.
And the plain fact remains that throughout most of human history, men and women both had to contribute to the survival of their families and social groups. Man as primary provider and woman as primarily a nurturer (especially without the help of other relatives) is a very recent occurrence. To try to argue for some general evolutionary explanation for modern American middle class behavior just doesn’t work. You could just as easily argue that men have a genetic predisposition to go all Genghis Khan and rape and pillage and take concubines.
General Winfield Stuck – Still doesn’t change the fact that left in a vacuum boys and girls are powerfully predisposed to certain types of emotional and physical functions to cope with daily living.
Human beings (and our ape cousins) are social animals. You don’t get any type of functioning boy or girl in a vacuum, and “wild children” are incapable of consistent recognizably human behavior.
Uh, OK. This really doesn’t mean much of anything. You just cannot say “we don’t know how this works, but we presume that the behavior is genetically determined, therefore our presumption is probably correct.” You are assuming what you need to prove. This is not how science works.
Really? Adult women with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS) tend to be taller than average, busty, very pretty, with full lustrous hair, and clear skin with no acne or facial hair above the lip. They are also genetically male, with an XY chromosome combination.
General Winfield Stuck
@Brachiator:
per usual, you argue by anecdote, without much common sense. I should have known better to respond as such.
GeneJockey
Well, that’s a start.
Of course they are. Add the two together and you get behavior. Not ‘Nature vs Nurture’, but rather ‘Nature + Nurture’.
Saying ‘We don’t know how it works’ is not proof that it does not, in fact, work. Nature doesn’t require that you understand it. Lots of people were killed by lightning before it was recognized as a giant discharge of static electricity, for example.
Brachiator
@GeneJockey:
WTF?
Science is, by definition, explaining how nature works. If you simply want to make some kind of appeal to the mystery of “nature,” then you are doing something akin to religion, not science.
And there is absolutely no way that you can make a claim about evolution or genetic predisposition, and then fall back on not needing to understand nature.
Here, you are trying to do science and are simply wrong. And it still begs the question of which genes in what combination interacting with which environment, is responsible for the behavior.
A while back, a review of a speech by science writer Matt Ridley on Genes, Experience and What Makes Us Human offers a caution about looking for genetic explanations about human nature without good evidence or foundation.
General Winfield Stuck – per usual, you argue by anecdote, without much common sense. I should have known better to respond as such.
And, per usual, you argue from nothing at all, and fall back on insult. If you want to make any claim about the behavior or nature of men and women, back it up with some evidence. To make some weird analogy about boys and girls being raised in a vacuum demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding about anything that makes us who we are.
General Winfield Stuck
@Brachiator:
The reference to “in a vacuum” was a theoretical one and you know it. And you not recognizing obvious biological differences in men and women by throwing out some anecdote about some rare syndrome is just absurd, and how wingnuts argue.
Differences in physique between men and women, hormonal differences, physical and a whole range of physiological differences are all based on genetics. And like I said, environment and socialization are also a powerful determinates in how we behave. Just because the precise genetic markers that cause these differences have not been documented yet in what is still a frontier science, when they obviously exist, is equally absurd./ As Genejockey points out better than I.
That’s why it is wasted effort to debate most things with you Brachiator, and it was my mistake for trying.
General Winfield Stuck
not hardly
General Winfield Stuck
To illustrate baseline biology imagining without or before strong cultural and environmental forces come into play. IOW, what we are born with.
GeneJockey
Brachiator, you seem to be making the mistake of believing that you must know HOW something happens to accept that it DOES happen. Trust me, that’s not the case.
Seriously, understanding that something DOES happen is the step BEFORE figuring out the nuts and bolts.
Really.
And you can believe me, because I actually AM a Scientist. It says so right on my business cards.
Brachiator
@GeneJockey:
Your statement that ” Nature doesn’t require that you understand it” is absurd. Trust me, that’s the case. That would be like Watson and Crick saying, “We know that there is something underlying the workings of inheritance, but we don’t need to look for no stinking DNA.”
Some elegant, “commonsensical” ideas about human evolution (the relationship of bipedalism and brain size) had to be thrown out the window when new fossil evidence blew apart what was commonly believed.
General Winfield Stuck –Differences in physique between men and women, hormonal differences, physical and a whole range of physiological differences are all based on genetics. And like I said, environment and socialization are also a powerful determinates in how we behave.
Obviously, genes, environment and socialization (among other things) influence human behavior. However, the specific statement that there is an evolutionary or “genetic predisposition” for men to be providers and for women to be nurturers is nothing more than a “just so” story unsupported by available evidence and complicated if not outright contradicted by the facts. The leap from what is known about physiological differences to speculations about the roots of perceived psychological differences is fun and entertaining for casual conversation, but that’s about it.
My anecdote about androgen insensitivity syndrome was not just cherry picking, but illustrative of how an investigation into a rare condition actually leads to a greater understanding of how genes, hormones, and timing contribute to both physical and psychological determinants of what makes us male and female.
grendelkhan
I don’t think so, exactly; it would be more like Watson and Crick declaring “We know that the working of inheritance must be underpinned by a mechanism, so therefore it’s this mechanism.” GeneJockey is conflating the “does happen” of “genes influence behavior in ways that differ by sex” with the “does happen” of “genes influence behavior in ways that differ by sex and conveniently match up with our culture’s preconceptions”.
Usually the phrase “begging the question” is misused, but I really do think it applies here.
GeneJockey
Brachiator, Lightning doesn’t require that you understand how it works for it to kill you. Long before Newton developed his Theory of Gravitation, apples fell to earth. Long before Gregor Mendel developed the concept of the gene, living organisms inherited characteristics from their ancestors.
Watson and Crick didn’t ‘look for’ DNA. Watson and Crick figured out how it works. And even before they did that it was already known that DNA was the genetic material. And for billions of years before that, it worked, just as it does now, despite the fact that nobody had the faintest idea how it worked, or even that it existed.
Because you are human (presumably), you want to understand how Nature works. But Nature does not require that you understand how it works.
GeneJockey
To put a finer point on it, Mendel developed and proved the concept of the gene, when nobody had any idea what a gene was made of.
The Hershey-Chase experiment demonstrated clearly that DNA was the genetic material, even though nobody knew how it worked.
Watson and Crick’s 1953 paper described the bare bones of how it worked, despite nobody having any idea what an actual gene sequence looked like, or how genes coded for proteins.
It is not necessary to know HOW something happens to know that it DOES happen.
Brachiator
@GeneJockey:
Is this thread still on?
grendelkhan pretty much restated my point.
Watson and Crick’s 1953 paper described the bare bones of how it worked…
You seem to be suggesting that Watson and Crick’s paper was unnecessary. They could just as well have said, “Why bother attempting to describe the bare bones of how DNA works? All you have to know is that it DOES work. Thank you very much.”
Is this really the point that you want to make?
GeneJockey
In a sense, yes. DNA had gotten along fine without humans understanding how it worked for billions of years.
You seem to be missing the point. Again. Let’s see if I can make it clear enough for you:
It is not necessary to identify the specific genes involved in the expression of a trait, including a genetic predisposition to a behavior or set of behaviors, in order to observe that the trait in question appears to have a genetic component.
Mendel did it all the time. His peas were yellow, or green in predictable numbers without his having the slightest notion of what made them so.
Therefore, your objection that, because we do not know what genes are involved in my postulated ‘genetic predisposition’ of human males to ‘provide’ and human females to ‘nurture’ we cannot therefore postulate that hypothesis, is nonsensical.
The hypothesis may be wrong, but your argument as to why that would be so is horseshit.
goatchowder
Umm, does this study actually track who left whom?
Having a life-threatening experience causes one to come face to face with one’s mortality, and to revisit one’s priorities. Staying in an incompatible marriage is one of those things that can– and should– get re-evaluated at those times.
The wives might be leaving the husbands, you know. Possibly due to their shitty caregiver skills, maybe not, but either way, don’t assume that it’s the men doing the leaving.