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Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

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Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#82
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My interest lies in why is the baseline so high in the first place? 2.5%/y sounds like an unacceptable risk , considering how devastating divorce is for men by design (in the USA, at least)

Good question, but I'm not sure why you included the gender distinction. Do you think divorce is less devastating for women, or that risk of divorce is more of a factor for men?

I think they mean how resources are split after a divorce, where courts are viewed as being more favourable to women.

For example I think women are more likely to keep children, whereas the men will pay alimony to support them. If there are no kids the resource split might be more equitable.

[edit] Also see further down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12184148

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#83
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This time damaged my marriage a lot and things never got back to how they had been previously. Wow, that sounds drastic. What happened?

Same boat, I was picking up almost any job to keep the family afloat, one time I got home and my partner was lying in the couch and crying. I thought it was the impending hardships we were going through so i cuddled and talked her into believing good times were ahead. Her response was "baby I'm pregnant and I'm not sure its yours" The rest is history. Luckily I bounced back, the boy was mine but phew..!

Real strength is making it through something like that. Respect.

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#84
post #49

It's a disappointing article in that it makes many narrowly focused and unfounded assumptions and one conclusion. I've recently been doing an indepth study of sexism in Australia starting at 1970. I've poured over archives (and I'm documenting it) to see how Australia went off the rails with its sexist attitude (eg. Domestic Violence is male only, or a revised false history of voting-who could and when). What I have…

Aiming STEM programs at girls isn't sexist. That just isn't what "sexist" means. Those programs exist to correct an imbalance caused by actual sexism.

Watch out: don't be tripped up by semantics. The two of you are using different definitions of the word "sexism".

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#85
post #62
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same boat, I was picking up almost any job to keep the family afloat, one time I got home and my partner was lying in the couch and crying. I thought it was the impending hardships we were going through so i cuddled and talked her into believing good times were ahead. Her response was "baby I'm pregnant and I'm not sure its yours" The rest is history. Luckily I bounced back, the boy was mine but phew..!

That doesn't sound like a healthy relationship.

By definition, it wasn't. At the time.

Just like our bodies, relationships may be at various states of disrepair. Kudos to the grandparent for having bounced back.

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#86
post #48
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I view it as the study went looking for X, and to it's surprise didn't see X, but happened to see statistical significance in Y. However the study did not have the scope to determine why Y occurred. I think the most likely thing that changed over time is Z: the first wave(s) of feminism began to liberate females from the traditional limitations of roles in society. However the true from of feminism is a recognition a…

> Men haven't had that liberation; a large part of society still believes in specific roles and responsibilities for men that coupled females are (at their option) exempted from. It's probably going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. As it stands right now, women have nearly all the power in heterosexual relationships, so they are able to see to it that progress is made in removing their own shackles while…

> As it stands right now, women have nearly all the power in heterosexual relationships

What? I think I know where you're coming from, but surely you realize there are many relationships where this is not the case, so it's strange to state it so absolutely.

I'd love to see this unpacked though - why do you think women hold nearly all the power in heterosexual relationships?

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be, but it also may be that there is a third factor which makes the husband more likely to be unemployed and also a less valuable mate.

In fact, I can think of several factors like that: alcoholism, drug addiction, anger management issues, clinical depression, chronic diseases, etc.

And potentially that men (and women) may react a certain way to unemployment that makes them difficult to be with.

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#88
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering why men tie their identity to employment so much. Is it because society expects them to be providers, and ridicules men who don't ?

I'd assume so. As much as HN likes to ridicule the notion of "the patriarchy," this is a component of it that's awfully harmful to men.

That's not "the patriarchy", it's just traditional gender norms.

There is a very big difference.

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#89
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering why men tie their identity to employment so much. Is it because society expects them to be providers, and ridicules men who don't ?

I'd assume so. As much as HN likes to ridicule the notion of "the patriarchy," this is a component of it that's awfully harmful to men.

This idea really has nothing to do with the concept of patriarchy. It would only be one idea out of many that patriarchy represents.

Re: Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status

#90
post #71
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what definition of "healthy"? Few marriages are perfect, and many are quite broken in many respects. Stress drives people to do all sorts of things they might later regret. But if an affair is unhealthy, by that definition literally most marriages are.

> But if an affair is unhealthy, by that definition literally most marriages are. I would be inclined to say that yes an affair would be a characteristic of an unhealthy marriage; at least by western standards. However I'm not sure you are correct in stating that most marriages have one or both partners being unfaithful. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infidelity#Infidelity_and_gend...

The numbers seem to be all over the place. I've read 25% of married Americans report having an affair (meaning .75 * .75 = 56% chance of a marriage not having an affair) Then just below it says 20%. The Washington Post quotes a study claiming fully 70% of women and 72% of men (study by sex researcher Shere Hite, so pretty big grain of salt there) and then cite a University of Chicago study finding 25% of married men have affairs.

So it's apparently somewhere between 30-70% of marriages which have at least one partner who has an affair.

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