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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

#71

Post by bnchrch »

zaroth wrote: post #68
MollyR wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't sound like a healthy relationship.

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...

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

#72

Post by zaroth »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #43

Whenever someone I know is breaking up I ask, "Money or sex?". It's always one of these reasons.

Yeah, I've heard this before from recent divorcees. But in a more stricter form of; marriages end in divorce when the wife doesn't get enough money or the man doesn't get enough sex. Horribly stereotypical, sexist, and crude but does seem to aptly describe the proximate cause of many divorces.

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

#74

Post by caf »

koolba wrote: post #2

> The big factor, Harvard sociology professor Alexandra Killewald found, is the husband's employment status. For the past four decades, she discovered, husbands who aren’t employed full time have a 3.3 percent chance of getting divorced in any given year, compared with 2.5 percent for husbands employed full time. In other words, their marriages are one-third more likely to break up. Interesting. I'd be curious to see…

Well, there's been at least one study purporting to show that longer commute times correlate with a higher chance of relationship breakdown, so that would tend to push the other way.

http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/1/2/longer-c...

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

#75

Post by foxylad »

antisthenes wrote: post #11
koolba wrote: post #2

> The big factor, Harvard sociology professor Alexandra Killewald found, is the husband's employment status. For the past four decades, she discovered, husbands who aren’t employed full time have a 3.3 percent chance of getting divorced in any given year, compared with 2.5 percent for husbands employed full time. In other words, their marriages are one-third more likely to break up. Interesting. I'd be curious to see…

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?

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

#76

Post by oldmanjay »

ethanbond wrote: post #64
MollyR wrote: 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.

There is a vast difference between ridiculing something and not accepting it on faith solely because very passionate people make assertions about it.

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

#77

Post by cperciva »

cname wrote: post #49
rustynails wrote: post #39

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.

Aiming STEM programs at girls isn't sexist. That just isn't what "sexist" means.

To the contrary, it perfectly fits the dictionary definition: Discrimination on the basis of gender.

It happens to be a form of discrimination which is (generally) considered to be acceptable since it is aiming to ameliorate a disadvantaged group; but it is discrimination nonetheless. The relevant question isn't "is this sexist", but rather "is this sexist in a way that society does not condone".

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

#78

Post by tpro »

sverige wrote: post #55

I have personally witnessed couples where the cause of the job loss was marital stress. Husband's job performance suffered because of things going on at home, company decides to cut back jobs, stressed husband is on the low end of performance and gets cut. It just adds to the mess at that point. Often the wife felt that the husband was less than he was before without his job, and ditched him. I've also seen men in th…

>I've also seen men in that situation who bounce back professionally after a divorce. Usually not immediately, but relatively short term (1 to 5 years).

That makes a lot of sense. That 1 to 5 year period may be due to depression, despondency and general lack of motivation. If they get through that there may well be strong motivation to rebuild yourself. Plus, if you no longer have a spouse and children waiting at home there is no one to complain if you start putting in extra hours.

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

#79

Post by finid »

koolba wrote: post #2

> The big factor, Harvard sociology professor Alexandra Killewald found, is the husband's employment status. For the past four decades, she discovered, husbands who aren’t employed full time have a 3.3 percent chance of getting divorced in any given year, compared with 2.5 percent for husbands employed full time. In other words, their marriages are one-third more likely to break up. Interesting. I'd be curious to see…

Statistically, especially for a study of this sort, a difference of 0.8% is not that significant.

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

#80

Post by [deleted] »

MollyR wrote: post #70
zaroth wrote: 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.

Stress doesn't absolve you of responsibility for your actions. Most marriages being degrees of unhealthy doesn't equate to most marriages having affairs in them. If my husband had an affair, child or no child, It would be an instant divorce. I could never trust him again.

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