81–90 of 129 posts
I'm reminded of a scene from Scrubs where Turk tells JD: "I love how kids of divorced parents swear they have the market cornered on family dysfunction...". Point being - I don't view "not divorced" as a significant metric for a successful / happy marriage.
While not all unhappy marriages end in divorce, it's at least safe to say that almost all marriages ending in divorce were not happy.
Without having read the original study, it would be worthwhile to see if the there was any attempt to normalize by education level, income and age. It's likely that these are more salient factors and profession is acting as a proxy for these.
Locomotive engineers and operators 15.77
Stationary engineers and boiler operators 16.99
Operating engineers and other construction equipment operators 18.97
The "blue collar" engineers have a substantially higher divorce rate than most of the "white collar" engineering professions, but the transition by percentages compared to the those preceding them in the list was a lot smoother than I expected.
"The article also purports that the higher level of communication inherent in engineering jobs may be vital. A healthy communication in a marriage is vital for its survival." Yeah, us software engineers are renowned for our communication skills.
Hey, don't keep pushing that stereotype on us. Software engineering, much like other disciplines, have people from all backgrounds and capabilities. I hate the idea that the persistence of these beliefs can effect the industry further, possibly leading to some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy where good communication skills are not expected. Routinely software engineers need to give presentations to customers, have t…
But more seriously, software engineers are merely the loudest of all engineering professions. Hardly the end-all and be-all. A significant portion of software engineers, never even had a scientific education(programming doesn't have to be scientific, though it can be, and almost every programmer calls himself a software engineer).
> This type of thinking is, I believe, the same mentality that keeps women out of STEM career paths.
i'm probably going to get a lot of hate for saying that, but
... no offence, you just pulled that out of your ass. people don't generally know what professions are like until they actually start working in them. Law is arguably way more racist, sexist and whatnot, but that doesn't stop women from doing it. The same goes for banking. It's just better marketed in central european culture.
and if you're going to make such an argument be sure to include the socioeconomic background that is relevant to that statement.
i personally had to witness the culture clash, when all the persian part of the family was encouraging a girl on how she's going to be successful doing her engineering studies and all the german part of the family saying she couldn't do it and she should instead just study language. incidently iran is also the country where 2/3s of the stem graduates are women and they recently passed laws for male quotas. when i say family, it includes aunts/uncles/cousins and even friends of the difference social backgrounds.
Not once in the entire discussion did anyone consider the potential work environment, the study environment or anything of the likes, nor would they even know. It was just a difference in mentality. The only people truely capable to make qualified statements on the matter were people that watched her teach math to friends high school friends.
And yes, I know, empirically proven doesn't mean it applies everywhere, but then the same applies to your statement.
EDIT: i kind of knew, but so much hate and not even a comment to justify. so, one just started learning angularjs and has now become a frontend (software) engineer and may now not only speak on behalf of the entire engineering population of the globe, but also on behalf of stem in general. that's at least questionable don't you think?
I find that male engineers are more difficult to handle by their wives, but if they can be handled, the engineer will hardly ever switch marriages or give up on the one thing that he's got that actually works. There is also stability of income and quality of life that comes into play. When there is stability in the professional field, an engineer has more time to dedicate to his family. That is a gigantic luxury in i…
I find that male engineers are more difficult to handle by their wives In general, I have found that intelligent men are more difficult for women to manipulate. Not to say that it doesn't happen or that it's not possible, merely that it's more difficult and when it does happen, it tends to be less effective.
Have you walked into the average engineering classroom? I remember my EE class had 90% male population. We were not exactly the coolest or most attractive looking group of guys. I think being grateful to finally meet someone that likes us plays a little role. More seriously, people with engineering backgrounds tend to be analytic and may have made more logical choices prior to marriage, that result in longer lasting…
I think this may be a narrow view of humanity... Everyone's an engineer in one way or another - that's just who we are as people. Just because the stereotype tends towards "engineers" (traditional meaning) being into mechanics, logic, programming, structures etc. doesn't mean that everything can't be viewed this way. The popular guys at school and politicians are social engineers. Footballers look to solve the proble…
Great, so we expand the word to mean anything, lets just toss the word out because its meaningless at that point.
Without having read the original study, it would be worthwhile to see if the there was any attempt to normalize by education level, income and age. It's likely that these are more salient factors and profession is acting as a proxy for these.
What is interesting is the last three "engineers" in the list are not engineers-by-education ("white collar") type engineers, they are engineers-by-trade ("blue collar"). The "engineers by trade" typically have a lower education level and probably lower income level. Locomotive engineers and operators 15.77 Stationary engineers and boiler operators 16.99 Operating engineers and other construction equipment operators…
The days of blue collar folks making less than white collar folks as a class has been dead for a couple generations, but the belief lives on...
If you look at the Myers-Briggs personality types listed at TypeLogic, you'll see for the INTJ type (most often associated with engineering types) as being said to often "Work at" a relationship. This is, I know, a weak argument at best, but I would toss out as something to ponder that perhaps there's a higher incidence of analytic types to dissect and improve their relationship. ...or simply inclined to remain with…
If you look at the Zodiac, most engineers are earth signs, and you know how hard it is to get along with them.
In any case, it was thrown out there to see what sticks. "What makes a relationship work" is hard to measure at best. But I have to think, just as the article makes some generalized assumptions from some rough figures, there might be a correlation to other rough observations, even if they don't hold up to scientific levels of scrutiny.
tl;dr: I don't think any of what's being discussed is able to be isolated as a defining factor of what makes marriage successful. But it's interesting to speculate.
Quite a few of the engineering professions have 50-60% the divorce rate of the national average, but after accounting for the above three covariances it's not quite as striking (putting them at 60-90% of expected). Agricultural engineers are still way down at 12% of expected, but they don't list the N for non-LE occupations.
Here's the actual article, but it's behind a pay wall. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11896-009-9057-8
Google scholar has a link to a publicly accessible version: http://faculty-course.insead.edu/popescu/UDJCore/2010/handou...
Have you walked into the average engineering classroom? I remember my EE class had 90% male population. We were not exactly the coolest or most attractive looking group of guys. I think being grateful to finally meet someone that likes us plays a little role. More seriously, people with engineering backgrounds tend to be analytic and may have made more logical choices prior to marriage, that result in longer lasting…
I think this may be a narrow view of humanity... Everyone's an engineer in one way or another - that's just who we are as people. Just because the stereotype tends towards "engineers" (traditional meaning) being into mechanics, logic, programming, structures etc. doesn't mean that everything can't be viewed this way. The popular guys at school and politicians are social engineers. Footballers look to solve the proble…
Anecdotally, one of the most athletic people I knew in school ended up double majoring with a 4.0 in mechanical and chemical engineering. I never went to a school where there were over-the-top movie quality cliques. Our athletes were also our 4.0's, who where also our popular kids, who were also our geeks. So be who you want.