Please refute the "flawed" study that everyone quotes saying men leave their partners when they get cancer.

EmeraldOfReddit96 · 2022-10-02T03:08:27+00:00

I've been hearing that a lot lately too. I knew it couldn't be true that generally men leave their partners when they get cancer.

copeharderhun · 2022-10-02T06:53:01+00:00

Ignoring the fact the study is flawed I want to provide some extra food for thought. Let's assume it is true

This is the ONLY case when women leave at lower rates than men. Every other case women leave at much higher rates. So the question then becomes: why is this the ONE situation in which women leave at lower rates? We have two possible options

Women are more loyal. This is known to be false. Women initiate the vast majority of divorce, are the majority of cheaters, will literally leave at the drop of a hat, etc etc. List goes on
They stand to gain something out of staying. This seems far more plausible. But what? Well it's quite simple - money. Their husband will be dying soon. They're about to receive the world's biggest payday. They'll inherent all their husbands stuff AND get life insurance. They're standing to win fucking big by staying.

Now people may say "well that's just an assumption" but sadly for them there is evidence. In cases of NON terminal illness women leave at much higher rates. It's only in the case of terminal where women are supposedly lower. If women were truly the gender of "in sickness and in health" then shouldn't that be true for non terminal too?

This is why I love this argument. Ignoring the fact it's trying to use an exception to prove a trend, it's basically saying "women are totally loyal to their husbands if they stand to get money out of it"

Huffers1010 · 2022-10-02T06:57:52+00:00

Less than a month ago a very good friend of mine lost his wife to cancer in her early forties. He spent most of the last two years missing work in order to look after her and his life currently consists of wandering around the house they used to live in, wondering when it's okay to start packing up her stuff and getting rid of it, in an absolute horror show of grief. It's horrible enough to watch it happen. What it's like to live it, I hardly dare imagine. Meanwhile, he's being pressured to get back to work, because obviously, he's a man, and he doesn't have any feelings.

This attempt to characterise men as likely to abandon sick women is just horrifying, or at least it would be horrifying if it were true. Since there's no reason to believe it's true (and plenty to believe it isn't) it's horrifying and an example of the sort of casual callousness that this sort of politics seems to provoke in people. We do actually have emotions, it's just that a lot of women don't like the fact that we have emotions, so we don't let on.

In the meantime I'm going to go and call my partner and tell her I love her, and I recommend everyone else do the same where they can.

I was going to end by asking whether there's any depths of awfulness these people won't go to in their desperate need to demonise men, but I think we all know the answer to that, don't we.

KochiraJin · 2022-10-02T04:04:19+00:00

The authors have retracted the article titled “In Sickness and in Health? Physical Illness as a Risk Factor for Marital Dissolution in Later Life,” published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior (2015, 56(1):59-73). There was a major error in the coding in their dependent variable of marital status. The conclusions of that paper should be considered invalid. A corrected version of the paper will be published in the September 2015 issue of JHSB.

Their programmer fucked up somewhere, that's all the refutation you need. Unfortunately I can't find an open access version of the revised paper. That might refute it as well.

sorebum405 · 2022-10-02T08:39:24+00:00

I made a post about this a while back.

The are two major problems with this claim.

1.It is based on studies that only find correlation and not causation, but people are trying to make causal inferences.These studies only look at the association between onset illness and divorce.They also don't even tell you who initiated divorce.So this issues alone already makes this claim unsubstantiated, but it gets worse.

2.The claim is also based on cherry picked studies,so even going by this weak standard of evidence we still can't say that men are leaving their sick spouse more.The 2009 study which is where this claim originated from, had a sample size of 515 people.There are other studies with similar findings, but the largest studies show no difference overall, and there are studies that show the opposite.So the findings are mixed.

There was a recent systematic review that came out showing that in general cancer is associated with a slight decrease in divorce with the exception of cervical cancer.

However, even one of the two studies assessed which had a large sample size and was judged to have a lower risk of bias also showed an increase of divorce with testicular cancer as well.

Divorce rates for around 215 000 persons diagnosed with cancer were compared to divorce rates for persons for whom all the other observed variables were the same. No overall harmful influence of a cancer diagnosis was observed. Most cancer forms resulted in small, immediate declines in divorce rates the first years following diagnosis. Exceptions were significant increases in the divorce rates for persons diagnosed with cervical and testicular cancer.

The other study only looked at young people and young people are more likely to divorce when a spouse gets a cancer diagnosis.I also don't see many of the studies that show onset illness of husbands is associated with an increased risk of divorce included in the systematic review.That is because they only look at cancer and not other diseases like MS and heart disease.Here is the conclusion of the study.

Overall, we found evidence that cancer is associated with a slightly decreased divorce rate—an exception may be cervical carcinoma, which is associated with an increased divorce rate. The findings of the present study are limited by the heterogeneity and methodological weaknesses of most of the included studies. Thus, further research is needed, not only to validate the findings, but also to better understand the processes within the partnerships, with the aim of better adapting psychosocial support services to the vulnerable groups.

So overall, the claim that men abandon their sick spouse more is unsubstained.There is not enough evidence to definitively prove this.The studies on this topic can't be used to infer causation.

There is also definitely not enough evidence to show that men leave their sick spouse 7x more often.Which is the specific claim I hear thrown around a lot because of the one 2009 study.

AndyBrown65 · 2022-10-02T04:39:42+00:00

I think this whole thing proves a few points: 1. Things get misquoted all the time 2. Haters gunna hate

The original (flawed) study showed a slight increase that men would leave their wives over wives leaving their husbands, not the 6 times that feminists gloat over.

Additionally, I suggest the original publisher was negligent and hateful by publishing it in the first place, as the lack of apology have only kept the unnecessary hatred going

McFeely_Smackup · 2022-10-02T04:20:59+00:00

It sounds like you've already refuted it pretty effectively.

asaxonbraxton · 2022-10-02T14:23:36+00:00

This is actually recommended by lawyers.

If a spouse, male or female gets cancer, lawyers and financial advisors will often recommend divorcing so the spouse that is survived doesn’t get left with a mountain of debt.

Terming it “abandonment” is a convenient way to drive a narrative based in raw numbers, but it doesn’t account for the amount of people that divorce for the financial reasons (but are actually still together).

tired_hillbilly · 2022-10-02T05:13:15+00:00

The study only counted divorces, it didn't differentiate who started them. Maybe the sick women are filing for divorce, thinking something like "Shit, this marriage is holding me back from doing my bucket list". Meanwhile sick men are thinking "Shit, I'm not gonna be here for her much longer, gotta get my affairs in order". Since the study didn't differentiate who initiated divorce proceedings, this interpretation makes just as much sense.

Magical-Hummus · 2022-10-02T13:13:33+00:00

I may not be a whole statistic but my wife has been sick or mentally burnt out many times and I never left her nor did I wish to leave. Imagining she would get a life-threatining disease, would prompt me to stay with her even more.

NeoNotNeo · 2022-10-02T14:41:55+00:00

Reminds me of study that proved two third of women suffered sexual assault in college based on questionnaire. One of the questions was has any man asked you “are currently seeing or dating anyone”. So all my uncles and aunts sexually assaulted me ??

Insane world

penguinsrcoolaf · 2022-10-02T10:49:16+00:00

It blows my mind that people can't accept the fact that some men are shitty humans & some women are shitty humans. Its not about what sex u are. This narrative that all women are perfect oppressed angels is insane.

b11734 · 2022-10-02T22:21:15+00:00

Manipulative feminist propaganda created to put science behind their malicious false claims.

delocalelectron · 2022-10-02T04:03:54+00:00

Much more likely to be more prevalent if the sexes are reversed. Jeez.... women will leave their husbands if they get a promotion.

SCVHelper · 2022-10-02T09:31:03+00:00

Many of these think tank institutions will outright lie or misrepresent their studies to garner votes. I would bet the opposite is true, that women will leave their partners (man/woman) if they get cancer.

Loumier · 2022-10-02T16:45:45+00:00

There's an article written in brazilian pprtuguese debunking this, it uses some sources in English.

Iamjustice915 · 2022-12-28T01:11:57+00:00

A little back story first: My parents got married in their early 20s and have been married for over 40 years now. Growing up, I never saw any love between them. Just two people sharing a household and raising kids. My dad has always been the authority and he never shares his feelings. Emotions are pretty much a weakness. I've seen my parents kiss once in my over 30 years of life, when they were both tipsy.

My mom got diagnosed with colorectal cancer about a year or so ago. She had a surgery and got a colostomy bag, everything was thought to be okay. Until they found a new growth in her lung recently. It was removed and now she is going through rough chemos to try to minimize the risk of anything else lurking in her body.

Through this all, my dad has been there with her for every doctors appointment, making sure her meds are in check, helping her get used to the colostomy bag, cooking for her and you name it. Taking care of her in every way possible.

One time my mom was away for a few days and she said that when she came back home, dad had marked some photo albums and told her he wanted to show her where he fell for her. My dad has even started cuddling mom in the mornings. First time ever, said mom.

He has also started hugging. Both my mom, but also us kids (who are in our 30s and 40s). I don't remember ever hugging my dad before, until just recently.

So no, not all men. In my dad's case, he took the scare as a sign to grow closer to his family. I'm forever grateful and proud of him for that ❤️

Title	Please refute the "flawed" study that everyone quotes saying men leave their partners when they get cancer.
Author	duhhhh
Upvotes	315
Comments	44
Date	October 2, 2022 2:43 AM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/xtdeap/please_refute_the_flawed_study_that_everyone/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/please-refute-the-flawed-study-that-everyone.1133162 https://theredarchive.com/post/1133162

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