In shitty but unsurprising news, men leaving their wives who have been diagnosed with cancer is 5x more common than women leaving their husbands who have been diagnosed with cancer.
where are you getting your stats? what source of information brought you to this conclusion? none I assume, but I would love for you to prove me wrong.
It’s literally a hyper link to the study
“Chamberlain and his team found that although overall divorce rates of couples with one seriously ill spouse were comparable to the general divorce rate in the US, there was a marked difference depending on which partner had received the diagnosis. In cases where the husband became seriously ill, divorce rates were actually far lower than average at three per cent. However, a staggering 21 per cent of wives who had been diagnosed with serious illness ended up separated or divorced within the same time frame.
In fact, Chamberlain’s study revealed that in ninety per cent of post-diagnosis divorce cases, the wife was the sick party. The researchers suggested that a possible explanation for this striking difference could be that men find it harder to take on a care-giving role.”
WHAT THE FUCK!?!? this is goddamn horrifying.
“Find it harder to take on a care-giving role.”
Bullshit.
They don’t want the burden of a sick wife who won’t be taking care of them. Like good ‘ol “sanctity of marriage” Newt Gingrich divorcing his wife who developed cancer.
I always want to point out that not abandoning your wife is the lowest possible bar, and husbands who don’t do it are unfortunately not necessarily supportive beyond this bare minimum—I once read a blog article by a guy who volunteered at a breast cancer resource centre (he was their first male volunteer, ever) and who wrote, about the boutique where the women tried on wigs:
Many clients came in with female family members or friends. These clients only came in with female family members or friends. During my two years at the center, I never once saw a client go into the boutique with a husband or male relative. I asked the staff about it. One manager said, “Same as the volunteers: guys won’t go near the wigs. Guys are wimps.” Sometimes a woman would come in for a wig… nervous, uncomfortable…and she’d get help from me or the staff, total strangers… and you could see her husband out in the parking lot… sitting in the car, listening to the radio; they couldn’t even come inside.
I’m also reminded of that study on organ donation rates across Europe, that found that among married hetero couples, 36% of women who could donate a kidney to their husband did so, while only 6.5% of clinically suitable men donate a kidney to their wives.
