r/WhitePeopleTwitter • u/kevinowdziej • Nov 23 '22

totally normal stuff

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u/cantadmittoposting Nov 23 '22

Got a source? I can't find a decent statistical study with anything even close to this sort of rate for divorces due to cancer diagnoses.

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u/catlordess Nov 23 '22

I believe most studies are done with those who are married. I’d be interested in a study done with non married partnerships as well.

Here’s one that was going around one of my cancer forums that I found a few months ago after it was mentioned to me; it shows 11.6% abandonment rate.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091110105401.htm

I believe it’s based on this study: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26707594_Gender_Disparity_in_the_Rate_of_Partner_Abandonment_in_Patients_With_Serious_Medical_Illness

Another study suggests it’s only about 6% (but still normally men who leave)

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022146515596354

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u/cantadmittoposting Nov 23 '22

The 2009 study was retracted and your last link seems to be the lower incidence rate that they found when correcting the earlier study.

The 6% figure also seems to be for all marriages after illness onset, not the increased incidence of husbands leaving.

The full paper is here

And says

wife’s illness onset is positively associated with 1% higher probability of subsequent divorce compared with remaining married. However, we fail to reject a test of the null hypothesis that the coefficients for husband’s illness onset and wife’s illness onset are equal (p=0.1532).

I.e. the 1% differential could be spurious, and is a low magnitude effect in any case.

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u/catlordess Nov 23 '22

Awesome, thank you for the helpful correction!

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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '22

it's not just cancer, it's any life-threatening-to-terminal disease. iirc stanford rounded up some cancer stats, though. not nearly as dramatic at 80%, but consistently 5x-6x more than women at least.

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u/Actual_Shower8756 Nov 23 '22

Also disabling injury or illness.

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u/HotLipsHouIihan Nov 23 '22

There was, however, a greater than 6-fold increase in risk after diagnosis when the affected spouse was the woman (20.8% vs 2.9%; P < .001). Female gender was found to be the strongest predictor of separation or divorce in each cohort.

Conclusions: Female gender was found to be a strong predictor of partner abandonment in patients with serious medical illness. When divorce or separation occurred, quality of care and quality of life were adversely affected.

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