Supporting the narrative through “Science”

So I came across this article that says, “Women thrive as the primary breadwinner, while men suffer, study says“. Well since a study says this we must believe it, right? I mean, really smart people did a study, so there, men are not cut out to be primary breadwinners.

The article goes on to describe this study:

To examine the effects of household income dynamics on health and well-being, researchers looked at data from heterosexual married people across the U.S. who were between the ages of 18 and 32. Their most significant finding was somewhat surprising, said lead author Christin Munsch, PhD, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut: As men took on more financial responsibility in their marriage, their psychological well-being and physical health both tended to decline.

Men were worse off during years when they were their family’s sole breadwinners—with psychological well-being scores 5 percent lower, and health scores 3.5 percent lower, on average, than in years when their partners contributed equally.

Well, researchers looked at some data and determined that men don’t do so well when they are the primary breadwinners.

The one big problem with this is that it is an observational study, and as any statistician should know, cannot actually prove anything. Since they just looked at data, there is only a correlation between being the primary breadwinner and having a psychological well-being score 5 percent lower. (What is a psychological well-being score? Sounds important; I better force my wife to work.)  To actually prove that being a male primary breadwinner causes psychological damage you would need to do a causation study.

What would a causation study look like? You would need to round up some volunteer families (at least 100 for good statistical significance) and then randomly choose some families to have the husbands to be the primary breadwinner, and other families to have a shared responsibility. (If you want to prove anything about the wives you would need to choose some to have the wives be the primary breadwinners.) You would then wait a few years, and revisit the families to do follow up psychological and health evaluations. If the primary-breadwinner husbands did have poorer psychological well-being scores, you can say it was the fact that they were forced to be the primary breadwinner.

However, rounding up families and telling them, who can work and who cannot, isn’t a very ethnical study, nor do I think it would even be possible. So, we are left with just an observational study. The only thing this study can say is that there is a correlation between husbands being the primary breadwinner and having a lower physiological and health score. It cannot prove that being the primary breadwinner causes the lower scores anymore than lower scores causes husbands to be the primary breadwinner. The observational study cannot rule out other compounding factors that might lead to the poorer scores.

But, why let a silly thing like statistics get in the way of proving the author’s conclusions. According to the article, the author concludes the following:

Our study contributes to a growing body of research that demonstrates the ways in which gendered expectations are harmful for men.

So, no where in the article does it provide any evidence that women thrive as the primary breadwinner, as the title states. The observational study only states that women who are the primary breadwinners don’t show a difference in their scores.

So, women should feel free to ditch their kids in daycare, it will do your husband good! Right?

So here are the problems:

First of all, what is a psychological well-being score? What questions were asked to come up with this well-being score? Are the questions biased in a way that could influence male, primary breadwinners to provide lower scores. Think about this question, “You feel satisfied with how much time you spend with your kids,” on a scale from 1 to 10. Just because you would like to spend more time with your kids could be interpreted as having poor psychological well-being.

But the main problem I see with this study, is that is only includes married people from ages 18-32. Guess when most college-educated, married people first have kids? 30. So, the people in this study primarily focuses on the following married people:

1. People who married while in college or shortly after (small percentage of married people).
2. People who do not have kids yet.
3. People who never went to college and got married in their 20’s.

Whose’s missing? That’s right the majority of college-educated, married men and women currently raising kids. Most college-educated men and women don’t start having kids until their 30’s, and these people are absent from the study. I wonder why they stopped asking married people over 32? Could it be that if older people were included in the study that the author wouldn’t get the results she wanted?

But don’t let that get in the way of the author’s conclusion. Please, women go out and be a cubical slave for corporate America, while your kids rot in daycare (they are a lot easier to brainwash that way). Trust me, your psychologically damaged husband can’t handle the pressure of providing for your family, but you can (you go girl!). (Unless he got a good education and career, but never mind that.)

So here’s what is going on. A young girl goes through years of college brainwashing telling her that she is better than men (you go girl). She gets her PhD in sociology (focusing on gender studies) and realizes that not many people have a need for a gender-biased sociologist, so the only job she can get is one that teaches the same worthless stuff. However, in order to keep her job, she needs tenure. In order to get tenure, she needs to publish. She is in a publish or have a man support her die position, (as most young professors are).

She sets up a “research lab” where “The overarching goal of her research is to identify the ways in which contemporary, dual earner families organize interaction based on a traditional, breadwinner-homemaker model and the consequences of this mismatch for individuals, relationships, and the reproduction of inequality.” – ie. to prove that traditional marriage roles (outline the the Proclamation on the family) is damaging individuals, relationships, and family.

Well, she can’t publish an article that supports traditional families, that would go against her college supplied brainwashing that women are better than men. Plus, most people in her field will be offended by such a result, so she tweaks the data (or looks for data) that support her predestined conclusion. Never mind the fact that it is only observational, and no conclusion can be reached. Like minded gender study professors eat it up and publish it. She then finds another like minded journalist that pretty much allows her to make any claim she wants. They publish it in the main-stream media, so eyes everywhere will see another “Women are awesome, men suck” headline as the browse the new.

Goal achieved, another little article to keep the anti-masculine narrative seeping into our heads.