Let's Hope The First Child Doesn't Have Scary LadyParts!

Today I am going to talk about one of my “favorite” kinds of misogyny: when the media writes about some type of statistic which “proves” that women are inferior, evil, or to blame for something bad that happens around them. This week’s example: an article entitled “More Daughters, More Divorce,” which was published in Tuesday’s Salon.

The subtitle of the article reads, “Girls are associated with a higher likelihood of a parental split, but there is no agreement on why.” Uhhhhh….okay. Couldn’t the higher likelihood just be a random coincidence, since there is no proof to the contrary?

Well, it must be a really big difference if people are writing about it, I suppose. Maybe it is all the fault of teh wimminz.

The sex of your baby can tell you all sorts of things — namely, which pastel hue will soon overtake your life — but rarely do couples consider what it will mean for their marriage. Cue this curious fact: Those with a daughter are 5 percent more likely to divorce than those with a boy, and the likelihood of a split only increases with each additional daughter. What’s more, unwed couples are more likely to marry if they discover they have a boy on the way.

Wow, a whopping 5% difference! Pardon me, but is that really significant enough to discuss in public? Far more interesting (I think) is the idea that parents are more likely to get married when they know they are going to have a son together. That would seem to be worth exploring – are women viewed as inferior than men, even before they are born? 

But the author does not explore it, because apparently it’s more important to find out whether daughters, simply by being wimminz, cause divorce. You think I’m snarking? Sadly, no! The Salon article links to another by Lisa Belkin at the New York Times, entitled “Do Daughters Cause Divorce?” Belkin also reaches no conclusions at the end of her article.

You know who did reach a conclusion? A man named Steven E. Landsburg, who wrote this about the original 2003 “study” that produced this statistic:

“All over the world, boys hold marriages together, and girls break them up.”

He also wrote:

[Landsburg suggested that] “daughters are a liability in the market for a husband. Not only do daughters lower the probability of remarriage; they also lower the probability that a second marriage, if it does occur, will succeed.”

Well, isn’t that a fine how-de-do! I’m surprised Mr. Landsburg didn’t suggest that women who have daughters should put them up for adoption so their marriages, whether they be first, second or 19th, would improve. Seems like the logical next step to me!

Landsburg’s monumentally sexist remarks were quoted in psychology professor Anita Kelly’s post on the Psychology Today website, to which both the articles I quoted above refer. Now, our friend Anita doesn’t necessarily agree with Landsburg, not because he is a giant horse’s ass, but because he has “overlooked several important facts.” (One of which being: he is a giant horse’s ass. Sadly, this is not among the good professor’s bullet points.) Ahem. These are the facts according to Kelly:

1.  Recent statistics in the US show that 73% of divorces involve wives leaving their husbands. So, perhaps we should be wondering, “Why are mothers of daughters divorcing more than mothers of sons?”

2.  When adult sons live at home, they add to the daily workload of their parents. When adult daughters live at home, they decrease the daily workload.*

3.  Females offer more and better social support than do men (see Shelley Taylor’s 2002 book, The Tending Instinct).

4.  An enormous human motivation is avoiding being lonely (see Cacioppo and Patrick’s 2008 book, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection).

When we add up these facts, a conclusion we might draw is that wives with daughters are less likely to stay with their husbands because they know that with a girl, they’ll never be lonely or without help. Thus, they may be less willing to tolerate any bad behaviors from their husbands (and less willing to stay married) because they don’t need their husbands as much. This idea could even explain why couples expecting a girl are less likely to marry: A woman carrying a girl anticipates that she won’t need a husband.

Yes, a woman who is pregnant with a girl anticipates that in eight or ten years after the baby’s born, she can start Cinderella on daily sweeps of the fireplace, so she feels no need to get married. After all, a husband is only good for chores and an occasional hug or so, and a daughter can totally take care of both!  Am I right, ladies and germs?

I’m not sure, but I think Kelly has managed to outdo Landsburg’s assery by making both men and women appear completely unappealing as partners. Women are cold slavedrivers who see their husbands as a giant job jar. Men don’t want to get married unless there’s a little boy on board. Blech! With “studies” like this around, it’s a wonder the divorce rate isn’t 100%.

By the way, my parents never divorced despite having the “handicap” of having a daughter. I guess I’m one of the lucky 95% (cough, cough) for whom this statistic has no meaning at all! Or maybe having a brother negated the “daughter divorce effect.” All this science-y stuff is so difficult to comprehend!

My favorite response to these various talking points came in comments to the New York Times article. It’s so good, I’m going to quote it in full:

Overlooking the reductive, lobotomized assumption that women’s relationships with their kids AND partners consist entirely of dividing up household labor, I’ll just suggest a different possible reason for the slightly higher divorce rate among moms of girls: Moms want to show their girls how to be emotionally healthy adults. Getting out of a bad marriage would be necessary for any mom; for a mom of girls, the impetus could be slightly stronger because she doesn’t want her girls to repeat her mistakes.

Now that sounds more plausible to me. But who knows? Since correlation is not causation, I suppose divorce is just one more thing in America that can become – say it with me now – ALL WOMEN’S FAULT.

This is an open thread.