Parents of daughters are more likely to divorce than those with sons

Re:Parents of daughters are more likely to divorce than thos... by tgv on Sunday February 07, 2021 @04:27AM (#26053789)

We're talking about 20.12% vs 20.48% chance of divorce. Take this sentence from the article:

> “If fathers were really more likely to take off because they preferred sons, surely they wouldn’t wait 13 years to do so,” reasons Dr Kabatek.

It's pure speculation: no data, no model, nothing. But even if dr. Kabatek is right, it only takes a fraction of the fathers to obtain that 1.8% difference. You can't really explain such small differences with sweeping explanations (raising daughters is more stressful than raising sons, abortion of sons conceived into tenuous marriages, or your mother/daughter friction) without adding many, many more factors that mitigate them.

And let's not forget that the data is difficult to interpret. The (preprint of the) article's abstract even starts like this:

> Evidence from the U.S. that couples with daughters are more likely to divorce than couples with sons has not been found for other Western countries.

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Re:Parents of daughters are more likely to divorce than thos... by as2344 on Sunday February 07, 2021 @05:15AM (#26053967)

“But in the five years when the first-born is between the ages of 13 and 18, that increase goes up to 5%. And it peaks, at 9%, when the child is 15.”

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Re:Parents of daughters are more likely to divorce than thos... by _qulr on Sunday February 07, 2021 @07:57AM (#26054707)

It's crucial to understand what these percentages mean.

"between the ages 13 and 18, parents of first-born girls divorce more than parents of first-born boys. The odds of divorce within this period are 10.7% for parents of boys, and 11.3% for parents of girls." https://theconversation.com/parents-of-teenage-daughters-mor...

There are 2 ways of spinning this. 10.7% to 11.3% is only a 0.6% increase in "absolute" terms. In "relative" terms it's a 5.6% increase, but that sounds worse than it really is. If you start with a very small number, then almost any increase no matter how small represents a significant increase in relative percentage.

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

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Re:Parents of daughters are more likely to divorce than thos... by Blikkentrekker on Sunday February 07, 2021 @08:27AM (#26054875)

Relative percentages can also quite easily be inverted, if one look at the complement.

The alternative way to look at it is that 89.3% vs. 88.7% don't divorce, which makes it a relative difference of 0.7%.

The do-divorce is a 5.6% increase, and the don't-divorce is a 0.7%; both are derived from the very same numbers.

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Re:Parents of daughters are more likely to divorce than thos... by _qulr on Sunday February 07, 2021 @08:34AM (#26054913)

Excellent point.

There's also the dubious assumption that increasing the divorce rate is a bad thing. Kids can sometimes suffer more from an unhappy marriage than from divorce. Especially older kids who are more aware of the situation.

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Re:Parents of daughters are more likely to divorce than thos... by andi999 on Monday February 08, 2021 @06:18AM (#26063137)

Whats the p value? If p only below 5% this could be just happen by screening 'western' countries.

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Re:Parents of daughters are more likely to divorce than thos... by enkid on Monday February 08, 2021 @10:44AM (#26065999)

Right. There's more than 20 western countries. If P is around 5% we would expect the result just from random fluctuation. If you start looking at other factors, such as number of children, when you have children, age gaps between children, etc., let's say 5 different potential scenarios, you would expect to see things that only have a 1% chance of happening. If 5 other groups are doing similar analysis, one of them is likely to see trends that only have a 0.2% chance of happening. I would take this result with a huge grain of salt.

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