Friday, January 30, 2009

Unscientific "survey" reinforces father stereotypes


Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog for the New York Times reposts a story on parenting.com that claims to find rampant anger against fathers in what is presented as a "survey."

It's not a survey; there is nothing scientific about it. It's merely a collection of opinions from, as far as we can tell, an unscientific panel of women assembled by parenting.com.

Yet Belkin calls the results "data" Here are some she cites:

--46 percent of respondents “get irate with their husbands once a week or more.”
--44 percent are “peeved” that their partners “often don’t notice what needs to be done around the house or with the kids.”
--31 percent say the get little or no “help” from their husbands with chores.
--33 percent say their husbands “aren’t shouldering equal responsibility."

This isn't scientific "data," as I've already said. But even if it were, let's look at what it says. Try turning the numbers around. If 46 percent of mothers get irate once a week, that means 54 percent--more than half--do not. More than half are not "peeved" that their partners don't notice what needs to be done.

And the next two bits of "data" are even more interesting, if we turn them around: Two thirds of respondents say they do get help from their husbands and their husbands ARE shouldering equal responsibility.

I wish the results were scientific -- because fathers actually look pretty good.

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