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.

Divorce risk calculator--try it!

Seems as though it would be tough to assess a couple's risk of divorce. Imagine the data you would have to collect--vast troves on their backgrounds, extended interviews with the parties involved, careful observation in the home.

What would it take, exactly, to assess the risks?

According to economics Betsey Stevenson--not much. Go to her divorce calculator, and fill in your gender, when you married and how old you were, your education level, and how long you've been married. And it will tell you your risk of divorce.

"The point is," says her significant other, the Freakonomics blogger Justin Wolfers, "that factors like age at first marriage and education tell us a lot about divorce risk." He adds, however, that if you're single and contemplating marriage, the stats won't help you. "These divorce risks are useful as statistical forecasts (even if they can’t answer the “what if” question) of how divorce risks change if you delay your marriage."

I guess we're not as subtle and complicated as we think we are...