…
…
…
The first article referenced is Does Breastfeeding Cause Divorce? The comment/response that’s on the same page seems pretty perfect so I wouldn’t bother commenting, especially if the article makes you feel screechy. Like me.
and the Happiness Gap study is here: You Can’t Be Happier than Your Wife: Happiness Gaps and Divorce if your eyes glaze over at the thought of reading the whole study, rest assured there’s no mention of breastfeeding. More comics are coming…
xox,
Heather
if breastfeeding caused divorce then I should long since be a single mom. MY DH is just fine with my breastfeeding in fact he playes with the kids by sharing;) They think it is so funny when daddy tries to nurse with them. After all nursing allows spouses with lovely glimses of your breasts all day long how can they not like that:)
Haha! Sure, if your marriage was in the tank anyways; pretty much anything can be the camel-back-breaking straw that leads to divorce. Like your spouse making smacking noises when he eats. Gah!
What silliness.
Such a preposterous article–I don’t even know where to start. Do you ever get so overwhelmed by the idiocy and misinformation in something you read that you can’t even get your head around writing a comment?
Ridiculous.
Having a baby can cause divorce too. But that’s right, the study, according to the author, discusses the imbalance of household chores and how that leads to unhappiness in marriage. But since I could sit on the couch watching soaps and eating bonbons all day while nursing, I don’t consider it a household chore. It actually gets me out of doing some chores. Makes me sit down for a few minutes. Which is good for me.
yeah b/c with the widespread use of formula these past decades, I know the divorce rate in our country has really just gone way down, almost never heard of these days…..
Gee, if breastfeeding causes divorce, then why did my first DH and I split up shortly AFTER the girls weaned?
I couldn’t resist the temptation, I went ahead and commented on the article. I usually don’t comment on those articles, because it’s a waste of time. I mean, I’m not going to change the author’s mind, and since she is apparently past the breastfeeding stage, it wouldn’t matter anyway. But so many inaccuracies in one article….the article is evidence that women need to be more educated about breastfeeding, and undoubtedly more women would choose to breastfeed. (Maybe just like 12% choose to smoke while pregnant, 12% would still choose not to….but WOW, what an improvement if 88% of women chose to breastfeed, to even 6 months!) I didn’t touch on the “embarrasing” 10month comment…another example of ignorence, since she is unaware that the WHO recommends breastfeeding for at least 1 year.
LOL, I breastfed while I cooked, vacuumed, loaded the dishwasher, folded laundry, took a shower, you name it. Imbalance of chores my butt, sounds like all I did was add one more “chore” to my daily routine! But my husband worked nearly 60 hours a week outside of the home (at the time, now he has been out of work over for over a year), and I considered the few hours a week he had with his children and I precious, and I was not going to leave a big mess for him to clean up because I was busy nursing. I appreciated that he worked so hard to allow for me to stay home.
Marriages fail for many reasons, and I doubt that breastfeeding is very high on the list.
ok not related to the article but the comments. i always get steamed by people who make this comment: “not everyone gets all those lovey dovey feelings while breastfeeding” like if you do you are a sap. it chaps my butt. i do understand that not all women get that hormone rush that makes them sigh and relax, but why say it so snarky. yuck.
heather in tempe
What the heck is “postpartum independence” supposed to be about? I expect mine to occur sometime after my daughter graduates from college.
OK, now I have read the Happiness Gap study brief – I wish the tables were included.
But there are a couple of points that speak to any notion that breast feeding is a contentious issue. The study shows that women are more negatively affected by any happiness gap and thus more likely to seek a divorce than men. Men seek divorces for other reasons, according to the study.
So, logically, the idea that breast feeding makes husband unhappy is much less important than the idea that breast feeding makes mom happy. Maybe that writer should not have used that study as a basis for her thesis.
There was a lot of stuff about unequal division of labor and economic utility. Sounds like women are still doing most of the housework even when we are also working for pay outside of the home, and it’s still pissing us off. (This is news?) When did “The Feminine Mystique” come out?
I think I can safely say that I investigated “assortative mating” very thoroughly in my twenties.
“Can you get pregnant while breasfeeding? Yes, but most women prefer to put the baby down first!”
Personally, the marriages/relationships I see dissolving these days are the ones where Mom doesn’t need a childbirth class because XYZ. and just like her Mom she’s going au natural w/ her OB and after 24 hrs of hell has a section and “can’t bf”. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be married to a man who couldn’t make time for a childbirth class, who encouraged me to have crappy care and major surgery for no reason and feed our kids a carcinogen not to mention my health.
My husband’s family has the breast cancer gene real bad and when our second child would only nurse off one side for the first few days I was fine with it and my husband was beside himself with fear and worry. LOL!