Hmmm

At the risk of putting myself on a limb, I noticed other than “married men tend to engage in less risky behaviors than non-married men” that there was no mention of the possiblity that mens sexual urges, desires and needs for those special moments of intimacy seemed to be totally lacking in the dialogues contained herein. I am uncertain as to why this angle was seemingly and so simply blown off, Perhaps another study might bring these conclusions to a head.

Sincerely

Daniel Lehrman, MSW through the courtesy of previous training from: Domena Renshaw, MD Loyola University Stritch School of MedicineSexual Dysfunction Clinic

daniel, Patient-Family Advocate at The Advocate for Patients and Families, Inc., at 11:00 am EST on November 10, 2007

I wonder how having children impacts these outcomes? I have first-hand experience that being married while working on a graduate degree is beneficial. The married, and usually older/more mature, members of my Masters program fared better academically than the single/younger members [whether our social life was better is debatable]. Having children is what has kept me from starting any additional graduate work until the present. Now that this kids are getting older and daycare issues are waning, it is time to get back into the classroom.

D. Berkowitz, at 7:33 am EDT on August 30, 2005

Marriage Advantage

This paper also overlooks any mention of another category of full-time doctoral student-those that happen to be 100% career employees. My Ed.D. cohort consists of 7 students, 2 males, and 5 females. Two of the females are married. Both of the females have double income families. Both males are married with families, One has a double income, and one supports a stay-at-home mom and children through a single income. All 7 members of the cohort work 100% in education related careers.

During the last three years, I have encountered more men than women who were in a similar position (full-time doctoral student/100% career employee supporting a family on a single income) but succumbed to the pressures of life circumstances eventually becoming an attrition statistic. What can be said of men that support their stay-at-home wives and children and are in doctoral programs? Some men may receive more support for the “mundane chores” but are not necessarily exempt from the “money” or other worries in life.

A. Albarran, Grad Student/Career Employee at UC San Diego, at 10:30 am EDT on August 30, 2005

He writes that the likely explanation for the marriage advantage to men is similar to the explanations for why marriage helps men generally. Married men tend to be more productive (across professions), stay in better physical and mental health, and are less likely to engage in “risky behaviors,” Price writes.

Actually, a better explanation is that people who engage in those behaviors are less likely to get married.

Jonas!, Mastermind at The CardBoard Box Mansion, at 10:30 am EDT on August 30, 2005

Another overlooked possibility is that the men who don’t marry by that life stage are not as “mentally prepared” in some way to finish graduate school. In other words, the causality could go in the other direction. The only way to test this would be to take a sample of male graduate students and force half of them to marry. I can’t see that passing the IRB!

Gina Hiatt, Dissertation and Faculty Coach, at 10:39 am EDT on August 30, 2005

Marriage advantage???

When I was in grad school in the early 90s, I was told to NOT get married because over 80% of grad school marriages end in divorce. I’m not sure where that stat came from (sorry), but one year in my PhD program I saw proof: there were 10(yes, ten) men in my English dept. who left their wives.

I also question, as did others, if married male PhD students finish faster because they have a wife who cooks and cleans and does other “chores” for them. One of my male professors would brag that his wife typed his dissertation (I’m not so sure he typed hers when she decided to get her doctorate). I think many pieces of data are missing from this article (and perhaps the actual study). The premise, of course, is interesting, but I’d like to see more data.

Single Woman PhD, at 7:56 pm EDT on August 30, 2005

Confirmation Bias

Control group? Sample size? Did anyone notice that 10 departments at 10 universities equals one department at each university? What department? Some departments have but few PhD students! If the departments are all, say, clinical psychology departments, can we honestly say that it generalizes to physics or philosophy?

Generally speaking, people like themselves. So why wouldn’t a person that enjoys their marriage want to say that everyone should be married? I appreciate the thought, but this study doesn’t merit all the jumping to conclusions written in these responses. Statistics and research methods classes people: go back and do it again!

Are these numbers really significant? One term earlier graduation for programs that take years... Wow. So they wanted to finish earlier because they had kids. No kidding? Since we don’t know what departments, we don’t know if this is the sort of program that demands more qualitative or quantitative work. What about quality of work? None of this was mentioned.

What disturbs me the most is the prejudice. Whether the reporting was too vague or the research more of a pilot study, I am shocked at the pirana-fest here. Got hate? Let’s throw diversity to the wind in favor of beating down single males, eh?

This reminds me of relatives pressuring me into marriage. It isn’t a good idea. The next thing you know, you’re married to some psychopath (or, if you’re pc, someone with anti-social personality disorder). If this study has any meaning at all, it isn’t just marriage, people; it’s the prejudice you’ve just shown.

If anything, we should be asking ourselves, how are we failing to enable single males to be successful in graduate school? We ask this for any other group, yet here it seems the hate-fest instead is ok? No. It’s not ok.

Perhaps we should all refer to the source of all this angst, the Bible, wherein we all all supposedly married in our “youth.” Obviously, those of us not married in our “youth” (people in Biblical times usually didn’t live to see 32) must be immoral failures. I’m 32 and never married and I’m in no hurry to be married to satisfy someone else’s prejudices. If and when I meet the right person and the right sequence of events happen such that lead to marriage, so be it. I completed my master’s degree with an improvement of over.6 (half a letter grade) from my undergraduate GPA to my graduate cumulative GPA. I also know the kind of hate that gets directed to single males in some graduate school programs. I went through hell to finish that degree with that performance. Thanks for sharing the hate, but next time I’ll sue.

Alex, at 10:46 am EDT on August 31, 2005

Ok, for everyone’s sake, I read the paper.

First of all, it’s not regression analyses. Rather, the author uses bootstrapping, simulation, comparison of means & etc. This means we are not sure how much of the variation in terms of doctoral outcomes is explained by marital status.

Second, the author uses marriage before starting the doctoral program. So there could be a self-selection effect although the author downplays the effects of that. But I think most people would agree that having a partner helps one to learn emotional management. So it would be great to see how the results would be changed by variables such as marriage initiated while in doctoral program and girlfriend/boyfriend.

Third, the author control for the student’s gender, marital status, GRE verbal and quantitative score, race, age, and whether he or she had a master’s degree prior to entering graduate school. He also control for the student’s field of study and institution. Looks pretty comprehensive but I feel the author can do better by including nationality, spouse characteristics, actual number of RA hours worked and number of kids.

Fourth, the data actually includes advisor, publications, and characteristics of the first job. But the author did not use these variables in the analyses. In my field, the fifth year funding is actually dependent on satisfactory performance. The publication record normally looks better on the fifth year. So finishing too early could be an indication that the faculty don’t want to invest in the doctoral candidate. Also, married people with kids would want to finish earlier but might land up in a lower status school. I heard that in the sciences, if one want to get a tenure-track job at a R1, it is necessary to do a post-doc. This would be even more impossible for the married man.

nerd, at 3:55 am EDT on May 31, 2006