Family Law

Men More Likely to Leave a Sick Wife?

By mbrickley

According to a recent article in the New York Times they are.

Dr. Marc Chamberlain, a Seattle oncologist, noticed a trend among his patients – that men dealing with brain cancer received a lot of support from their wives, while women with the same disease were more frequently going it alone, having faced a divorce or separation following their diagnosis.

Chamberlain, along with Dr. Michael J. Glantz of the University of Utah’s Huntsman Cancer Institute, began a study of 515 patients who were diagnosed with either brain tumors or multiple sclerosis between 2001 and 2006.

According to the New York Times, women in the study were more likely to face separation or divorce than men who were diagnosed with the same conditions.

According to a report published in the journal Cancer, only about 12 percent of the patients ended up dealing with separation or divorce – which is comparable to the divorce rate of the overall population.

The noticable difference in divorce is shown when the study is broken down by sex. Three percent of men reported divorce or separation after diagnosis, while 21 percent of women with the same diagnosis reported separation or divorce.

According to the report in Cancer, it is not known whether the separations reported were caused primarily by the diagnosis of illness, or if the couples who reported divorce were previously having marital problems.

In couples that are happy pre-diagnosis, it appears that men are more likely to leave their sick wives than women are to leave their sick husbands.

Visit the New York Times for more information.

Full post as published by The Divorce Blog on November 13, 2009 (boomark / email).