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Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft

2 years ago

> The second presumption is that "abuse" or "adverse experiences" is able to be categorized by the researcher's definition. Again, we're dealing with people of different cultures who have different standards for living. We're overlaying our own "refined" terminology of what constitutes "abuse" or "danger" to them and drawing conclusions. Worse yet, we're saying that those same conclusions are correlated to the conditions that they experienced, regardless of how they themselves would classify it.

I think in this case, it seems they did pretty well. They're not lumping in "people failed to use their pronouns" into it, but things like gun violence, violent crime, and bullying. Some kids might be made of tougher material and shrug that off better, but even for them if that's not an adverse experience, I don't know what could be. It seems like the researchers are using an appropriately conservative definition.

> Maybe it's a good thing that mom divorced the man who was never around.

Yeh, but now we're confusing propaganda that was designed to encourage women to leave abusers for something of statistical significance about another matter entirely. If there are more men who would have made the kids' lives better than there are men so dangerous it's good they were separated from their children, then it doesn't matter that some are bad. The fact that the father has divorced and is out of the picture puts them at a higher risk of poor outcomes.

> The fact that the father has divorced and is out of the picture puts them at a higher risk of poor outcomes.

Hundred percent agree on this point. My concession was that it's not always beneficial that the parents stay joined nor is it deterministic that a single father or mother is strictly worse off than an intact family with an abusive/negligent/not present parent. Ideally none would divorce, but we can't factor for that.