Daily Archives: 8 July 2016

The More Chores A Husband Does, The More Likely The Marriage Will End In Divorce

Couples may be better off living in a “traditional” household where women do all the housework if they want to stay together, according to a report from the Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Science.

Norwegian researchers were interested to see how married and cohabiting men and women divided housework and childcare throughout various life stages. They analyzed two separate studies involving nearly 20,000 men and women aged 18 to 79: the study of Life Course, Generation and Gender, and the study of the Norwegian Life Course, Ageing, and Generations. Participants respectively answered questions about the division of housework and childcare; their attitudes toward gender equality; as well as other variables like life stage and social class.

The results showed 65 percent of couples equally or near-equally divided childcare, but not housework: Women reported doing all or almost all of the work in 11 percent of couples and “somewhat more of the work” in 60 percent of couples. About 25 percent of couples divided the work more equally, with younger couples, childless couples, and couples where the woman had a full-time job among those more likely to split domestic chores.

Researchers did not find an association between a traditional share of housework (women do most of the work) and a lower risk of divorce — but they did report untraditional couples had a greater risk for divorce. Men who did as much or more of the housework were more likely to get divorced than couples where the woman did most of the housework over a period of four years.

“The more a man does in the home, the higher the divorce rate,” said Thomas Hansen, co-author of the study entitled “Gender Equality At Home,” according to AFP. While researchers found no or very little cause-and-effect, they believe that the observation could be due to “modern” attitudes.

www.medicaldaily.com/more-chores-husband-does-more-likely-marriage-will-end-divorce-242815

Race and Police Shootings

But now a new study has found exactly the opposite: even with white officers who do have racial biases, officers are three times less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects than unarmed white suspects.

The results come from a laboratory project at Washington State University using highly realistic police simulators, in which actors in various scenarios approach and respond to officers on large, high-definition video screens in an attempt to recreate critical situations on the street. The officers are equipped with real guns, modified to fire infrared beams rather than bullets, and the scenarios can branch into conflict or cooperation, depending on the officers’ words and actions.

It’s the third time researchers at Washington State — Lois James, Stephen M. James and Bryan J. Vila — have set up simulations to monitor the differing reactions of police when confronted by white or black suspects. And all three times, they found that officers took significantly more time to fire their weapons if the subject was black, according to their latest report, “The Reverse Racism Effect,” to be published in the journal Criminology & Public Policy.

It’s a complex subject, dating back to a 1974 study which concluded that “the police have one trigger finger for whites and another for blacks.” A 1978 report found that 60 percent of black suspects shot by the police carried handguns, compared with 35 percent of white suspects. In 2001, a statistical study showed that black people comprised 12 percent of the population but committed 43 percent of the killings of officers.

But there has also been a contrary narrative, that officers are hesitant to fire at black suspects, starting with a 1977 analysis of reports from major metropolitan departments which found officers fired more shots at white suspects than at black suspects, possibly because of “public sentiment concerning treatment of blacks.” And in 2004, David Klinger at the University of Missouri-St. Louis interviewed more than 100 officers and found “evidence of increased wariness about using deadly force against black suspects for fear of how it would be perceived and the associated consequences.”

www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2016/04/27/this-study-found-race-matters-in-police-shootings-but-the-results-may-surprise-you/