In Japan where women have really low rates of heart problems they have found that women that live with their spouses and their in-laws have a really high rate of heart problems.
The researchers followed 91,000 Japanese men and women living in different household arrangements for more than 10 years. The participants ranged in age from 40 to 69 and had not been diagnosed at the start of the study with any serious illnesses, including heart disease, stroke or cancer.By the end of the study, 671 participants had been diagnosed with coronary artery disease, 339 had died of heart disease, and 6,255 had died of other causes.
Women who lived with their spouses and parents, usually in-laws, were less likely to smoke or drink heavily, but were three times more likely to have had a heart attack, the researchers found.
The article feigns surprise in finding out that men don't have these same health problems, but fails to make the obvious conclusion that women get inordinate amounts of pressure from their in-laws to live up to certain expectations that increases stress in their lives. Many women are choosing not to get married or have as many children in Japan, but the culture of expectation around how women should act in the home seems resilient. I wonder if a similar correlation can be made with women that are living with their in-laws in the states?
via NYTimes.
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While I think this article proposes some things to look at, I think Samhita is making a few to many conclusions.
"fails to make the obvious conclusion that women get inordinate amounts of pressure from their in-laws to live up to certain expectations that increases stress in their lives"
This is based on a study, you can only make conclusions based on what you studied and then you can hypothesis about why you may have seen something, and then run a new study to test that hypothesis. The conclusions that women living with the in-laws have higher heart problems because of higher pressure put on them is not based on anything in the report (the report was not testing for it, so it is intriguing but cannot be concluded), and I would love to see a report. It is a plausible hypothesis, but that doesn't mean that we can draw an obvious conclusion. Especially when I am pretty sure that the in-laws are not the only people in Japan putting pressure on women, I would bet that it comes from lots of directions. And there many be a lot of other factor in why the living with the in-laws causes heart problems that aren't a result of the in-laws always having ridiculous expectations.
And there many be a lot of other factor in why the living with the in-laws causes heart problems that aren't a result of the in-laws always having ridiculous expectations.
And of course, living with in-laws may not necessarily cause heart problems but simply may frequently coexist with them statistically. Not that I'm denying a causal link (in-laws at home --> heart attack), but I'm wary of assuming there is one. (I realize that one of the authors of the study ambiguously links the two causally.)
I'm just being nitpicky, though. I agree with the bulk of this comment, David, particularly as to what inferences we can make as (in my case, at least) laypersons and what "obvious conclusions" have been omitted by those researchers involved.
To tell the honest truth I am not exactly sure what you are saying, but to clarify my point, what gets me is that the obvious conclusion that Samhita seems to draw is that these women experience more stress because of the rediculous expectations put on them due to living with inlaws. I will agree that somehow there are higher stress levels, but there are always higher stress levels when you live with people in close proximity and perhaps women just feel it more (I really don't know, my point is that we need a study to draw any conclusions on what is causing the stress). This report did not study what is causing this stress, so to jump to the conclusion that it is rediculous expectations is really not a valid conclusion because it is based solely on opinion.
It isn't mentioned in the study, but historically, tensions between mothers and daughters-in-law have been a significant cause of stress for Japanese women. Traditionally, when women marry they are expected to defer to their mother-in-law for everything, ("slave" is a word that some people have used) and they really don't have a say in any of the household decisions until their son gets married and brings in a daughter-in-law... So the dynamic between the two generations within one house is very different from the dynamic in the United States. This compounded with their constant proximity-- it is not uncommon for women to feel that having sex with their husbands becomes somewhat embarrassing or nervewracking in houses that use shoji, or doors made out of paper. Of course, all of this is changing with Japanese society, but I think that it does endure to a certain extent in the memory & expectations of a lot of older-generation Japanese people, especially in more rural parts of the country. So while it isn't something that the Times mentions in the study, I don't think that it's a particularly out-of-line conclusion to draw.
In Russia married men live longer than single men and married women live shorter than single ones. It is a correlation. Not a reason-consequence relation. I believe the article about Japan in the post is also about correlation only.
I don't know about Russia, but I had understood from other studies and anecdotal evidence that married men in the U.S living longer may actually be causation, because married men do things like go to the doctor and eat healthier food more often than single men. I've never heard that married women live shorter lives in the U.S though.
Kat, this MIGHT be the cause, but consider the opposite: drug-addicts, alcoholic, risky men much less likely to marry than men with more healthy life - women tend to avoid marrying men with such destructive behaviour.
I have heard it in the US! It keeps popping up in the news and online. The married men live longer; the women's lives are cut short.
I could certainly offer some thoughts, though I am not a scientist and cannot prove them. I'm thinking that it's because in many (if not most) partnerships, the man's standard of living is raised (including more doctor visits and better food) and then the woman ends up working twice as hard (persuading him to get his butt TO the doctor, doing the housework the guy so often neglects, handling the bills for both ppl, etc.) I fully expect to wear out and die earlier myself for this reason. I'll collapse into my grave and he can just throw all my cleaning implements and financial records in on top of me because I know he won't be using them for anything. X(
it's true that correlation doesn't equal causation, but it's still something that should be noted and perhaps studied more.
a few weeks ago in our med school we got a lecture on heart problems. the lecturer had a very convoluted way of pointing out the discrepancy between heart disease outcomes among blacks and whites in mississippi (most people in mississippi seem to like like convoluted explanations to inequalities).
she made the point that there isn't much difference in outcome between a white mississippian woman and a black new yorker woman, but there is a big discrepancy between white and black mississippians because of one thing - hypertension or high blood pressure. before she got to the answer though, some classmates suggested options like socioeconomic status, genetics, etc, and she kept saying no, as if this high blood pressure problem among mississippi blacks came out of nowhere. is it any surprise that the poorest state in america, with many inequalities and politically conservative policies has such bad health outcomes? i think it's safe to hypothesize that it is the stress of the socioeconomic status, along with maybe some genetic components we should research, causes uncontrolled hypertension in mississippian blacks (i.e. generally).
and while correlation does not mean causation, this ideal only seems to be thrown at people who in their data interpretation criticize patriarchy. i've been told to be "open minded" about american medicalization of pregnancies, but i know many doctors who are not open minded to even bona fide research on safety of alternative birthing.
patriarchal scientists throw around sexist interpretations all the time, so it's not wrong for a feminist to interpret this japanese research through a feminist lens. why is it that russian married women live shorter than single women? we don't need to say that just because you get married, you'll die sooner, but we do need to look at the trends more seriously.
Actually, the "correlation is not causation" argument is "thrown around" in every realm of scientific analysis, even in contexts that have nothing to do with patriarchy or gender issues. How would you possibly justify the statement that this ideal is only directed at those who attack patriarchy? That's just ridiculous!
Also, simply because other scientists make dubious arguments based on assumptions about causality, does that mean that feminists should respond in kind with poorly reasoned and scientifically indefensible arguments? You're statement that other scientists making "sexist interpretations" (the existence of which I don't dispute) means that it is "not wrong for feminists" to commit classic logical errors is absurd. So someone else saying something that is incorrect makes all other incorrect statements "not wrong?" Come on. That approach hurts feminism, and it hurts scientific discourse in general.
i'm not saying feminists should be unscientific because sexist scientists are. but data interpretation will always carry viewpoints of the interpreter. evolutionary psychologists or any other scientist who has sexist hypotheses are criticized by feminists, but i don't think the bulk of it comes from the "mainstream" scientific community. what i mean is that feminist critiques or interpretations are always seen as "alternative," or "other," while many sexist interpretations are accepted as unbiased possibilities among scientists. for example, i've heard people say that larry summers's comments about women maybe being innately worse at math and science is not out of line, because it could be a possibility until we've ruled it out. so why should feminist scientists be afraid to offer their own interpretation of data, until and unless it has been ruled out?
and i don't think there's anything unscientific about discussing causation. none of us concluded anything, we're just hypothesizing. even many clinical recommendations are based on correlations, rather than causations. if we don't think about what data and statistics tell us, what is the point of research?
it's not wrong, it's just unscientific. there's a difference. And also,this argument gets thrown around in lots of studies about people because we can almost never prove causation-we can't take people apart and watch what they're thinking and what happens. A prime example I see is nutrition and health arguments. Any claim of causation there is almost always unproveable. and most of those patricarchial claims are blasted by . . . well, every scientist who isn't an evolutionary psychologist. This same argument is made to them as well.
Samhita's conclusion are unscientific, to say the least.
Heart disease can develop from many variables.
yeah, but some things to tend to make it more likely than others. No, this article didn't scientifically prove that living with in-laws causes heart disease because of standards. it gave a place to look.
In Korea a wife and her mother are virtually slaves of the husband's mother. My girlfriend's mother-in-law (yes) was absolutely hideous to her because she wasn't producing grandkids. She interrogated her constantly about assumed physical or spiritual faults that might be keeping her from getting pregnant.
i dont know about heart problems, but i do know living with my in-laws' almost ruined my marriage.
I hear you on that. You could not pay me enough to live with my inlaws.
You have my deepest sympathies. I can only imagine. @___@ I'm sure I'd lose my mind!
There are other factors to take into account -- the alternative for Japanese women is likely to be a lot worse. My friends have to take a lot of time off work to fulfill their 'societal obligations' to their relatives. If they live in the countryside, that means a long journey away from the cities.
Japanese women of that age range are far more likely to not work and to still believe they must fulfill particular societal obligations to their families, including their husband's parents. They have VERY few outlets for their stress, and while they almost definitely experience stress and bad feelings, they have NO one to vent them to unless they're going out to host clubs at night or have some friends they can hang out with once in a while.
They are slaves to their husbands, their children, and to both sets of parents. In general. Maybe there are some who don't put up with crap. I'd say that's definitely not most of them.
It doesn't surprise me that they would experience more heart attacks than, say, their male counterparts. I also wouldn't be surprised if they face a lot of other stress-related ailments.
But in general there's a lot wrong with Japanese society and I think that stress is the root of a lot of it. There are roughly 100 suicides per day. Mental health problems carry a lot of stigma, and even something as simple as seeing a therapist can be seen as shameful. Housewives, especially those caring for elderly relatives in addition to their own families, have very little down time. Most housewives I know here wake up obscenely early and go to bed incredibly late just to cram everything into their day and make sure everyone is taken care of. When can they relax? Never. Who can they talk to about their problems? Their kids? Their husband who's never home? The parents/in-laws whom they have to cater to?
This is probably why host bars do well.
Sorry this is long and rambling ... the longer I live here the more frustrated I get with the "shou ga nai" attitude. ("What can you do?") Shaking things up is a very un-Japanese thing to do.