A new study found out that the marriage vow "Til sickness do us part" is not true when it is the wife that becomes seriously ill as 50 of the husbands choose to divorce their sick wives.
Amelia Karraker, lead author of the study from the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, and her colleagues analyzed the two decades of data involving 2,712 marriages. The couples were over 50 years old during the interviews.
The study was able to identify the four common serious health conditions that affected the marriages-- cancer, heart problems, lung disease and stroke. They found out that 31 percent of the married couples ended up in divorce during the study period with more men leaving their sick wives.
"Married women diagnosed with a serious health condition may find themselves struggling with the impact of their disease while also experiencing the stress of divorce," said Karraker in a press release.
Researchers are yet to look at the reasons of the husbands choosing to divorce their wives during the time they need them the most. They gave possible reasons though such as gender norms and social expectations since men are not perceived to be caregivers, as well as the likelihood of getting a new, healthier wife after the divorce. Another theory is that the wives might have initiated the divorce out of anxiety that their husbands are not willing to take care of them.
"We did not have information on who initiated divorce in this study. But it's important to keep in mind that in most cases, it's women who do so. So it could be that when women become ill and their husbands are not doing a very good job caring for them, they would rather that he just go and they rely on friends and family who will take care of them," Karraker added.
This study was presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America in Boston in May 1.
