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Family

Boomer dad plays song to comfort his daughter going through divorce and it's simply perfect

Sometimes you don't need words.

@jac.rsoe8/TikTok

Some dads just get it.


There’s no shortage of stories out there showing how emotionally distant or out of touch some baby boomers can be. Younger generations are so fed up with it that they have their own catchphrase of frustration, for crying out loud.

The disconnect becomes especially visible in parenting styles. Boomers, who grew up with starkly different views on empathy, trauma and seeking help, have a reputation for being less than ideal support systems for their children when it comes to emotional issues.

But even if they often have a different way of showing it, boomer parents do have love for their children, and many try their best to be a source of comfort in some way when their kid suffers.

Occupational therapist Jacqueline (@jac.rose8) recently shared a lovely example of this by posting a video of her boomer dad helping her through a divorce in the best way he knew how.

Turns out, it was the perfect thing.

“My husband just said he’s divorcing me and my dad came over and I was non-functional in bed,” Jacqueline wrote her video, adding that “...boomer dad didn’t know what to do, so he played his favorite song, the Dua Lipa ‘Rocket Man’ remix 😂”

In the clip, Jacqueline’s dad never really looks at her, but shifts the focus by describing what he imagines while listening to the song and performing the sweetest dad dance ever.

Watch:

@jac.rose8 #divorcetok #divorcesucks #divorcesupport #divorcesupportforwomen #divorcesupportsquad #supportivedad #disabilitytiktok ♬ original sound - Jacqueline

The heartwarming moment served as a great reminder that words aren’t always necessary.

‘“I am CRYING. This is so precious, he is trying his hardest to be there for you in any capacity. How pure ❤️,” one person wrote.

Another added, “This would instantly make me feel better.”

Even Jacqueline shared in the comments that her dad “didn’t know what to say but he was there and helped me in such a sweet way. He’s the best 🥰”

Proving that he has multiple love languages, Jacqueline later shared that her dad also went out to Home Depot to replace her lightbulbs. Not only that, but her mom also made Jacqueline’s favorite dinner. Maybe boomers are okay after all.

Really, it goes to show that great parents can be found in every generation. Part of what makes them great is knowing that they don't need to be perfect in order to show up when things are hard. Being there and sharing their love is enough.


This article originally appeared on 6.12.23

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Education & Information

A major study claiming men leave their wives when they become ill has been debunked

This is good news.

Photo credit: Canva

Study showing increased divorce when wife is ill is wrong

It was the study that shook views of marriage across the country. Researchers concluded that men simply couldn't handle the "sickness" part of their wedding vows, consistently bowing out of their marriage if their wife became sick. The results of the study were cited everywhere and you can still find them being regurgitated in hot take internet think pieces.

The paper is titled “In Sickness and in Health? Physical Illness as a Risk Factor for Marital Dissolution in Later Life," and the findings were reported on by large publications. But it turns out the results have serious flaws causing the authors to rush to correct their mistake.

According to Retraction Watch, the first author, assistant professor at Iowa State University, Amelia Karraker "seems to be handling the case quickly and responsibly." The beauty of peer reviewed research is that there are multiple sets of eyes to check your work, which is what led to the discovery of the paper's flaws.

It was her colleagues from Bowling Green State that discovered the error while trying to duplicate the findings. The numbers kept coming up short of what was reported in the original paper.

"I sent them the statistical analysis file, which documents all of the steps as to how we came to all the estimates in the paper. And they pointed out to us, to our horror, that we had miscoded the dependent variable," Karraker tells the outlet.

The mistake had already been printed and republished on multiple media outlets, but the original writers of the paper contacted their editor to alert them of the error. While this error plays a large role in the high risk of divorce when a wife becomes ill, it doesn't completely eliminate it. The risk does still increase but it seems to increase in one health circumstance–heart problems. Other illnesses did not seem to have the same level of divorce risk. So what happened?

Woman in hospital bed

Photo credit: Canva

Well, according to Karraker, not all of the participants finished the study. Turns out the ones that left before the study ended were accidentally coded as having gotten divorced, when that couldn't have been determined since they were no longer participating. Karraker and her co-author got the participant information and data from a previous study conducted by University of Michigan which included data from 2,701 heterosexual marriages.

The study focused on four serious diseases: heart disease, stroke, cancer and lung disease showing an increase in divorce risk if the wife falls ill versus the husband. While Karraker's results were flawed due to the unfortunate mistake, other studies who don't use her results show a significant increase in divorce rates when the wife becomes seriously ill.

In the study "Gender disparity in the rate of partner abandonment in patients with serious medical illness" by Michael J. Glantz, MD et al, the authors explain, "female gender was found to be the strongest predictor of separation or divorce in each cohort." Glantz shares that divorce rate was 11.6% for cancer patients, which is similar to the average. "There was, however, a greater than 6-fold increase in risk after diagnosis when the affected spouse was the woman (20.8% vs 2.9%; P < .001)"

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Family

Mom has the perfect response to teen son who refuses to do 'girl' chores

What exactly are "girl" chores, anyway?

via Krampus Production/Pexels

A boy doing the dishes.

A 41-year-old mom with 3 boys, 12-year-old twins, and a 10-year-old, pays them $10 daily to do their chores. However, their pay is deducted $10 if they miss a day. The boys have to do their tasks 5 days a week, although it doesn’t matter which days they choose to work.

“This system has worked swimmingly for us since it started, the boys have always complied with completing their chores,” the mom wrote on Reddit.

Her 12-year-old son was getting ready to play Fortnite with a friend and told him he’d be ready in 15 minutes once he finished his chores. When the boys started playing the game, he told the friend he was in charge of dusting and sweeping the stairs, to which the friend responded, “It’s a good thing my parents don’t make me do girl chores.”

After learning what the friend said, the mom told her son that chores are genderless.

“I spoke with my son and explained to him that knowing how to clean was not specific to any gender, that it was a life skill everyone needed to know. I also told him that I understood that other families functioned differently; however, in our family, everyone did an equal share,” she wrote.

Over the next 3 days, the boy refused to do his “girl” chores. So, when allowance day came, the two brothers who did theirs received $50, but the 12-year-old who refused only got $20. The mom and the boy's father are divorced, so the 12-year-old called his dad to complain that he got $30 less, and the dad took his side.

“My ex-husband then proceeded to call me and tell me that I’m in the wrong for only giving him $20 and to imagine how it makes him feel that his brothers got more than he did. I explained to him that our other sons actually did their chores for all 5 days, so they were rewarded accordingly,” the mother wrote. “And assured him that if he had decided to start giving the boys an allowance, then he can run allowance however he wanted, but this was ultimately the system I had come up with.”

She added that her husband said she is being “insensitive” and “humiliating” their son.

The mom asked Reddit’s AITA subforum if she was in the wrong, and the commenters unanimously agreed that she was right. Other commenters noted that she made a smart decision leaving her ex-husband because he took the side of his child, who refused to do work for sexist reasons.

The only problem the commenters had was that the mom was being a little too generous by giving them $50 a week. That’s $600 a month for 3 kids.

"It’s the real world, you don’t do your job, you don’t get paid, and I actually think $10 a day is pretty generous for allowance," Longjumping-Gur-6581 wrote. "$10/day is insane for that age,” fIumpf added.

“You’re not taking money out of your son’s allowance, you’re not paying him for services not rendered,” Excitedorca wrote. “The sexist, misogynistic reasons behind not completing the chores need to be corrected and that won’t happen by rewarding it.”


This article originally appeared on 9.22.23

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Family

Mother is 'fuming' that daughter's stepmom tells people she's the biological parent

What would you do?

via Pavel Danilyuk

A stepmother braiding her stepdaughter's hair.

A mother on TikTok has received over 8 million views on a video that recounts a terrible episode that occurred as she was trying to separate from her abusive ex-husband. In the video entitled, “Stepmom tells everyone she is the mom,” Belle Blake recounts a harrowing tale of when she realized that her ex-husband’s wife lied about her role in her daughter Delilah’s life.

Blake tells the story as a “reenactment” because it occurred during a time when she was involved in legal proceedings and couldn’t share it publicly.

As a TikTok user with over 93,000 followers, Blake told the salacious story, knowing it would attract attention, which she used to promote the Safe At Home Program or Address Confidentiality Program.

It all started when Blake picked up her daughter, Delilah, from dance class and the other mothers thought she was the stepmom. Delilah’s real stepmom, Stephanie, had told everyone she was her biological mother.

@mrsbelleblake

I’m 1000% done #stepparents #cheater #husbandandwife #divorce Disclaimer: this is a reenactment inspired by my own experiences with domestic abuse. I am no longer around the people involved. This is to bring awareness to the Safe At Home Program (Address Confidentiality Program), this program provides a decoy address to victims of domestic abuse so their abusers can’t find them. Domestic Abuse Hotline: 800-799-7233

“Her stepmom has been telling everyone that she is her biological mom. Like having conversations about when she was pregnant with her," Blake says in the video.

The stepmother had even claimed that Blake’s birth story was her own. "I gave birth to her, weird. And [a mom at the dance class] goes, 'What? No, no, no, Stephanie gave birth to her. Stephanie was telling us all about the preeclampsia that she had. She had a seizure after she was born...'" she continued.

"This woman stole my birth story! My birth story! That I went through. She's out here telling people that she was pregnant with Delilah, and she had preeclampsia. And she had seizures! She had to stay in the hospital with a magnesium drip! Excuse me?" Blake says while getting progressively angrier.

Blake goes on to clarify that Stephanie wasn’t even around when Delilah was born; she was still in high school.

To add further insult, Stephanie said she named Delilah after hearing the song “Hey There Delilah” on the radio, which was Blake's story as well. "But I can't believe that somebody would actually do that. She went on to tell people how she picked out the name. Delilah. Like talked about, how ... this woman is like trying to be me," Blake says,

Stephanie was able to get away with her dishonesty for so long due to strict visitation rules. Blake never had her on days she went to dance class.

Blake’s disturbing story inspired many to rally behind her in the comments. “Go through the family courts, get custody changed and file a restraining order,” ArtisticCircus urged. “This is like - your daughter shouldn’t be alone with this woman territory,” Morgan Elisa Strickell added.

“That’s actually scary,” Alisha wrote, to which Blake responded, “Terrifying!”

The good news is that these days, Blake and her children have no connection with her ex-husband or Stephanie and aren’t old enough to remember them or their shocking behavior. Blake now has sole custody of her kids and is married to a "fantastic guy" and "everything is great."

Throughout her video series on the identity-stealing stepmother, Blake was eager to mention that she was sharing it to promote a program that helps women escape domestic violence known as the Safe At Home Program or the Address Confidentiality Program.

To learn more about this program that allows victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking or other types of crime to receive mail at a confidential address while keeping their actual address undisclosed, visit the National Domestic Abuse Hotline’s website.

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