Men More Likely to Divorce Ill Spouses

May 12, 2001 — -- Men are more likely than women to divorce their spouses when the spouse suffers a serious illness such as brain cancer, a new study suggests.

Researchers at Brown University and the University of Massachusetts found that of 23 separations or divorces among 214 couples coping with brain cancer, 18 occurred when the woman was the patient, according to Dr. Michael Glanz, the study leader. The lopsided results held true even though more male patients than female were monitored in the brain cancer study, he said.

"The number of failed marriages among women with brain tumors is very alarming, and suggests their male partners were not as supportive as one would hope," Glanz said a written statement. "Women seem more willing or more adept at nurturing their husbands through and illness, while men are not as skilled at doing the same for their wives."

Similarly, the study found that men were more likely than women to divorce or separate when their spouse had multiple sclerosis or other types of cancer. In a group of 108 married patients with MS, most of them women, 22 of 23 divorces involved female patients. In a group of 193 couples where a partner was stricken with systemic cancer, 13 of 14 divorces occurred when women were the patients.

The study — which also found increased likelihood of divorce depending upon the youth of the couples and the location of the cancer in the brain's frontal lobe — is being presented this weekend at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in San Francisco.

Adjusting for the imbalance in some of the study's groups between male and female patients, men are approximately eight times more likely than women to leave a spouse with brain cancer, six times more likely to leave one with other cancer and seven times more likely to leave one with MS, said Glanz, a neuro-oncologist at the University of Massachusetts.

"I was surprised," Glantz said of his findings in a telephone interview. "All of the men that I worked with … were also surprised. But a lot of the women … fairly commonly would say, 'Duh! Is that surprising to you?' … Frequently they had an anecdote of their own."