In the past couple of days, I stumbled on some pretty depressing internet tools. I am not sure if it more depressing that they simply exist, or that they are advertised like normal, run of the mill stuff.
The first was from a site called divorce360.com. Yep, a whole entire site dedicated to all things divorce. What was interesting was what they called the Marriage Calculator, or more to the point, a “divorce calculator”. You put in some information such as your education level, how old you were when you got married, how long you have been married and they give you an odd percentage of the people who have gotten divorced in your “group” and a prediction of what percentage of people from your “group” will divorce.
For example, my results:
People with similar backgrounds who are already divorced: 36%
People with similar backgrounds who will be divorced over the next five years: 10%
In general for the five-year divorce prediction rates, those with less than 3 percent are at lower
risk, 3 – 7 percent are of average risk and more than 7 percent are at higher risk.
I have no idea what this summary says about me and my marriage. I would be inclined to ask things like “is your husband a Poopy-Head *?” Honestly though, I don’t know what our culture’s fascination is with constantly throwing out statistics about what increases divorce rates. I have read so many times that my marriage is doomed, doomed, doomed because we got married young. I would love to see as much attention devoted why marriages succeed, succeed, succeed! No, I am not claiming that there are no such things as conditions that certainly do or do not stack the cards for or against a marriage working, just simply this is plain ole depressing. I can see reaching road blocks in a marriage and easily throwing in the towel simply because “well, I shouldn’t have gotten married anyway.” It conveys a message of hopelessness rather than one of hope.
Perhaps this sort of info is useful prior to marriage, but once there is a commitment, I am not sure how telling people their chances of failing is of any help.
The second sad shock for the day was the DNA Eye Color Paternity Test. I actually cannot fathom at all what the point of this tool is. I clicked on it because I saw a link on one of my celebrity gossip sites stating “now you know if it’s positive or negative, now find out if it’s blue, green, or brown”. Not an exact quote. I thought “oh fun, like one of those ‘child height predictors’. I don’t even know why I find this kind of thing fun. It’s like “short Dad, short Mom, there’s a good chance you will have a short kid.” Wow. Really? Amazing!
But the eye color thing intrigued me. My husband and I have plain, not light, not dark, but just average, middle of the road brown eyes. Out of six kids, we managed to produce one with brown eyes like us, one with hazel eyes, one with heterochromia, or in other words one brown eye and 3/4 of another brown eye and 1/4 blue eye, another with hazel eyes, one with deep, chocolate brown eyes, and one blue/green-eyed little girl (yes, yes shamelessly showing off my kids). If you asked me before they were here, I would have guessed they all would have had dark, brown eyes, but God is full of surprises.
So I clicked on the quiz to see what other interesting combos might come up. I missed the point. It wasn’t just for fun, it was some sort of paternity-predictor quiz. I am baffled how someone has slept with so many people in one month, they have no concept who the other parent is, and only have a few eye colors to go by, but I guess I don’t watch enough Maury.
So here’s the quiz:
First you select the “biological mother”: “brown”
Then the “child”: “blue-green”
Then the “Alleged Father”: “brown”
Here are the results:
EYE COLOR ANALYSIS
Eye Color Test Results: Not Excluded
Summary: The Alleged Father is Not Excluded from being the biological father of the child because the eye color of the Alleged Father is consistent with the Child
The eye color chart (located below) highlights the eye colors that are most likely to occur in offspring (children) based on the eye colors that were selected for the parents. The eye colors ‘highlighted’ in color are most likely to occur. The eye colors indicated in ‘gray’ are considered to be unlikely.
Blue-green was in the “gray” area. So my husband is considered unlikely to be my daughter’s father. Ah, science. Seriosuly, what is the point? Can you imagine if I was someone desperate for the kind of information this thing is supposed to help provide, and all I got was a “maybe, but unlikely”? Sheesh.
*”Poopy Head is an official psychiatric diagnoses. My father is a psychologist so I know smart stuff like this. True story. I highly recommend that if you are dating someone who is diagnosed as a “Poopy Head”, you reconsider.