Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by onceiwasthere 1713 days ago
But the subject of the wiki page is the observed effects on wives (specifically in Japanese culture), not husbands. There's surely plenty of literature out there on how retired people feel.
2 comments

It is important to note that wikpedia articles is limited to what exist in sources, and if the sources don't consider alternative perspectives than the article can't do it. The article do link to Salaryman, and from there Karoshi, which is one observed effect when people has lost their jobs, which in turn is not identical to retirement but has common aspects to it. Both Karoshi and Retired Husband Syndrome are defined as psychosomatic stress-related illness caused by the model breadwinner. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi)

It might be worth linking the two together at the bottom of the Retired Husband Syndrome article.

And? That it only talks about women's and not men's experiences is for sure a fair criticism.
The men don't suffer from RHS though, so it's less relevant on an article about RHS. Perhaps there is another article that could be written about them.
Well, that's not surprising; RHS is defined as a condition of women. Men can't get it.

I don't believe "RHS" exists as a real medical condition. It sounds just like girlies being girly, with teddy-bears and social circles and so on; and blokes being blokey and controlling the remote. This is just people being people.

Or they could report about the "male" version and make it more balanced. How is that not fair?
Because the number of retirement age Japanese couples where the man stayed at home and the woman worked full-time late into the evenings for her entire career is probably in the hundreds.
No my point was more -- there must be a male experience of "I'm not working any more suddenly -- now that I've just retired-- and have to hang around at home all the time with nothing to do and my wife seems angry about it."

How does that feel for them?

Of course there is, but that's not the subject of this Wikipedia article...

Imagine if there's an article about what the psychological effects are if you have a family member in deep coma for many years. You're complaining that that article isn't talking about the effects of being in deep coma for many years on a person. They're different subjects!

Do you think that there's not studies that dive into this?