more misuse of statistics

http://www.imdiversity.com/Villages/Woman/dialogue_opinion_letters/amoruso_alpha_girls_0313.asp
"ALPHA GIRLS: Is Today's 'Perfect' Seriously Flawed?"
by Carol Amoruso
retrieved December 31, 2008
IMDiversity.com

The article criticizes a new book (Alpha Girls by Dan Kindlon) which describes a new sort of girl, as it were: (about 20% of the 18-22 female cohort) young women who are confident, assertive - aggressive - driven overachievers (roughly). I have a complaint; let's start with some quotes.

"Surely, the picture is more nuanced than this. Nowhere is mentioned the fact—nor its impact--that 50% of first marriages end in divorce, 48% of all heads of households are unmarried, nor that 43% of today’s weddings (2002 figures, culled from U.S statistics by Divorce Magazine). These and other indications of great upheaval in the family dynamic cannot but redefine in dramatic ways a girl’s relationship to her father."

"Kindlon peers out from behind rose-colored glasses, while around him are stories of the frightening malaise gripping Generation Next’s young women. Overwhelmed by unreasonable expectations and emotional disconnect, they are characterized by Courtney E. Martin as “outwardly high-achieving and inwardly self-hating.” Writing for Alternet before the publication of her book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, Martin reports that “7 million American girls and women have eating disorders, women account for twice as many panic disorders and depression and are plagued by 75% of autoimmune diseases.” Other sources cite that 75% of all anxiety attacks befall young women. Sadly, studies on growing narcissism among young women in particular predict impaired ability to achieve deep, intimate relationships."

There is something odd about this analysis. Amoruso is clearly aware that we're talking about a rather rare subset of young women - who are presumably rather different from the other 80%. And yet she is happy to take statistics that apply to young women generally, and assume that they apply just as much to this subset. Now, given the emphasis on good relationships with fathers discussed by Kindlon, wouldn't it be reasonable to ask: maybe these girls come disproportionately from non-divorced parents. Maybe the difference is that when these girls' parents got divorced, the fathers didn't step out of their lives entirely. In other words, this is an incomplete use of statistics: it leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions. The point was that these girls are unusual; the question ought to be: why?