> Assumption made in article that suicide rates are correlated with how much child care is provided by the state seems unfounded.
I don't think that that was the assumption made in the article. The original NY article made some vague claims about scandinavian women being happier and that being somehow tied to childcare... which was not thought out or supported in any way. The author of the rebuttal article used the suicide rates to show that other conclusions could easily be made about the happiness of scandinavian women.
Lack of support for this claim in that NY article is not proof for it's falseness.
Author in his rebuttal also did not show that suicide rates of women correlate with their happiness nor that their average happiness of all woman in the country has anything to do with amount of child care provided free if charge. I think it's far worse because he claims that more people help you with your burdens the less happy you are which seems paradoxical and tries to found this claim with suicide rates which seem to have some apparent correlation with how much sunlight individuals get.
I personally know young mother who gives her 3 year old daughter all her awake time and I find it hard to believe how she could not benefit from easing up getting child care for her. 24 hours in a day is for one person just barely enough to take care of the kid. You need other peoples help and I don't see how making it easier could lead to lower happiness let alone increasing suicide rates.
Now I noticed that there's list of suicide rates by country and gender here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_rates
There seems to be higher rate of suicides in females in northern countries but they are much less likely to commit suicide than males.
Suicides in males seem to be correlated more with economic situation that latitude.
Assumption made in article that suicide rates are correlated with how much child care is provided by the state seems unfounded.