Stress in Marital Disruption as a Function of Age Variation, Gender Differences, and Socioeconomic Status

Abstract

The study attempts an empirical investigation on stress 1n martial disruption as related to sex, age, education level, employment status, and economic conditions of the disrupted people in the socioeconomic and cultural context of Bangladesh. It involved a 2x3x3x3x3 factorial design consisting of two levels of sex (male and female), three levels of age variations ( adolescence-13/14 years to 21 years, early adulthood-21 years to 40 years, and middle age-40 years •to 60 years); three levels of education (illiterate, secondary level, and graduate); three levels of employment status (unemployed, self-employed, and employed); and three levels of economic status (higher class, middle class, and lower class). Five hypotheses were formulated to test in this study. The first hypothesis states that the stress of female spouses is higher than that of the male spouses; The second hypothesis states that there is a positive relationship between stress and age variation; The third hypothesis states that there is a negative relationship between stress and education level; The fourth hypothesis states that there is a negative relationship between stress and employment status. And the fifth hypothesis states that there is a negative relationship between stress and economic status. A test of measuring stress was developed and applied on a purposively selected sample consisting of 924 maritally disrupted spouses of Bangladesh. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), t-tests and multiple comparisons were used for the computation of the results. The results indicated that the main effects for sex, age, education, employment status, and economic status were statistically significant. The interaction effects between sex and age variation; between age variation and education level; between education level and employment status; among sex, age variation, and education level; among sex, age variation, and employment status; and among education level, employment status and economic status were also found significant. In general the interpretation of results showed that the intensity of stress in female marital disrupted spouses was significantly higher than that in male maritally disrupted spouses. The stress was found significantly higher in spouses from middle age group than in spouses from early adulthood and adolescence groups. The intensity of stress was also significantly higher in early adulthood than in adolescence group. The results suggest that the stress of illiterate respondents was significantly higher than that of the respondents from secondary level and graduate level. The stress of the respondents from secondary level was also significantly higher than that of the respondents from graduate level. The results also suggest that the stress of unemployed respondents was significantly higher than that of the employed and self-employed groups. Again the self-employed group expressed stress significantly higher in intensity than the employed group. Again the results suggest that there 1s a negative relationship between intensity of stress and economic condition of the disrupted spouses. The intensity of stress was higher in lower class respondents than in middle class and higher class respondents. Again the middle class respondents expressed significantly higher intensity of stress than higher class respondents. The interaction effects among sex, age variation, education level, employment status, and economic condition suggest that the; intensity of stress in marital disruption varies with the variation of these factors. Thus the results of the study suggest that sex, age variation, education level, employment status, and economic status are significant independent variables of stress in marital disruption.