Separated and Divorced Women Compared with Married Controls: Selected Life Satisfaction, Stress and Health Indices from a Community Survey

A stratified sample of 31 French speaking and 33 English speaking separated or divorced (S/D) mothers and matched married controls were identified by telephone by the authors in four high-income census tracts of Montreal. The 128 women were home-interviewed by questionnaire which included extensive sections on health, stress and life satisfaction. It was predicted that modern S/D women with children would be better off as regards satisfaction, stress and health than pre-women's liberation era women, and that they would be as well or better off than the married controls. The authors found that these hypotheses were supported only in part. They found that the S/D were significantly worse off than the married in four areas (general life satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, self-esteem and use of professional therapists) and on almost all other health-stress measures, there were trends favouring the married. There were no significant differences or no trends favouring the S/D. Nonetheless, the S/D did appear to be considerably better off when compared with the picture of the S/D in the earlier literature. The greater frequency of depressions and greater use of therapists by the English speaking women was thought to reflect their weaker network of support relatives as well as the impact of recent political changes in Quebec.

Social Science & Medicine

Vol. 17

no. 2

95-105

1983

en