Marital Stress and Married Working Women in Nigeria: the Role of Coping Strategies, Self-Concept and Educational Qualification

Abstract

In this 21st century a lot of women are experiencing martial challenges due to the various and important roles they perform in the home and in the society, which may require some psychological remedies. The study investigated the influence of coping strategies, self-concept and educational level on marital stress among married working women. The participants whose age ranged from 25 – 55 years with mean age of 40.63 and standard deviation of 7.59 were 377. They responded to three instruments. A 2 x 2 x 2 Analysis of Variance was used to analyze the data. Thus, the results showed that married working women who adopted emotion-focused strategies presented less marital stress symptoms F (1, 369) = 4.44, p<. 05; those with higher educational level presented less marital stress symptoms F (1, 369) = 6.33, p<.05. The results also showed that there were significant interaction effects of coping strategies and self-concept F (1, 369) = 5.88, p<. 05; and self-concept and educational level F (1, 369) = 4.18 p<. 05. Based on the outcome of this study, it was recommended that married working women should strive for higher education and also use emotion-focused coping strategies in the face of marital stress.