Life Stresses Facing the Working Wife and Her Coping Strategies in Relation to the Family Stability

Egyptian wife performs multiple roles in life to settle oasis of hopes and prosperities for her family. The current study assumes that such roles are probably the roots of the family stability. Life stresses facing the wife probably have negative impacts on the family stability. Also, her coping strategy is probably figured out through her social participations beside of the economic status of the family. To test these hypotheses, 400 wives having children and their husbands were still alive were taken into a descriptive analytical study. Three scales were used in the current study i.e. (a) family stability scale consisting of 3 subscales (spousal support, belonging and safety), (b) stresses scale comprising 4 subscales (social, job, and economical stresses beside the psychosomatic disorders), and (c) coping strategies scale consisting of one problem-focused coping strategies (active coping), and three emotional-focused coping strategies (seeking for emotional social support, or escape-avoidance or anger feelings). Results showed that (1) family stability was significantly affected by the wife’s feelings of stress (2) Active coping was the most significant strategy used in facing job problems. On the other hand, seeking emotional social support was the most significant strategy used for facing social and economical stress beside psychosomatic disorder (3) Strategies of seeking for emotional social support or anger feelings recorded the highest significant correlations with the family income, while strategies of “active coping” or escape avoidance” recorded the highest significant correlations with residence (urban-countryside) and the type of family (extended-nuclear family) through the roles expected of the Egyptian wife.