The Divorce Experience of Middle-and Working-Class Women, 1984

The purpose of this study was to generate a description of the divorce experience from the perspectives of working and middle class women, and to investigate the relationship of socioeconomic factors to postdivorce adjustment through a series of case studies. The participants were 12 women, 6 of whom were working class and six of whom were middle class, as specifically defined by the author in her dissertation. All of the women were white, between the ages of 27 and 33, and had been divorced not less than a year and a half and not more than two years. Each participant had at least one child living with her and had been divorced only once. All of the working-class participants were part- or full-time students. An open-ended, structured interview schedule was employed. The three main categories and subsequent areas that were addressed are as follows: 1) the pre-divorce conditions, including the participant's perception of her marriage; her inner strengths; her support system; and her relationship with her husband, children, in-laws, and family of origin; 2) the divorce, including emotional reaction to the final separation; financial, parenting, and interpersonal concerns; and 3) post-divorce adjustments in the above mentioned realms. The Murray Archive holds additional analogue materials for this study (12 interview transcripts from the study). If you would like to access this material, please apply to use the data.