Marital Disharmony among Working Couples in Urban India - A Sociological Inquiry

Abstract

The culturally diverse Indian society has undergone far-reaching changes in its social fabric, altering gender role linked beliefs and attitudes regarding family. In this light, the paper seeks to examine the inevitable disagreements among urban married couples while shouldering the duties of marriage/home and ambitious careers, leading to highly stressful lives. Specifically, the present paper explores the propensity among dual career couples to express their disagreements openly to each other, and the issues that trigger such arguments. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data regarding the frequency of arguments on specified areas affecting marriage. The analysis of 238 marriages in Bangalore city reveals that financial concerns, sharing household responsibilities, management of time, parenting, relationship with in-laws, and habits and addictions turned out to be common triggers of marital arguments among dual career couples. We also note that both duration and quality of marriage were inversely related to frequency of arguments.