The corporate executive wife's coping patterns in response to routine husband-father absence

The routine absence of corporate executive husband/fathers in intact families is a variation of father absence. Though not prolonged, frequent exits and reentries may stress the family system. To determine how nonclinical family members deal with routine father absence, a coping inventory was administered to 66 corporate wives. Factor analysis revealed wives coped with the stress of routine father absence by (a) fitting into the corporate lifestyle; (b) developing self; and (c) establishing independence. Though a pilot study, findings offer empirical support for a premise more traditionally accepted by family therapists than by family sociologists: Individual psychological variables need to be considered along with systems variables in the development of family stress theory.