Sex Differences in Vulnerability to Undesirable Life Events

Author(s): Ronald C. Kessler and Jane D. McLeod

Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 49, No. 5 (Oct., 1984), pp. 620-631
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2095420
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 SEX DIFFERENCES IN VULNERABILITY TO
UNDESIRABLE LIFE EVENTS*

RONALD C. KESSLER JANE D. MCLEOD

University of Michigan

Past research has shown that the emotional impact of undesirable life events is
significantly greater among women than men. This finding has led to speculation
that women possess a deficit in coping capacity or in access to social support that
renders them pervasively disadvantaged in responding emotionally to problematic
situations. We present a different argument in this paper. We hypothesize and then
document that women are not pervasively more vulnerable to the effects of
undesirable events. A disaggregated analysis of life-event effects shows, further, that
female vulnerability is largely confined to "network" events: life events that do not
occur to the focal respondent but to someone in his or her social network who is
considered important. Further results are presented to argue that this greater
vulnerability is due to the greater emotional involvement of women in the lives of
those around them. It is demonstrated that this emotional cost of caring is
responsible for a substantial part of the overall relationship between sex and distress.

It is well documented that women in Western
society have significantly higher rates of psy-
chological distress than men (Al-Issa, 1982). In
sociology, most discussions of this fact have
revolved around the idea that women's social
roles are more stress provoking and less ful-
filling than those occupied by men (Gove,
1978). This social-role explanation has fostered
a substantial body of research on sex dif-
ferences in chronic role-related stress. This
work has typically been based on indirect mea-
sures of stress. Marital status, numbers and
ages of children, and employment status have
been used to make inferences about chronic
stress (Gove, 1972; Radloff, 1975; Gove and
Geerken, 1977; Aneshensel et al., 1981). For
example, the sex-distress relationship has
been shown to be more pronounced among the
married than the previously married or never
married (Gove, 1972; Fox, 1980). This specif-
ication has been interpreted as evidence that
role-related stress and resources are responsi-
*Direct all correspondence to: Ronald C. Kessler,
Institute for Social Research, University of Michi-
gan, Box 1248, Ann Arbor, MI 48106.
This research was supported by NIMH Research
Scientist Development Award IK02 MH00507 to the
senior author, by NIMH research grants IROI
MH30479 and T32 MH16806, and by a National In-
stitutes of Health Biomedical Research Support
Grant to the Vice President for Research at the Uni-
versity of Michigan. We would like to thank
Elizabeth Douvan, Richard Kulka, Ben Locke,
Jerome Myers, Lenore Radloff and Joseph Veroff for
making their data available to us. We would also like
to thank Duane Alwin, Elaine Wethington and
Camille Wortman for helpful comments on earlier
drafts.
ble for the higher levels of distress among
women than men.
Although provocative, this indirect line of
analysis cannot take us far in understanding the
processes that create distress among men and
women. Only gross comparisons across con-
stellations of status profiles are possible, and
these lend themselves to multiple interpreta-
tions including the possibility that prior psy-
chological status or predispositions lead to
selection into or out of certain statuses (Kess-
ler and McRae, 1984). There have been a few
attempts to move beyond this indirect assess-
ment, by measuring role stresses and resources
directly (Pearlin, 1975; Kessler and McRae,
1982), but this has proven to be quite difficult.
The role-stress measures developed so far are
highly subjective in content, and this has ham-
pered attempts to make causal inferences. (For
a critique, see Kessler [1983].)
In the face of this difficulty, some re-
searchers have turned to an examination of sex
differences in exposure and response to unde-
sirable life events (Dohrenwend, 1973; Kess-
ler, 1979; Radloff and Rae, 1981). This ap-
proach offers methodological advantages over
the analysis of chronic stress in that exposure
can be unambiguously measured. Further-
more, the consideration of life events is neces-
sary for a comprehensive interpretation of sex
differences in stress exposure.
This research has documented that although
men and women do not differ greatly in the
number of undesirable life events they experi-
ence, women are significantly more affected
emotionally than men. Indeed, this greater fe-
male vulnerability to life-event effects ac-
counts for a substantial part of the overall re-

620 American Sociological Review, 1984, Vol. 49 (October:620-631)

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 UNDESIRABLE LIFE EVENTS 621

lationship between sex and psychological dis- ered stressful. In addition, women reported a
tress. number of events that men failed to mention.
A variety of interpretations have been of- The latter consisted of life crises that had oc-
fered to account for this vulnerability. For curred to members of the respondents' social
example, Belle (1982) has suggested that networks: family, friends, and neighbors.
women have access to fewer supportive re- Women reported that such network events
lationships that ameliorate the distressing ef- were very distressing to them, while men sel-
fects of life crises. Radloff and Monroe (1978) dom mentioned events of this type.
have argued that women are socialized in such Research on male and female roles provides
a way that they are susceptible to reactive de- a basis for understanding this vulnerability of
pression. Pearlin and Schooler (1978) have women to network events. From early child-
suggested that the coping strategies used by hood, women develop a moral sense that em-
women are less effective than those used by phasizes caring for others, just as men con-
men. struct a morality that emphasizes individual
Arguments of this sort imply that women are rights and responsibilities (Gilligan, 1982).
disadvantaged by a pervasive deficit in coping Women are more likely than men to be attuned
resources. However, this implication remains to the needs of others and to feel responsible
untested. All of the research on life-event ef- for meeting those needs (Miller, 1976). This
fects to date has worked with aggregated in- sense of responsibility for the life events of
dices that combine many different events into aloved ones could lead women to report more of
single measure of exposure. We do not know these events and to experience these events as
from this research whether the vulnerability of more distressing.
women is pervasive or limited to particular On the basis of the above considerations, we
types of events. Clearly, the development of propose two hypotheses for evaluation in this
theory in this area would be advanced by such paper. First, we hypothesize that women are
a specification. not pervasively more vulnerable than men to
Some evidence that women are not perva- the emotional effects of undesirable life events.
sively more vulnerable than men can be found The confirmation of this hypothesis would call
in case studies of crisis coping. For example, into
it doubt the relevance of recent research on
seems that women adjust somewhat better than sex differences in overarching stress-buffering
men to the loss of a spouse (Stroebe and resources, such as social support and coping
Stroebe, 1983). Women also seem to be less styles, for an understanding of vulnerability to
emotionally affected than men by financial dif- acute life stress. Second, we hypothesize that
ficulties (Kessler, 1982). There is evidence that network life events-events that occur to
women cope more adequately than men with people who are important to the respondent-
marital separation and divorce after an initial play a central part in the aggregate vulnerabil-
period (Wallerstein and Kelly, 1980). These ity of women to undesirable events. The con-
examples point to the idea that the different firmation of this hypothesis would significantly
roles occupied by men and women, and redirect research on sex differences in vul-
perhaps the salience of these role domains, are nerability to life events. Furthermore, it would
implicated in vulnerability to particular events. provide an opportunity for research on the
If this suggestive evidence can be rigor- stress of female roles to be integrated with
ously supported in general population surveys, research on life events, by demonstrating that
a fundamental reorientation will be required in the demands for nurturance that are at the
current thinking about the vulnerability of center of female role obligations are also cen-
women. Rather than searching for pervasive trally involved in the events to which women
coping deficits, research on sex differences in are more emotionally vulnerable than men.
vulnerability to life events would be directed to
the role domains in which female vulnerability DATA AND METHODS
is isolated. But if female vulnerability is con-
Data
centrated in this way, what types of events are
involved'? Although no research has explicitly We present analyses based on five epi-
estimated disaggregated models to pinpoint the demiologic surveys of' the general popula-
effects of particular events, Dohrenwend tion. Table 1 describes the sample sizes, sam-
(1977) has presented suggestive evidence about pling frames, years of administration, and mea-
what these events are. She interviewed a sam- sures of psychological distress included in each
ple of men and women to determine the eventsof the surveys. The smallest and oldest of the
that they had experienced in the recent past five is a panel survey conducted in New
which, by their own accounts, were most dis- Haven, Connecticut, by Jerome Myers and his
tressing. This inductive search uncovered associates (NH). We pooled the two waves of
many events that both men and women consid- this panel into a synthetic cross-section in the

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 622 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Table 1. Data Sets and Screening Scales Included in the Analysis

Screening Scales

Survey Sample Psycho-

Symbol Year Population Size Depression physiological Source
NH 1967, 1969 New Haven, CT 720 Ss GURIN Myers et al.
21 or older (1974)
CMHA I 1971-73 Washington County, 1673 CESD, PHYSL Comstock and
MD, 18 or older PSYCL Helsing (1976)
CMHA II 1971-73 Kansas City, MO 1173 CESD, PHYSL Comstock and
18 or older PSYCL Helsing (1976)
CMHA III 1971-73 Washington County, 1089 CESD Comstock and
MD, 18 or older Helsing (1976)
SML 1976 U.S., 21 or older 2264 ZUNG GURIN Veroff et al.
(1981)

CESD: Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (Radloff, 1977).

GURIN: Gurin Scale (Myers et al., 1974).
PHYSL: Psychophysiological/Physical Subscales of the Langner Scale (Langner, 1962; Dohrenwend and
Crandell, 1970).
PSYCL: Psychological Subscale of the Langner Scale (Langner, 1962; Dohrenwend and Crandell, 1970).
SS: Study-Specific Scale (Weissman and Myers, 1978).
ZUNG: Modified Zung Scale (Zung, 1965; Veroff et al., 1981).

analysis. (See Kessler and Greenberg operationalized in perceptions of bodily

[1981:157-62] for a description of this tech-
nique.) The largest and most recent survey is
the Survey of Modern Living (SML) adminis-
tered by Joseph Veroff and associates. The
three other surveys are part of the Community
Mental Health Assessment (CMHA) program
administered through the Center for
Epidemiologic Studies at the National Institute
of Mental Health. Two of the five surveys were
conducted in urban areas (NH and CMHA II),
two in rural areas (CMHA I, CMHA III), and
one in the total U.S. population (SML).
Our decision to use a number of surveys in
the analysis was based on the fact that the rate
of occurrence of specific life events is very low
in surveys of this type. Therefore, analyses of
particular life-event effects have low power
within surveys. Combining the results from
many surveys helps resolve this problem by
increasing effective sample size. Methods have
been developed to combine tests of sig-
nificance across surveys to arrive at overall
levels of statistical significance. These tests of
pooled significance are discussed in more de-
tail below.
Our analysis employs three central vari-
ables: sex, psychological distress, and life
events. A description of the latter two vari-
ables and their operationalization is necessary.
Psychological distress. The outcome vari-
ables of interest are several different scales of
subjectively experienced psychological dis-
tress, described in the sixth and seventh col-
umns of Table 1. The scales used vary from
one survey to the next, but they can collec-
tively be divided into two groups: those that
measure depressed mood and those that mea-
sure psychophysiological distress (PPS) as
feelings known to be associated with anxiety
and depression. Psychological distress is mea-
sured seven times with a depressed-mood scale
and four times with a scale of psycho-
physiological symptoms in the five surveys.
These 11 replications form the basis of the
analysis. 1
Life events. Life events were assessed with
life-event lists in four of the five surveys (the
exception is SML). The lists differ in length
and in the precision with which they dif-
ferentiate events (for example, asking about
minor illnesses, serious illnesses, and serious
injuries separately versus combining them into
one overall illness/injury category) and in the
inclusion of some less serious events (for
example, death of a pet). All of the lists include
the most serious life crises, such as death of a
loved one and divorce.
In these four surveys, respondents were
I Although there is a significant relationship be-
tween scores on the two types of screening scales,
depressed mood and psychophysiological symp-
tomatology can be discriminated in factor analysis.
Furthermore, scores on both types of scales dis-
criminate people with either depression or anxiety
disorders from others in the normal population. It is
not clear why some people manifest these disorders
in high scores on one type of screening scale rather
than the other, although there has been some
speculation that cultural differences play a part
(Dohrenwend and Crandell, 1970; Wheaton, 1982).
For our purposes, though, this uncertainty is of less
importance than the fact that each type of scale pro-
vides some information about psychopathology in-
dependent of the other, a fact which argues for the
use of both scales in a comprehensive analysis.

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 UNDESIRABLE LIFE EVENTS 623

asked to report which, if any, of the events on Death of a loved one is the most frequently
the list happened to them in the past year. This reported serious network event in standard
time frame is consistent with evidence from life-event inventories, with about 15 percent of
retrospective case-control studies that events adults in the normal population affirming that
have a significant impact on acute onset of someone important to them died in the past
clinical disorders for no more than one year year. Less dramatic events obviously occur in
(Brown and Harris, 1978; Paykel, 1978; Surtes social networks with greater frequency, but
and Ingham, 1980). The list was then repeated they are not reported by most respondents un-
and respondents were asked whether any of less they occurred to members of their im-
the events happened to someone important to mediate family. For this reason, we aggregated
them. all other undesirable network events into a
No life-event list was included in the SML single scale in the first part of our analysis.
survey. Instead, respondents were asked a We recognize that the combination of these
single open-ended question: "Now think about diverse events into substantive groups masks
the last time something really bad happened to important variability among crises, both in
you. What was it about?" Each respondent their meanings and their emotional effects.
reported one event and the date of its occur- However, this partial disaggregation is more
rence. To approximate the one-year measures true to reality than the conventional approach
available in the other surveys, only those of combining all undesirable events into one
events experienced in the last year were in- summary measure. It is sufficiently detailed to
cluded for respondents in the SML survey. test the two central hypotheses and, as we
Investigations of life-event effects typically document below, it allows us to offer a rela-
use weighted sums of the life events on the list tively concise, yet theoretically rich, analysis
as the measure of exposure, with weights being of life-event effects.
assigned on the basis of some objectively de-
termined criterion for the seriousness of the
Methods of Analysis
event. We present a different approach. We
disaggregate the list into six theoretically cohe- A model of the form
sive categories. This allows a more precise
determination of which events are implicated D = bo + b1S + b2LE
in the pattern of differential response observed + b3(S)x(LE) + b4C (1)
between men and women. We consider only
undesirable events. We do not weight the indi- is typically estimated in research on the re-
vidual events or the categories for seriousness lationship between sex and response to life
but, instead, use simple counts of the number events. D is a measure of distress, S is a
of reported events within each category.2 dummy variable coded 1 for men and 0 for
The six categories of events are income loss, women, LE is an index of life events, (S) x (LE)
separation and divorce, other love loss, ill is a multiplicative interaction of S and LE, and
health, death of a loved one, and other network C is a series of control variables. Estimates of
events. Most of these are diverse. Income loss, b3 are usually negative and statistically signifi-
for example, includes such things as being cant, meaning that the impact of life events on
fired, business failure, and foreclosure of a distress is more pronounced among women
mortgage. Other love loss consists in broken than men.3
engagements, breaks with a steady girlfriend or Our analysis strategy modified this basic
boyfriend, and the termination of other impor- prediction equation in two ways. First, we di-
tant friendships. vided the sample of women into two groups:
women in the labor force (WLF) and
homemakers (HM).i This division is justified
2 Previous research has shown that weighting will
by the fact that the life situations of employed
not normally affect the results of life-event analysis
because the variance of the item weights is small and unemployed women are very different.
relative to the between-person variance in event oc-
currence (Shrout, 1981). This is also true in our
analysis, in which events are divided into six 3An alternative interpretation is that the putative
categories. We considered using individual life interaction is masking a nonlinearity in the effect of
LE on D (Southwood, 1978). This is possible,
events in the analysis instead of event categories, but
decided against this option for two reasons. First, though, only if LE and S are strongly related to each
even with the five surveys considered here, there are other, which is not true in these data since, as we will
too few reports of some life events to allow a pow- note, mean levels of LE do not differ substantially by
erful analysis. Second, an analysis of the many dif- sex.
ferent undesirable life events included in the life- 4 The analysis was limited to whites age 65 and
event list would prove difficult to interpret and, younger, excluding students, the retired and the dis-
thereby, theoretically wasteful. abled.

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 624 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL
Furthermore, previous evidence shows that
labor force participation is the most important
role-related descriptive characteristic among
women which pertains to their psychological
well-being (Kessler and McRae, 1982). Our es-
timation equation included this elaboration by
introducing separate dummy variables for each
of the two groups of women in place of the
single dummy variable for sex in equation (1).
We included only men in the labor force (MLF)
in the omitted contrast group, as there are few
unemployed, retired, or disabled men in these
surveys.
The second change in the prediction equa-
tion involved the life-events term. We included
six life-event categories instead of one. This
means that there were six interaction terms
between sex and life events for each subgroup
comparison and twelve interaction terms in all. groups, by type of event.6 It also lists z-
This model was estimated for each of the out-
come variables in the five surveys. Control
variables for marital status (dummy variables
for previously married and never married) and
age were included because many of the event
types are either related to one of these vari-
ables (as the presence of health problems is to
age) or confined to persons in one category of latter that slope estimates for the impact of
these variables (as marital separation is to the
married).
With these modifications to equation (1), it
was possible to evalute the differential impact
of life events on men- and women. In addition, come loss than either women in the labor force
we estimated within-group models to evaluate
the significance of life-event effects separately more physical health problems, although the
among men in the labor force, women in the
labor force, and homemakers. Each of these
equations was estimated 11 times, once for
each of the outcome variables enumerated in
Table 1.
The results of these replicated analyses were
summarized by calculating pooled significance
tests. A number of methods are available for
doing this (Rosenthal, 1978). Although we used
several of these methods, they yielded similar
results and so we present only one here: the
method of adding t-values. In this approach,
the t-values for a parameter are summed across
replications and divided by
{j [df/(df- 2)]11/2.
This ratio is a standard normal deviate that can
be used to evaluate the overall significance of
the parameter across the replications.
RESULTS
In this section we consider both differences in
exposure to life events across the three groups
and differences in the slopes of distress on life
events. We begin by describing the absolute
levels of exposure and response within the
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REVIEW
three subsamples and follow with between-
group comparisons.
Exposure to Life Events
As noted above, past research has found that
the greater importance of undesirable events
for the well-being of women than men can be
largely accounted for by differences in emo-
tional response to events. Differences in expo-
sure have been comparatively unimportant.5
Nevertheless, it is useful to begin by examining
the frequency with which events of different
types are reported to get a sense of the entire
process through which life events affect the
emotional functioning of men and women.
Table 2 presents the average number of life
events reported in the five surveys, within sub-
statistics for the test of sex differences in aver-
age number of events reported, pooled across
the five surveys.
There is a wide range in the number of
events reported. The most common are net-
work events and the least common are marital
separation/divorce. There are so few of the
marital disruption on emotional functioning
should be interpreted with caution. All other
event types are much more common.
Men report a considerably higher rate of in-
or homemakers. They also report significantly
substantive difference is small (1 i percent more
physical health problems among men than
women). Overall, men and women are very
much alike in the frequency with which
they report marital disruptions and other love
losses, although women in the labor force have
higher rates than homemakers.7
5 Makosky (1980) and Belle (1982) have noted that
life-event inventories represent the typical life events
experienced by men better than those experienced
by women. None of the surveys considered here, for
example, includes abortion or rape. All of them, in
contrast, include entering or leaving the armed
forces. This slanted representation must be borne in
mind when interpreting evidence about sex dif-
ferences in exposure.
6 Respondents in WCII were not asked about
Other Love Loss or Network events. Other Love
Loss events were also not included in the life-event
list in NH. Therefore, the sample sizes for these two
types of events are different from those listed in
Table 2. The correct sample sizes for Other Love
Loss and Network events, for MLF, WLF, and HM
respectively are 1429, 1214, 845, and 1862, 1406,
1201.
7 In the population as a whole, of course, the num-
bers of men and women who experience a marital
disruption are identical since it takes one of each sex
 UNDESIRABLE LIFE EVENTS 625

Table 2. Average Number of Reported Life Events, by Type of Event, for Men in the Labor Force (MLF),
Women in the Labor Force (WLF), and Homemakers (HM) and z-statistic for Sex Differences
in Average

Average Number of
Life Events z-statistic

Type of Event MLF WLF HM MLF vs. WLF MLF vs. HM

Income .102 .056 .042 4.001 5.296

Separation/Divorce .028 .036 .018 - 1.174 1.617
Other Love Loss .053 .082 .039 -2.818 1.318
Death of a Loved One .118 .146 .170 -2.075 -4.231
IlII Health .159 .138 .139 1.773 2.301
Network .719 .892 .958 -4.074 -6.315
(N)II (2221) (1616) (1472)
a Sample sizes apply to all categories of eve
discussion of the differing sample sizes.

Women report significantly greater expo- Response to Life Events

sure to death than men. This is part of a
Table 3 presents partially standardized slopes
broader pattern of reporting more network
of distress on each event type averaged over
events of many different kinds. Homemakers
the 11 replications of the regression analysis.8
report the highest level of exposure, followed
These slopes describe the expected increases
by women in the labor force and then men in
in distress, in standard deviation units, associ-
the labor force. Approximately 12 percent of
MLF report having known someone who diedated with the occurrence of each event type,
controlling for age and marital status. The
in the past year, as compared to 15 percent of
standard deviation is defined on the basis of the
WLF and 17 percent of homemakers. The pat-
total sample, rather than separately within the
tern is the same for other network events. Men
sex-specific subsamples, so that comparisons
in the labor force report an average of .719
across the subsamples can be made. The num-
events, WLF an average of .892, and HM an
bers in parentheses under each average slope
average of .958 events. The sex differences for
are the z-statistics of these slopes, pooled
both event types are highly significant.
across the 1 1 replications. Comparable statis-
Most of these results make good sense. It is
tics for the pooled significance of sex dif-
obvious, for example, that more events occur
ferences in the slopes are presented in the table
in networks than to their individual members.
as well.
It is also reasonable that employed people ex-
Fourteen of the 18 pooled subgroup regres-
perience more income events than homemak-
sion coefficients are significant at the . 10 level.
ers. It is much more difficult, though, to under-
One of the remaining four coefficients is sub-
stand the significant difference in the frequen-
stantively significant but based on such a small
cies with which men and women report net-
number of events that it is not significant in
work events. Evidence suggests that men
statistical terms (separation/divorce among
know more people than do women (Veroff et
HM). The remaining three coefficients-for the
al., 1981), yet women are aware of more of the
influence of deaths and network events on men
crises that occur to the people around them.
and the influence of income losses on
This could occur as a result of women being
homemakers-are substantively as well as
more attuned to their interpersonal envi-
statistically insignificant.
ronments or because the members of these en-
The sex comparisons show that several
vironments look to women more than men for
event types affect men and women equally.
support and comfort in times of trouble. We
Income losses have similar effects on the
explore these possibilities more fully in our
well-being of both men and women in the labor
interpretation of the results.

8 The 11 replications are not independent, as they

to make (and break) a marriage. The differences we
observe between women in the labor force and
homemakers reflect two facts: marital disruptions
are more likely to occur among women employed
outside the home than among homemakers; and
marital disruption is often the occasion for women
who were previously homemakers to seek a job out-
side the home.
are taken from only five separate surveys. There-
fore, the significance tests here are not exact. We
experimented with two other ways of combining the
results: (1) selecting only one outcome variable from
each of the surveys; and (2) averaging the results
within surveys before combining the five averages in
a final analysis. These different approaches yielded
very similar results to those reported here, which
documents that the results are robust.

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 626 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Table 3. Average Slopes of Distress on Life Events for Men in the Labor Force (MLF), Women in the Labor
Force (WLF), and Homemakers (HM) and z-statistics for Sex Differences in Slopesa

Average b z-statistic

Type of Event MLF WLF HM MLF vs. WLF MLF vs. HM

Income .342 .330 .043 -.114 -2.759

(9.455) (4.744) (.500)
Separation/Divorce .143 .263 .236 .927 1.088
(2.101) (2.980) (1.533)
Other Love Loss .374 .354 .320 -.679 -.430
(5.100) (4.595) (2.514)
Death of a Loved One -.003 .193 .222 1.529 3.902
(-.002) (2.360) (4.119)
Ill Health .176 .245 .538 1.235 5.444
(5.133) (5.456) (8.307)
Network -.028 .129 .045 4.297 1.991
(-.115) (5.071) (2.789)

a The numbers in parentheses are pooled z-statistics for the significance of the slope estimates. Slopes are
pooled across all 11 dependent variables except for Other Love Loss (available for 8 dependent variables) and
Network events (available for 10 dependent variables).

force. The effects of marital disruptions on
men and women are statistically indistinguish-
able, as are the effects of other love losses. On
the basis of these results, it is perfectly clear
that women do not suffer from a pervasive
emotional vulnerability to stressful experiences
when compared to men. Therefore, the first of
our two hypotheses is supported.
At the same time, there are sex differences in
the response to some kinds of life events.
These overwhelmingly show men to be less
responsive than women. In the 12 male-female
comparisons only one shows women to be sig-
nificantly less affected than men while six
show women to be significantly more affected
than men. The single instance of greater male
vulnerability is in the case of income losses,
where homemakers have a markedly low
slope. The six cases of greater female vulnera-
bility are associated with ill health, death of a
loved one, and network events.9
9 The greater impact of death on women than men
is not due to widowhood. Indeed, as noted above,
the available evidence suggests that women adjust
somewhat better than men to the death of a spouse
(Stroebe and Stroebe, 1983). Although only a small
number of widowhoods are reported in our surveys
compared to other types of deaths (in CMHA-I, for
example, there were 18 widowhoods and 344 deaths
of other important people in the year prior to the
interview), our results are consistent with this result.
There is only one survey, SML, where more than a
single male respondent was recently widowed. Here
there are five such men. The average slope of dis-
tress on widowhood in this subsample (comparing
these five men to those who are still married, con-
trolling age) is .88 across the two distress outcomes
in that survey. Despite the small number of men
involved, both slopes are significant. Among women
in the labor force the only survey with more than a
trivial number of recent widowhoods is CMHA-1,
where there are nine. (Each of the other surveys
The most dramatic of these sex differences is
the extreme vulnerability of homemakers to
physical health problems. We prefer not to
interpret this coefficient, as it is difficult to
know whether selection of the most seriously
ill women out of the labor force is responsible.
The slope difference between men and women
in the labor force for ill health events is in the
same direction, but not significant."'
Much more important for our purposes are
the findings that women are considerably more
affected than men by the death of a loved one
and by other network events. The latter is par-
ticularly striking, given that men do not report
as many network events as women. A closer
examination of the results in NH indicate that
this underreporting takes a rather special form:
men report fewer ininor events and events at
the edges of their caring networks. The correc-
tion of this sex-related bias in reporting would,
in all likelihood, magnify the differential impact
of network events.
contains either one or two.) The average slope of
distress on widowhood in this subsample is .64. For
homemakers, finally, there are small numbers of re-
cently widowed people in each survey. (The mini-
mum is three in CMHA-II; the maximum, eight in
CMHA-I and SML.) The average slope here is .46,
with six of I I slopes significantly greater than zero.
None of the possible tests of slope differences be-
tween males and females is significant nor, for that
matter, close to significance.
"' These sex differences are equally clear when we
confine ourselves to the depression outcomes. We
took this extra step in specification because Thoits
(1981) has suggested that illness events might be
confounded with psychophysiological indicators of
psychological distress, and because this might be
more true of women than men. That the differential
vulnerability appears when depressed mood is taken
as the outcome argues against this interpretation.

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 UNDESIRABLE LIFE EVENTS 627

Table 4. Decomposition of Sex Differences in Distress from Pooled Sex-Specific Regression Equations

MLF vs. WLF MLF vs. HM

Type of Event Response Exposure Total Response Exposure Total

Income .000 - .016 - .016 - .021 - .012 - .033

Separation/Divorce .004 .001 .005 .003 - .002 .001
Other Love Loss -.001 .010 .009 -.003 -.004 -.007
Death of a Loved One .026 .002 .028 .033 .006 .039
Ill Health .011 -.005 .006 .055 -.008 .047
Network .126 .009 .135 .061 .001 .062
Total .166 .001 .167 .128 -.019 .109
Residual Mean Difference .041 .220
Observed Mean Difference .208 .329

Decomposition of the Overall ing the observed and residual mean differences
Sex-Distress Relationship in the last two rows of the table. Women in the
labor force have an average distress score .208
We noted earlier that previous research has
standard deviations higher than men, while
found sex differences in vulnerability to unde-
homemakers have an average distress score
sirable events more important than sex dif-
.329 standard deviations higher than men.
ferences in exposure to these events in ac-
Were we to remove the observed sex dif-
counting for the higher levels of distress found
ferences in exposure and response to stressful
among women than men. This is also true for
life events, these differences would be reduced
the disaggregated data presented here, a result
to .041 and .220, respectively. This means that
that can be most clearly seen by using a
we can explain 80 percent of the MLF-WLF
demographic-mean decomposition procedure
difference and 33 percent of the MLF-HM
(Jams and Thornton, 1975). Our use of this
difference in distress by taking life events into
procedure is heuristic, as we created synthetic
account.
regression equations from the average means
The row and column totals pinpoint the crit-
and slopes in Tables 2 and 3 and performed the
ical ways in which life events are implicated.
decomposition on these.1" Nonetheless, even
From the row totals we see that differential
in this rough sort of manipulation the over-
response accounts entirely for the influence of
whelming importance of differential vulnera-
life events on the excess distress observed
bility is clear.
among women. Differential exposure is of no
The results of the decomposition are pre-
importance in the MLF-WLF contrast and
sented in Table 4. There are two decomposi-
works to the advantage of women in the
tions reported: one for the comparison of
MLF-HM contrast.
MLF versus WLF and one for the comparison
Response to network events accounts for
of MLF versus HM. For each life event, the
over 75 percent (.126/.166) of the response
decomposition derived two components: (1)
component in the MLF-WLF contrast and 48
(bw-bm) (Xm+Xw)/2, the differential-response
percent (.061/.128) in the MLF-HM contrast.
component, which represents the expected
Deaths affect women more than men as well,
change in the distress of men if the slope
accounting for 16 percent (.026/.166) and 26
among men were the same as it is among
percent (.033/.128) of the differential response
women and the mean level of exposure were
components in the two contrasts.
equal to the observed mean, averaged over
Women also report the occurrence of more
both men and women; (2) [(bm+bw)/2]
network events, which means that the dif-
(Xw-Xm), the differential-exposure compo-
ferential exposure components in the decom-
nent, which represents the expected change in
positions are meaningful for deaths and other
distress among men if mean exposure were the
network events. When we combine these ef-
same among men as it is among women and the
fects with the influences of differential re-
slopes were equal to the average slope among
sponse it is possible to explain 78 percent
men and women.
(.163/.208) of the observed MLF-WLF dif-
The first thing to note in this table is that a
ference in distress and 30 percent (.101/.329) of
substantial part of the observed sex difference
the MLF-HM difference in distress.
in distress can be explained by the life events
considered here. This can be seen by compar-
DISCUSSION
I An exact decomposition would require us to
work separately with each of the 11 replications. We Our analysis has documented that previous
hesitated to do this as the parameter estimates in evidence of female vulnerability to undesirable
each replication are unstable. life events is confined to network life crises

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 628 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW
including the death of a loved one. This means
that pervasive deficits in coping resources-
like limited access to social support, personal-
ity predisposition or coping styles-need not
be called on to understand the ways in which
life events help create distress among women.
Instead, we need to learn more about the ways
in which network life crises impinge on the
emotional lives of women and more about how
men manage to avoid these damaging effects.
A consideration of these issues should begin
by recognizing that women are doubly disad-
vantaged by network events. They report more
of them than men and they are more emotion-
ally responsive to them than men. We consider
these two issues in turn.
There are two main possibilities for under-
standing the greater exposure of women to
network events: they might actually know of
more network crises than men; and they might
define a wider range of people as significant
others than men. We believe that both of these
possibilities have merit. Our belief that women
know about more network events is based on
evidence in the help-seeking literature that
people in need of emotional support are much
more likely to seek out women than men as
confidants (see Kessler et al. [forthcoming]
a review). In many cases, these confidants are
given exclusive information about the prob-
lems of those who seek their support. This
means that women actually know about more
network events than men.
At the same time, it is difficult to examine
the available evidence and conclude that dif-
ferences in knowledge about the occurrence of
network events account entirely for sex dif-
ferences in self-reported exposure. The fact
that women report deaths of loved ones more
frequently than men, for example, is unlikely
to be due to special access to the information.
A more plausible interpretation is that women
consider more people important than men do.
Our conception of sex differences in vul-
nerability to network events is a good deal
.more complex. One possibility is that the pro-
vision of social support is centrally implicated:
women are more involved as supporters and
this involvement is distressing. Unfortunately,
our life-event surveys did not probe respon-
dents about their involvement with the victims
of network events that were reported. We must
consequently use evidence -outside these sur-
veys to examine this interpretation.
One central aspect of this interpretation has
been documented: women are more likely to be
sought out as supporters during times of crises.
The evidence for this comes from surveys of
help seeking in which respondents are asked to
describe who helped them during the last pe-
riod in their life when they needed help with a
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serious problem. Women are between 30 per-
cent and 50 percent more likely than men to be
mentioned as helpers in such surveys (Kessler
et al., forthcoming).
There is no direct evidence that support pro-
vision is distressing, but indirect evidence sug-
gests that it might be in some situations. Case
studies of helping transactions show that help-
ers often do things that reduce their own dis-
tress, like minimizing the victim's problem or
attempting to be inappropriately cheerful
(Dunkel-Shetter and Wortman, 1982; Wortman
and Lehman, forthcoing), even though these
things make the victim feel more inadequate,
isolated, or misunderstood.
Despite these findings, the available evi-
dence is inconsistent with the view that sup-
port provision by itself is capable of explaining
the vulnerability of women to network events.
The contrary evidence comes from the previ-
ously mentioned surveys of help seeking,
which show that men provide a substantial
amount of support to crisis victims. It is true,
as noted above, that women far outnumber
men among informal helpers. Nonetheless,
help-seekers describe receiving considerable
help from men, and they report that the types
forof help received include listening, comforting,
and talking things out-the very sorts of emo-
tional support that are presumably most dis-
tressing for providers. If support provision
were centrally involved in the distress caused
by network events, we would expect to find
some evidence of this among men. That we
find no such evidence argues against this in-
terpretation.
There are other possibilities. One is that
providing support leads to distress only when
the provider is already overloaded with so
many demands for nurturance that his or her
capacities for keeping emotional distance
break down. Evidence exists that women have
more demands of this sort made on them by
their networks than men (Fischer, 1982; Gove
and Hughes, 1984). In fact, some social net-
works are so demanding that their female
members are in better mental health if they are
isolated from other members of the network
(Cohler and Lieberman, 1980).
Another possibility is that support provision
is of only secondary importance and that the
impact of network events on women stems
from emotional involvement in the lives of
their loved ones. Evidence for this ability to
become involved is widespread. We know that
women are more oriented to the needs of those
around them (Gilligan, 1982) and that women
have a more emphatic orientation than men in a
wide range of experimental and natural situa-
tions (Eisenberg and Lennon, 1983). General
population surveys, furthermore, show that
 UNDESIRABLE LIFE EVENTS 629

women are more likely than men to cite the
well-being of their spouses (Campbell et al.,
1976), parents (Brody, 1981), and children
(Menaghan, 1978) as important sources of con-
cern.
This interpretation fits nicely with an elab-
oration of the analysis that was not reported
above. We reasoned that if women have a
wider field of concern than men, vulnerability
to network events should be smallest for
events that occur to close family members and
larger for events that occur to more distant
others. This is exactly what we found in
analysis of the New Haven data, the only
survey that allowed us to focus on the person
to whom the network event occurred. In this
survey, men were as distressed as women by
serious life crises that occurred to their
spouses and children. Yet, as soon as we
moved beyond this small field of concern the
impact of network events on men vanished,
while it persisted among women.
The overload and emotional-involvement
interpretations are probably both implicated in
the vulnerability of women to network events.
The time and energy demands placed on a sup-
porter are likely to lead to distress when they
come on top of an already demanding set of
role responsibilities. This pressure is likely to
be exacerbated by a personal style that pro-
motes emotional involvement and subordina-
tion of personal needs to the needs of others.
Even in the absence of the demands created by
being a supporter, finally, deep personal con-
cern for a person in the midst of a life crisis is
almost certainly capable of promoting personal
distress.
SUMMARY
We began by noting that most research on the
sex-distress relationship has emphasized the
central importance of male and female roles.
We described how this research has for the
most part been indirect, based on the compari-
son of men and women within different status
configurations rather than on a detailed con-
sideration of role demands and resources. We
also described how, in response to this limited women.
sort of progress in the consideration of chronic We have also pinpointed a direction for fu-
stresses and fulfillments within role domains, ture research that is likely to provide clearer
some researchers have begun to study sex dif- insights into the differentiation of male and fe-
ferences in exposure and response to life male role stresses than we have been able to
events.
In the elaboration of this research on life-
event effects we have documented that the
theoretical considerations about role demands
that have informed thinking about ongoing
stresses and fulfillments in the lives of men and
women emerge in a new form when we look
closely at life events. Women are exposed to
more network events than men and less
shielded from their emotional effects, just as
qualitative research and theoretical arguments
have suggested that women are more burdened
than men by daily hassles and provided with
fewer resources to cope with them within their
role situations.
Like the ongoing stresses linked to their
roles, the network events that damage female
mental health are more important for their con-
stancy and ability collectively to overwhelm
than for their individual emotional effects.
Network events have quite small effects on
distress compared to personal life crises like
marital disruption or income loss. However,
network events are much more common than
the latter. The small accumulation of effects
across a number of network crises creates the
distress found among women, a result that
once again ties in with thinking about the stres-
ses associated with traditional female roles.
Our analysis has concentrated on the un-
usual stress experience rather than the ordi-
nary. In doing this we have not accounted en-
tirely for the sex-distress relationship. We be-
lieve that women are not only exposed to more
acute stresses than men, but also to more of the
daily stresses that are associated with routine
role functioning. A consideration of the latter
will be necessary before we can comprehen-
sively assess the part played by stress.
Nonetheless, the work presented here has
taken us considerably closer to a synthesis of
research on role stress and life events. We
have documented for the first time that
women are exposed more than men to acute
life stresses which are centrally associated with
their nurturant roles, and that this role-related
difference is one important source of the men-
tal health advantage of men. Deeper interpre-
tation of this exposure and vulnerability to
network events will require a detailed under-
standing of the ways in which networks make
demands on their female members during times
of crisis. This sort of understanding is probably
a good deal easier to develop than an under-
standing of the small day-to-day role demands
that differentiate the situations of men and
glean so far from the analysis of ongoing life
situations. We are directed to an analysis of
life-event effects on the network of the victim,
on empathic reactions, on support, and on the
emotional costs of care giving. These are im-
portant areas for investigation for they appar-
ently hold the key to understanding the perva-

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 630 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

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