From a large urban centre in Australia a population of fifty families were selected for interview. Of these, twenty‐six families were divided into two groups — high‐stress and low‐stress. When compared on twenty‐eight variables, the following were found to be associated with the high‐stress families: Spouse personality mismatch on the extroversion‐introversion scale from Lanyon's Psychological Screening Inventory, associated communication problems, spouse mismatching on the discomfort (neuroticism) scale, higher discomfort and alienation scores for wives than for husbands and lower than usual non‐conformity scores for husbands. While single parenting was also associated with high stress, single mothers showed lower discomfort scores than mothers in two parent high stress families. It is concluded that important intrinsic factors may contribute significantly to stress in families and that the previously reported higher levels of neuroticism among married females when compared to married males are often associated with personality mismatching and communication problem