Investigating the Impact of Marital Conflict on Prenatal Concerns: The Mediating Role of Psychological Well-Being

Having marital conflict during a stressful pregnancy has significant effects that can be made resistant to psychological stress by expanding the psychological well-being of pregnant women, so this study aimed to investigate the effect of marital conflict on prenatal concerns with the mediating role of psychological well-being.  The method of the present study was descriptive - correlational. The statistical population of the study was all pregnant women aged 18-40 years in Mashhad who referred to office gynecology, hospitals, and health centers in the first half of 2019-2020. The statistical sample consisted of 150 pregnant women who selected and investigated via a convenient sampling method and according to Morgan's table. To collect the data, the Revised Marital Conflicts Standard Questionnaire- 54-questions (2009), Prenatal Concerns Questionnaire (Alderdice and Lynn, 2011), and Psychological Well-being Questionnaire (Ryff, 2002) were used. The collected data analyzed by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using SPSS  and Lisrel software. The results showed that according to the values ​​of the path coefficient and T, the marital conflict has a direct and significant effect on prenatal concerns (T = 7.48 and T = 0.68). In other words, the higher the level of marital conflict, the higher the concerns (P <0.01); moreover, the finding of this research showed that conflict with psychological well-being has the opposite effect (T= 7.82 and T= -0.69).  That is, the higher the conflict, the lower the level of psychological well-being. According to the results of the study, it can be said that marital conflict, in addition to being a risk factor for prenatal concerns, can indirectly affect the level of prenatal concerns through psychological well-being.