Predicting Concerns During Pregnancy Based on Marital Quality and Cognitive Self-Regulation with the Mediating Role of Mental Security

During pregnancy, the marital quality and mental security of women are threatened. A woman's physical, mental and psychological health during this period has significant effects on the health of the fetus, success in natural childbirth and breastfeeding, and improving health. Maintaining psychological security, cognitive self-regulation of emotions, and the quality of marital relations during pregnancy can reduce the worries of this period to some extent. The current research aims to predicting design a structural model of marital quality and cognitive self-regulation with the mediating role of psychological security to predict concerns during pregnancy.

The present study was a descriptive-correlation type using the structural equation modeling method. The study  population included all the pregnant women of 25 to 40who referred to health centers and clinics in Yazd in 2023. 275 women were randomly selected by cluster sampling method. Data was collected using Aldersey and Lin's (2011) pregnancy anxiety questionnaires, Busby et al.'s marital quality (1995), Maslow's psychological security (2004), and Garnevsky et al.'s (2002) cognitive self-regulation of emotion. Data analysis was done through Pearson correlation methods and structural equation modeling using SPSS-19 and AMOS-20 software.

The results of multivariate regression test showed that the variables of cognitive self-regulation of emotion (positive emotion (R=0/49), negative emotion (R=0/056), and marital quality (R=0/089) with the mediation of psychological security on concerns during pregnancy, had a direct and significant effect (P<0/05). Psychological security also had a direct, negative, and significant effect on worries during pregnancy (P<0/05).

The results of the present study shows that the structural model of concerns during pregnancy based on cognitive self-regulation of emotion and marital quality with the mediation of psychological security had favorable fit indices, and therefore, the knowledge of these variables can help to reduce worries during pregnancy.