Marital Satisfaction and Marital Intimacy in Employed and Unemployed Pregnant Women of Ardebil City

Employed pregnant women have to do their jobs in addition to fulfill their house wife role and behavior, while changes physical and psychological change and needs of pregnant women in home and work place cause some problem for them. Marital satisfactions is one of the criteria's of mental health, that employment and marital intimacy are it's influential factors; it is different in various societies and are influenced by personal and social characters of community. This study was conducted to compare marital satisfaction and intimacy in employed and unemployed pregnant women in Ardabil. This cross-sectional study was conducted in 93 employed and 93 unemployed pregnant women referred to health and treatment centers of Ardebil University of Medical Science, and private clinics of Ardabil. We gathered data by an information form, Enrich Marital Satisfactions Questionnaires and Bagarozi Couple Intimacy Questionnaires. Validity of questionnaires assessed through validity of content and their reliability measured by Cronbach α. Questionnaires were filled by pregnant women. The data analyzed by SPSS 16 soft ware using T-Test, Man-vitny, chi-square, Correlation coefficient, variance analysis, and LSD tests). There was no significant difference between mean of marital satisfaction and general intimacy in employed and unemployed pregnant women. p > 0.05. There was significant correlation between intimacy and satisfaction expect body intimacy (p < 0.01). There was significant difference between marital satisfactions of pregnancy in different trimester. This difference was significant between first and last trimester. It was not significant between first & second & third trimester. 69.9% of unemployed pregnant women and 66.7% of employed pregnant women had relative and medium marital satisfaction and 93.5% of unemployed pregnant women and 94.6% of employed pregnant women had medium intimacy. It seems that employment had no effect on marital satisfaction and intimacy. Considering that most samples had medium intimacy satisfaction, educational programs and consulting is recommended.