Sexual Self-esteem as a Predictor of Marital Satisfaction in Mothers with Normal or Mentally Retarded Children

The present study was designed to compare marital satisfaction in mothers with normal children and mothers with mentally retarded children and to establish the role of sexual self-esteem as a forecaster of marital satisfaction in mothers in Qaen, Iran (2014). 120 mothers were participated in this study. 60 mothers with mentally retarded children were selected through census and another 60 mothers with normal children were selected by multi-stage random sampling and were assigned in case and control groups respectively. The results showed that marital satisfaction and all of its components in mothers with normal children were significantly more compared to mothers with mentally retarded children (P<0.05). Sexual self-esteem and each of its components was significantly (P<0.05) increased in mothers with normal children. The results of multiple regression showed that sexual self-esteem can explain 0.741 and 0.766 of the variance related to marital satisfaction in mothers with normal and mentally retarded children respectively. Thus, marital adjustment training is recommended for mothers with mentally retarded children and sexual self-esteem training can be considered as one of the solutions to increase marital satisfaction especially in women.