The Comparison of Marital Satisfaction between Men without Child and Men with First and Second Child in Transition to Parenthood

Marital satisfactions vary in different stages of life of couples. Childbirth as special period may cause different challenges regarding to person’s potential, therefore this study was carried out to compare marital satisfaction between men without child and men with first and second child in transition to parenthood. Materials &

This correlation study was done in 3 groups with 60 men without child, and with first and second child, a multistage sampling was conducted. Instruments include: Enrich marital satisfaction, transition difficulty to parenthood scales and demographics data, that were completed by eligible men refer to Mashhad health care centers in 2014. Data was analyzed with SPSS V16.

The mean age of men was 32.52±5.52 years and 57.2% had academic education. Men without child had 1.7% relative dissatisfaction, 20% moderate satisfaction, 61.7% more satisfaction and 16.7% most satisfaction. Men with first child had 3.3% relative dissatisfaction, 31.7% moderate satisfaction, 51.7% more satisfaction and 13.7% most satisfaction and men with second child had 8.3% relative dissatisfaction, 28.3% moderate satisfaction, 53.3% more satisfaction and 10% most satisfaction. There were no significant differences among three groups (p=0.19). The16.4% of marital satisfaction in men with child was predicted by transition difficulty to parenthood that implies the strong correlation between these two variables.

There was no correlation between men’s marital satisfaction with childbirth; therefore couples should be consulted not to worry about fatherhood and number of children.