The Comparison between Marital Satisfaction, Emotional Stress Cognitive Social Support in Parents Having Mentally-Impaired Children and Parents Having Normal Children.

This research was conducted for the analysis and the comparison between marital satisfaction and emotional stress with cognitive social support in parents having mentally-retarded children and those with normal children. The method of this research is casual comparative. The samples of the research included two groups of 50 parents having mentally-retarded children and normal ones. The selection of parents with normal children was done using a clustering method and mass counting was the method used for the selection of parents having mentally-retarded children. To conduct the research, child rearing mental pressure, marital satisfaction and cognitive social support Questionnaires were used. The results were analyzed using the independent T statistical tests, Pearson and Regression correlation. The findings of the research confirmed the correlation between emotional stress and marital satisfaction of parents with normal children and those having mentally-retarded children. Parents of mentally-retarded children, suffer from more emotional stress. At the meantime, parents of mentally-retarded children, compared to those having normal children have a lower level of marital satisfaction. However, as far as cognitive social support is concerned, there was no significant change. Also, the results indicated that the correlation between the emotional stress and marital satisfaction variables between the two groups of parents was negative and the correlation between cognitive social support and marital satisfaction of parents having normal children was significant; in mentally-retarded children, the correlation was not significant.The results of Regression analysis indicated that the effect of emotional stress and the educational level over the marital satisfaction is significant.The results of this research indicated that the increase in the emotional stress of parents as a result of having mentally-retarded children, ended in a decrease in marital satisfaction. In other words, marital satisfaction could depend on whether there is a mentally-retarded child, in the family. Therefore, it is possible to teach those parents methods of decreasing stress through education and counseling.