Background & aim: Women's emotional relationships with their spouses can be influenced by adverse sexual performance during pregnancy. A spouse's supportive behavior toward pregnancy and his emotional response play a pivotal role in maintaining his pregnant wife’s mental well-being. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between pregnant women’s sexual activity and response with spouses’ emotional response to pregnancy.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, cluster sampling was employed to select 265 pregnant women having a healthy singleton pregnancy within 16–24 weeks from January to Agust 2024. The Raj Sexual Activity and Response Questionnaire and the Kazemi Emotional Reaction to Pregnancy Questionnaire were used to collect data on a self-report basis. ANOVA, paired t-tests, Pearson correlation coefficients, and linear regression were utilized for data analysis in SPSS Statistics 22.
Results: Before pregnancy, 79.6% of women showed sexual activity and response at satisfactory to excellent levels. However, this figure declined to 40.4% after pregnancy, with mean scores for sexual activity and response falling from 63.86±19.51 pre-pregnancy to 44.88±14.31 post-pregnancy (P<0.001). Additionally, the mean emotional response to pregnancy score of the spouse was recorded as 52.35±21.31. There was a significant positive correlation between women’s sexual activity and response and the spouses’ emotional response to pregnancy (P=0.001, r=0.202).
Conclusion: The spouse's emotional response to pregnancy was positively associated with the pregnant women’s sexual activity and response. The results can be used to develop a pregnancy counseling program to establish safe marital environments and relationships, helping pregnant women with psychological stress.