The Effect of Maternal Employment on the Elementary and Junior High School Students’ Mental Health in Maku

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Most experts view the childhood period as a foundation for shaping the individuals’ fundamental future characteristics and behaviors. They believe that parents’ personality and behavior quality exert a greater effect on the development of a child’s personality than other factors. Given the mothers’ role in children’s mental health and considering the fact that children are a nation’s future makers, the present study was designed to investigate the impact of maternal employment on students’ mental health in Maku. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present study is descriptive and cross-sectional, and the population of the study encompasses all students in the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades (n=583) who are studying in 2013-2014 academic year in Maku. General Heath Questionnaire was employed for gathering data, and the SPSS software was used for analyzing the data. FINDINGS: The results of the study indicated that there was a significant difference between the mental health problems, somatic problems, social functioning, anxiety, and depression of the students with employed and non-employed mothers. In other words, the students with non-working mothers experienced greater mental disorders than those with working mothers. CONCLUSION: According to the findings of this study, it can be concluded that children with working mothers showed a better mental health than non-working mothers’ children.