Journal of health research in community

Background and Aim: Children have important roles in the familyand their death disturbs the balance of the family. The unpleasant effects of death on family balance may remain for many years. The purpose of present study was to identify the damage caused by bereavement of a son on marital relations and the quality of life of parents.
Materials and Methods: the present research was carried out with a qualitative approach and a interpretative phenomenological model. Participants were parents who had lost their young son during one year of 2023-2024 in Khorram Abad city. The samples was selected by purposive sampling method (16 individuals) and the sampling continued until data saturation and no new data was obtained. The qualitative research method used was a semi-structured interview. All the interviews were recorded and implemented verbatim and analyzed using the Colizzi method.
Results: In this study, 4 main themes and 18 sub-themes were extracted. The main themes included: marital satisfaction, marital adjustment, quality of life, and marital intimacy, which were shown to decrease with the death of a child, and marital intimacy was high in some couples and low in others.
Conclusion: Considering the importance of children for parents, their death poses serious challenges to the parents' life system The results of this study showed that bereavement of a child has negative effects on couples' marital relationships. It is concluded that these couples need therapeutic with family counselors to prevent family and marital harm interventions to improve their marital relations and quality of life.