Aim: The center of family around the mother and her presence or absence can effect on the emotional intelligence and mental health of students. In other words, working mothers inside or outside home have different effects on both the boy and girl students. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and mental health of students with working and non-working mothers.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on a population consisting of all high school girls and boys in the city (total n=140). Data were gathered by a questionnaire. After verifying the validity and reliability, the data were collected, and analyzed using SPSS18 and descriptive statistics.
Findings: The findings indicate that mothers’ employment brings no negative and positive consequences for emotional intelligence and mental health, though it positively affects students’ educational performance. Results also revealed that the adolescent children of employed mothers had high emotional intelligence. The female children of employed mothers showed more emotional intelligence, while there were no gender differences in the emotional intelligence of adolescent children of homemakers.
Conclusion: The research finding revealed that boys and girls with working mothers have low mental health, this results approves that presence of mother at home is necessary.