Mood and the transition to motherhood

Abstract

The associations between mood as assessed by the BDI and the MAACL-D and salient issues during the transition to parenthood, such as parenting attitudes, were studied during the last trimester of pregnancy and during the early postpartum period in 30 primiparous women. Two broad categories of factors were correlated with mood. These included factors such as perceptions of pain tolerance and body image. The second category could be described as attitudes towards caretaking. Women with a depressive mood tended to have more negative perceptions and attitudes. The majority of factors were not correlated significantly with both mood scales, suggesting that me two scales may be measuring different aspects of mood. In addition, there was an improvement in mood from the prenatal to the postnatal period, as measured by the BDI.