The ups and downs of early mothering

Abstract

Introduction: The maternal experience of having a young infant is often viewed through a negative lens focused on psychological distress due, in part, to a historical focus on identifying threats to prenatal, perinatal and postpartum well-being of women and infants. This report examines maternal appraisal of both positive and negative experiences during and after pregnancy and introduces a new scale that assesses both uplifts and hassles that are specific to early motherhood.

Methods: The sample included 136 women who began study participation during pregnancy and completed an existing scale designed to evaluate pregnancy-specific hassles and uplifts. When infants were 6 months old, participants completed the newly developed Maternal Experience Scale (MES) along with questionnaires related to anxiety, depression, attachment, parenting stress and infant temperament characteristics.

Results: In general, women with 6-month-old infants rated their maternal experiences far more positively than negatively. MES hassles and uplift scores reflected both convergent and discriminant validity with general measures of psychological well-being and parent-specific measures. Appraisal of the pregnancy experience significantly predicted appraisal of early motherhood for hassles, uplifts and a composite score reflecting emotional valence. Women became relatively more uplifted and less hassled from pregnancy to 6-month postpartum; this was particularly true for multiparous women.

Discussion: The maternal perception of motherhood corresponds to her perception of pregnancy. The MES provides a balanced view of motherhood by including maternal appraisal of the uplifting aspects of caring for an infant.

• Infancy
• maternal stress
• motherhood
• parenting
• postpartum distress
• pregnancy

Acknowledgements

We thank the diligent and generous participation of our study families, without which this work would not be possible.

Declaration of interest

This research was conducted with funding provided by The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2 R01 HD027592 awarded to J.A.D. The authors report no conflicts of interests

Current knowledge on the subject

• Research has generally focused on the negative and stressful features of pregnancy and early parenting.

• Measurement of both uplifts and hassles in the prenatal period reveals that women are more positive than negative about pregnancy.

• Failure to measure positive aspects of mothering contributes to its pathologization.

What this study adds

• A new instrument with good internal reliability and both convergent and discriminant validity to measure both the negative and positive appraisal of early motherhood.

• Women’s attitudes toward their pregnancy significantly predict their attitudes toward their infants.

• In low-risk women, mothering an infant is regarded as consistently more uplifting than hassling.