Partner relationships during the transition to parenthood

Abstract

Partner relationships are relevant in the psychological adjustment during the transition to parenthood, but mothers have been studied more often than fathers in this respect. The Relationship Questionnaire (RQ) to assess positive and negative dimensions of the partner relationship, the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES‐D) to assess depression and the State Anxiety Inventory (STAI) to assess anxiety were administered to forty‐three women and their partners recruited during the second trimester of pregnancy and seen again until after delivery in order to assess differences in women's/men's anxiety and depression according to partner relationships. Results indicate that women/men with a less positive relationship with the partner show higher anxiety than women/men with a more positive partner relationship, and those women/men with a more negative relationship with the partner show both higher depression and higher anxiety than women/men with a less negative relationship with the partner. Also partners of women/men with a more negative partner relationship show higher depression than partners of women/men with a less negative partner relationship. Psychological adjustment during the transition to parenthood of both the women/men and the partner is impacted by the partner relationship.

Keywords:

• partner relationship
• pregnancy
• depression
• anxiety

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the couples that participated in this study and the researchers (Yanexy Vera and Karla Gil) who assisted with the study. This research was supported by grants from the March of Dimes (12FY03‐48) and NIMH (MH# 46586) and NIMH Research Scientist Awards (MH# 00331 and AT# 001585) to Tiffany Field, funding from Johnson & Johnson to the Touch Research Institutes, and a grant from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (POCI/SAU‐ESP/56397/2004) to Barbara Figueiredo.

Notes

1. The 12 items of the Relationship Questionnaire were subjected to a principal components analysis (PCA) using SPSS 11.5. The Kaiser–Meyer–Oklin value was 0.67, exceeding the recommended value of 0.6, and the Bartlett's test of sphericity (Chi‐Square (66) = 218,876, p<0.001) reached statistical significance, supporting the factorability of the correlation matrix. The PCA revealed the presence of three components with eighteen values exceeding 1, explaining 64.7% of the variance (component 1 = 39.2%, component 2 = 16.6% and component 3 = 8.9%). An inspection of the screen plot revealed a clear break after the second component, so we decided to retain these two components for further investigation. To aid in the interpretation of these two components a varimax rotation was applied. The rotated solution presented a single structure with both components showing a number of strong loadings and high communalities values. The two‐factor solution explained 55.9% of the variance, with component 1 (positive sub‐scale: items 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) contributing to 38.7% of the variance and component 2 (negative sub‐scale: items 5, 10, 11, 12) contributing to 17.2% of the variance.