Quality of life in Japanese couples during the transition to parenthood

ABSTRACT

Objective: This study aimed to examine the quality of life (QOL) in Japanese couples during the transition to parenthood with their first child.

Background: Relevant literature suggests that the health status of women drop during pregnancy and the postpartum period. However, less is known about their partner’s well-being during the transition to parenthood and little research has addressed the relationship between couples’ QOL across multiple domains.

Method: Participants included 9216 married Japanese men and women, including 3729 couples, who were expecting or raising their first child under the age of three. They independently completed questionnaires on baseline demographics and on WHOQOL-BREF.

Results: Men showed higher scores for psychological QOL, while women had higher scores for social and environment QOL. A significant interaction between gender and stage of transition to parenthood was found. The moderating effect of age between the stage and QOL was found for men on the physical and psychological domains. Couples’ QOL scores were weakly to moderately correlated.

Conclusion: Findings suggest that both men and women had lower QOL, with the exception of women’s physical QOL, after childbirth, but they showed different trends during the transition to parenthood across different domains of QOL.

KEYWORDS:

• QOL
• Japanese couples
• childbirth
• postpartum
• transition to parenthood

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Benesse Education Research and Development Institute for giving us permission to use their survey data and thanks for all participants’ cooperation.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

The authors declare no conflict of interest associated with this manuscript.

Permission to use the Japanese version of WHOQOL-BREF instrument (Tazaki and Nakane, 1997) was granted by paying a fee to the distributor. Data collection for the survey was carried out by survey companies in Tokyo that carry PrivacyMark certification for its approved personal information protection programme in compliance with Japan Industrial Standard. The participants voluntarily participated in the surveys and informed consent was obtained by filling out the questionnaire. A survey company anonymously indexed responses so that personal information was not disclosed to the researchers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.