Maternal romantic attachment, and antenatal and postnatal mother–infant attachment in a sample of Polish women

Abstract

In this exploratory study, we evaluated the relationship between a woman's self-reported romantic attachment style (as measured with The Attachment Styles Questionnaire), her experience of pregnancy, antenatal (The Maternal–Fetal Attachment Scale) and postnatal (Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire) attachment with her baby, and depressive symptomatology (The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale). In the first stage of the study 162 pregnant females participated; of these, 64 were followed up in the second stage. The maternal romantic attachment style predicted attachment with the baby in the antenatal, but not in the postpartum period. The anxious-ambivalent romantic attachment style predicted more interaction with and attributing more characteristics to the foetus, secure attachment style was positively correlated with role taking, and avoidant—with attributing more characteristics to the foetus. In the postpartum period, the correlation between antenatal and postnatal attachment was only moderate; role taking during pregnancy correlated with anxiety about care for an infant. However, our study shows the association of the profile of anxious-ambivalent romantic attachment with postpartum depression, which heightens the risk of postnatal mother–infant bonding impairments.

Keywords::

• Attachment
• Mother/s
• Postpartum depression
• Pregnancy
• Antenatal attachment

This work was supported by the University of Gdańsk Research Grant [grant number 538-7416-0895-12].

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ We understand the postnatal mother–infant attachment as the way the new parents conceptualize their infant and their own identity as parents in the postpartum period, following Redshaw and Martin (2013, p. 219).