The authors prospectively investigated stress in 71, mostly European American, pregnant women. Conservation of Resources (COR) theory was applied to assess the impact of resource losses and gains that occur in women's lives. Resources were defined as those things that people value or that act as a means to obtaining that which they value and include social, personal, object, and condition resources. The authors hypothesized that women's resource losses would better predict postpartum anger and depression than their resource gains (in the opposite direction). They also predicted that earlier resource loss would accelerate the negative impact of later resource loss on postpartum distress. Resource gain was expected to be most salient when resource losses co-occurred, such that resource gains buffered the negative impact of resource loss. The hypotheses were generally supported and argue for the primacy of resource loss in the stress process.
We investigated stress, coping, and employment status in 92, mostly European American pregnant women. Conservation of Resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1988, 1989) was applied as a specification of role‐quality theory to examine the stressful influences of women's multiple roles. Women's resource loss predicted psychological distress better than either their resource gains or their employment status (i.e., multiple versus single roles). Full‐time employed women were significantly more distressed under high loss conditions than were part‐time or nonemployed women. Examining women's coping strategies based on a communal model of coping, we found that active, prosocial coping was associated with better emotional outcomes. A significant interaction was found for the effects of loss × cautious action such that loss was related to greater depression, but only among women who did not employ cautious action.
The social support literature, despite its focus on women's strengths in relationships, has not fully addressed the social realities of women of diverse ethnic backgrounds and socio economic conditions. Specifically, the emphasis on marital relationships as primary sources of support during pregnancy marginalizes those women for whom these partnerships are unhelpful or unavailable. In addition, women's greater use of social support as a coping strategy is often portrayed in the coping literature as an ineffective approach to stress. Data from two studies of pregnant women are presented to illustrate these points and to present a new model of coping that reframes women's coping as prosocial, active and effective. Our article is designed to challenge researchers to examine the relevance of work on social support and coping to women of varying ethnicities and economic circumstances.
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