The purpose of this study was to look at the factors related to the first-time mother's coping with child care when her child is 3 months old. This study is part of an extensive longitudinal project in which the development of mothering skills of first-time mothers was followed up for 8 months postpartum. The data were collected with a questionnaire between March and September 1995, in a sample of 271 first-time mothers. The mothers filled in the questionnaire when their babies were 3 months old. Coping with child care was assessed using Spearman correlation coefficient and stepwise regression analysis. Positive correlation was found between the mother's competence, attachment to the child, health, depression, relationship with the spouse, sense of isolation and role restriction, and the mother's coping with child care. The strongest correlation existed between the mother's competence and her coping. Positive correlation was also found between the child's mood, demandingness and acceptability, and the mother's coping with child care, with the child's demandingness having the strongest correlation. Positive correlation was again found between social support--the average functional support the mother received from her own social network, plus affect, affirmation, and aid from the public health nurses--and the mother's coping with child care. The predictors included in the multivariate method were the mother's competence, health, depression, and attachment to her child; the child's mood and ease or difficulty of care; and the affect and affirmation from the public health nurse. The results show that the first-time mother's coping with child care, when the child is 3 months old, is affected by the characteristics of both mother and child, as well as by the social support received from their social network and from the public health nurses at the child welfare clinic.

The purpose of the study is to explore the experiences of family members in their role of relative in a situation where a next of kin has been admitted to hospital. The questionnaire was used in data collection. The data reported here are from a pilot study. The sample consisted of 70 family members of patients receiving treatment on the neurological wards. It was found that family members spent a lot of time at their relative's bedside, most of them up to several hours a day. The daily routines of families and way of life were also very much affected. The most important way in which the hospital supported families was to keep them informed about the patient's care and treatment. However, this was not possible without an active interest and involvement on the part of family members themselves. There were obvious problems and shortcomings in terms of family orientation: only one third of the family members felt that the nursing staff were seriously interested in the family's well-being, and only one quarter had been told what they could do in hospital. About half of the family members needed to meet nurses to get support from nurses and over one third from doctors. The oldest respondents and women needed more help than did others. Men preferred to turn to doctors rather than nurses for help. In general family members had good experiences of visiting their relative in hospital. They believed that they were expected and that they were of help to their relative. Over half of the family members said they were actively involved in caring for their relative. Only four per cent of the family members reported bad experiences of their visits to hospital, in spite of the obvious shortcomings in family nursing. For this reason it is important that nurses facilitate the involvement and integration of relatives in the process of nursing.

The purpose of this study was to look at the networks of social support available for mothers during pregnancy and childbirth. Another concern was to describe mothers' experiences of labour and the connections of social support with those experiences. The data were collected through the use of two questionnaires submitted to 200 mothers recruited from Tampere University Hospital. Both instruments--Norbeck's Social Support Questionnaire and a scale designed by the author--were based on Kahn's (1979) theory of social support. The mothers reported an average of seven support persons each. Most typically, these were the mother's spouse or partner and close friends and relatives. The network of social support is a major source of emotional support, aid and affirmation for the mothers. During labour the main source of emotional support for mothers was the midwife. For the vast majority (85%) of the mothers, childbirth was a positive experience. A significant association was found between the emotional support provided by midwives and mothers' positive experiences of childbirth.

The death of a spouse is one of the most stressful events in a person's life. Social support has been shown to be widely beneficial in moderating the effects of both chronic and acute stress. The answers of Finnish widows and widowers (n=318) were analysed in order to investigate the sources of social support, what is the nature of support received, and whether social support is connected with coping with grief. The Hogan Grief Reactions Checklist was used to describe the grief as well as answers to open-ended questions about what helped the widowed persons cope with their grief. Kahn's theory of social support was used as a framework in the content analysis of the open-ended answers. The results showed that Finnish widows and widowers receive social support most often from their own family and friends. They perceived the received support most helpful, but also the support that the grieving person can give to other family members is seen as important. Results suggest that those who had had social support were able to grieve by allowing themselves to disorganize and experience panic behaviour.

The purpose of this study was to look at the social support provided by nurses on a maternity ward to recent mothers and to describe the mothers' experiences of their stay on the ward after childbirth. The data were collected with a questionnaire in a sample of 200 mothers giving birth at Tampere University Hospital. The questionnaire was specially designed for this study by the researcher on the basis of Kahn's (1979) theory of social support. Of the three categories of support identified in that theory, the one that mothers reported receiving most of during their stay on the maternity ward was concrete aid; and the type of support they received least was affect or emotional support. The vast majority or 95% of the mothers described their stay on the ward as a positive experience. Both first-time and other mothers had hoped to receive more guidance in child care and breastfeeding.