Personal Competencies, Social Resources, and Psychosocial Adjustment of Primiparous Women of Advanced Maternal Age and Their Partners

Abstract

The present study aimed to (a) characterize the personal competencies, the social resources, and the psychosocial adjustment (psychological distress, quality of life, and parenting self-perceptions) during the early postpartum period of primiparous women of advanced age (≥35 years at the time of delivery) and their partners (older parents) compared with that of younger first-time mothers (20-34 years) and their partners (younger parents); and (b) explore the role of personal competencies and social resources in couples' psychosocial adjustment, depending on the age group. Older (n = 74) and younger parents (n = 71) completed self-report measures to assess personal competencies and social resources (third trimester of pregnancy), psychological distress, and quality of life (third trimester of pregnancy and 1-month' postpartum) and parenting self-perceptions (1-month' postpartum). Older parents were more similar than different from younger parents regarding personal competencies, social resources, and psychosocial adjustment during the first postnatal month. Regardless of the age group, higher personal competencies and social resources predicted lower anxiety and more positive parenting self-perceptions in women. Beyond higher personal competencies, older maternal age also predicted higher quality of life. In men, higher personal competencies were protective against anxiety, but only at older maternal age.

Can We Predict the Evolution of Depressive Symptoms, Adjustment, and Perceived Social Support of Pregnant Women from Their Personality Characteristics? a Technology-Supported Longitudinal Study

“…Similar to depression, no changes were observed in perceived social support, which was high at both assessment times. This is an important finding considering that social support seems to have a buffering effect on women's health during the perinatal stage and, as some authors affirm, social support could contribute to reducing the impact of stress and depressive symptomatology [48]. Related to this, the fact that in the present study baseline support from family and friends was prospectively associated with reduced depressive symptomatology is consistent with the idea that social support facilitates the journey to motherhood [53].…”

“…Finally, multivariate regression was carried out to explore to what extent the changes in study outcomes (i.e., depressive symptoms, adjustment, and perceived social support) at Time 2 (third trimester of pregnancy) were explained by personality factors, after controlling for important covariates (i.e., age the corresponding outcome at Time 1, that is during the second trimester of pregnancy). Age was included as a covariate because it has been related to psychosocial adjustment during the perinatal period in the literature [48]. A Holm-Bonferroni correction was used for all statistical analyses, which resulted in a p-value of 0.0125.…”

Parental Stress Scale: Validation study with a Portuguese population of parents of children from 3 to 10 years old

“…This result reflects the dichotomy of parenting that Berry and Jones (1995) expected that the PSS would capture. In spite of these data needing further research, previous studies reported that older parents may experience increased fatigue and more professional responsibilities but also more positive parenting self-perceptions and higher self-confidence, when compared to younger couples (Guedes and Canavarro, 2015). Additionally, this group of parents reported the higher number of children in the family when compared to younger couples, which increases the demands on parents' resources (Baker et al, 2001).…”

Quality of Life instruments and their psychometric properties for use in parents during pregnancy and the postpartum period: a systematic scoping review

“…The sample size in the included studies ranged from 30 to 5079 participants, with a mean of 507 participants. There were no studies conducted on only fathers, and only four studies (7%) included couples [ 25 , 37 – 39 ]. About half of the studies assessed QoL during pregnancy and half during the postpartum period.…”

“…Twenty-five (58%) of these studies reported Cronbach’s alpha for all dimensions of the instrument separately. Three (7%) studies reported Cronbach’s alpha for the total scale: QOLS [ 81 ], MAPP-QOL [ 111 ], EUROHIS-QoL-8 [ 39 ]. And three (7%) studies reported Cronbach’s alpha for the component summary scores: SF-36 [ 58 ] and SF-12 [ 71 , 72 ].…”