Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Purpose: Unintended pregnancy accounts for a substantial proportion of pregnancies and births in the United States, exacting heavy health, social, and economic costs. (1,2) Pregnancy wantedness is a complex issue and has frequently been measured by the intention, or the timing, of a pregnancy. Few studies, however, have examined the attitudes and feelings about a pregnancy, or the positive and negative motivating factors for pregnancy and childbearing. Furthermore, most research on the consequences of unintended pregnancy focuses on maternal risk behaviors related to perinatal outcomes such as adequacy of prenatal care, smoking, and other substance use during pregnancy. Less attention has been paid to the consequences of unintended pregnancy for children such as early child development, and relatively few studies have examined the association of these consequences with antecedent pregnancy attitudes and feelings. We examine these associations. Methods: This study was part of a larger longitudinal study among women who applied for Early Head Start. Our sample consisted of 173 primiparous low-income, urban, African-American women who applied for Early Head Start in one Midwestern urban city. Pregnancy attitude, the predictor variable, was assessed at the first interview (at the end of pregnancy or during infancy) and was categorized by four components: 1) pregnancy wantedness (this consisted of two items: happy to be pregnant and glad to be having a baby), 2) positive childbearing motivation (PCM), 3) negative childbearing motivation (NCM), and 4) social reinforcement of pregnancy. The outcome variable, child attachment security, was assessed at approximately 12 months of age and measured by use of the Attachment Q-sort.(3) Stepwise linear regression analyses were conducted to assess the interrelationship among the components of pregnancy attitude and to assess the relationship between the components of pregnancy attitude and child attachment security. Negative infant temperament was used as both a control variable because of its association with lower levels of attachment.(4) Results: The four components of pregnancy attitude were correlated: social reinforcement was positively associated with pregnancy wantedness and NCM was negatively associated with pregnancy wantedness. PCM was positively associated with child attachment security and NCM was negatively associated with it. Social reinforcement of pregnancy was associated with wantedness, but not with child attachment security. Implications: This pilot study has implications for measuring pregnancy attitude; specifically that multiple measures are inconsistently correlated with one another and may provide different information about this complex attitude. Further, both PCM and NCM were associated with child attachment security, suggesting that parenting interventions with pregnant women may contribute to healthier outcomes for children's social-emotional development.

1.U.S, DHHS. Healthy People 2010. (2000). McLean VA: International Medical Publishing Inc. 2.Brown SS, Eisenberg L. (1995). The best intentions. Institute of Medicine, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. 3.Van Ijzendoorn, M. H., et al. (2004). Assessing attachment security with the Attachment Q Sort: Meta-Analytic Evidence for the validity of the Observer AQS. Child Development, 75,1188-1213. 4.Mangelsdorf, S., et al. (1990). Infant proneness-to-distress temperament, maternal personality, and mother-infant attachment: Associations and goodness of fit. Child Development, 61, 820-831.