The transition to motherhood Peter Hoffenaar Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences University of Amsterdam Assessing women’s subjective well-being

Transition to motherhood Major life transition  Generally associated with increased levels of personal distress Period of reorganization and transformation  Le Masters (1957): ‘‘the first child destroys the two-person or pair pattern of group interaction and forces a rapid reorganization of their life into a three-person or triangle group system’’ (p. 354)  Qualitative shifts and structural changes in women’s experiences and women’s outlook on life

Research aims Compare women’s postpartum well-being to prenatal well-being A multi-method approach to the assessment of well-being Examine changes in both the level and the content of well-being

Changes in the level of well-being Level: How happy are you?  General satisfaction with one’ life  Positive feelings  Absence of negative feelings (Diener, Oishi, and Lucas, 2003)

Changes in the content of well-being Content: How happy does x make you?  Changes in how women experience their daily activities  Compulsory activities (shopping, housework, preparing food)  Active leisure (exercise, socializing, talking on the phone)  Passive leisure (watching TV, non-work computer use, relaxing, and napping)  Eating  For example, women may come to enjoy eating less after birth if they feel the need to diet in order to prevent postpartum weight retention

Method (1) Longitudinal study  T1: 4 weeks before estimated delivery date  T2: 4 weeks after birth Recruited through yoga classes 19 first-time expectant mothers; age range 24-39; majority college (36.8%) or post- graduate degrees (47.4%) Working full time or 4 days a week in the period before their maternity leave (84.2%)

Method (2) General life satisfaction  “How satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?” not satisfied at all (1) - very satisfied (4) Depression  The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) Experienced affect  Day Reconstruction Method (DRM; Kahneman et al., 2004)  A More Efficient Alternative to Experience Sampling (ESM)  Combination of time use assessment and feeling state assessment

Procedure DRM protocol described in Kahneman et al. (2004)  Packet 1: General life satisfaction and demographic questions  Packet 2: Diary of the previous day built up of a series of episodes  Packet 3: Key features of the episodes, including:  1) the beginning and ending  2) the focal activity  3) whom they were interacting with  4) how they felt at the time (ratings of multiple affective adjectives).  Packet 4: Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS)

DRM: Diary pages Think of your day as a continuous series of scenes or episodes in a film Try to remember each episode in detail, and write a few words that will remind you of exactly what was going on

DRM: Episode questions Please look in your diary and select episode x in the morning/afternoon/evening What were you doing?  Respondents marked activities from a list of 22 How did you feel during this episode  Ratings of affect adjectives on a scale from 0 (not at all) to 6 (very strongly)  Positive affect (PA): happy, self-confident, satisfied  Negative affect (NA): stressed, sad, angry

DRM affect measures At the level of the episode: Net_affect (episode) = average of positive affect (PA) – average of negative affect (NA) At the level of the individual: Net_affect = duration-weighted average of the values of Net Affect (episode) At the level of activity/interaction partner: Average Net Affect experienced during a particular situation

Results: EPDS

Results: EPDS; reliable change Matthey, S. (2004). Calculating clinically significant change in postnatal depression studies using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. Journal of Affective Disorders, 78(3),

Results Net Affect (PA-NA)

Mean level of well-being

Changes in the level of well-being Strong convergence on change  Spearman rank correlations ranged from.53 to.61 Differences between prenatal and postnatal levels of well-being were not significant ( Wilcoxon’s signed rank test ), irrespective of which measure was used

Mean Net Affect by activity category

Change in the content of well-being Upward shift in well-being during active leisure from T1 to T2 Episodes involving eating occur more frequently at T2; not less or more enjoyable In the postpartum period:  Emotional experiences during time spent playing and walking with the baby were very positive  Child care activities ranked slightly above compulsory activities (e.g., housework)

Conclusions The women in this study generally seemed to cope well with the transition to motherhood Prenatal and postnatal well-being scores generally indicated positive mood states or mild mood disturbances Women may enjoy active leisure activities, such as exercise and reading, less during pregnancy as a result of their physical condition

Discussion Large scale study needed to examine the particular form of change ( linear, curvilinear ) and to explain individual differences in change patterns  E.g., effect of perceived antenatal support Day-to-day variability in women’s level of well- being  e.g., as a result of highly variable infant sleep patterns Possible advantages of the DRM  lower susceptibility to the influences of general beliefs and social desirability

Thank you for your attention! Questions?