PREGNANT WOMEN'S RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY MATERNAL BONDING: ASSOCIATIONS WITH MATERNAL–FETAL ATTACHMENT AND BIRTH CHOICES

Recollections of own maternal care measured by parental bonding were found to be important in the pregnant woman's construction of herself as a mother. Although these recollections were studied with regard to various variables, there is a dearth of studies associated with pregnancy and childbirth. In this cross‐sectional study, 341 pregnant women were recruited. Measures included a Sociodemographics–Obstetric History Questionnaire; the Childbirth Choices Questionnaire (H. Preis, M. Gozlan, U. Dan, & Y. Benyamini, 2018); the Parental Bonding Instrument (G. Parker, H. Tupling, & L.B. Brown, 1979); a question regarding the planned presence of the woman's mother at delivery; and the Maternal‐Fetal Attachment Scale (M.S. Cranley, 1981). Parental recollections of Care were associated with fewer natural birth choices (hence, a more “medicalized” delivery), lower maternal–fetal attachment, and a wish for the mother's mother to be present at the birth. Parental recollections of Encouragement of Behavioral Freedom in childhood were associated with more natural choices regarding childbirth. In addition, women with higher scores on the parental bonding Denial of Autonomy factor reported stronger maternal–fetal attachment. Thus, early recollections of experiences with caregivers as manifested in parental bonding may be a possible influence on the transition to motherhood, and working through possible difficulties associated with these recollections may improve adjustment to motherhood.     

Is Mother Other?

Abstract

The discourse of maternality figures a contentious site for feminist theology. If figured in terms of a fecund womb, maternality risks reinscribing women in a masculine symbolic order of world-making that has long conflated women’s differences with motherhood, narrowly defined in terms of fecundity. After considering the ways identifying female sexual difference with motherhood reifies a masculine model of subjectivity, this paper turns to Lynne Huffer’s reading of feminist psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray to suggest that maternality has the potential to interrupt the self-same movement of masculine discourse and engender an ethical space of difference of and for the other. Examining Irigaray’s interweaving of maternality with pleasure to create space for women’s desires, this paper concludes that the ambiguity of desires through which maternality is constituted challenges the care-driven, natality-centered discourse of maternality itself. As a scene of unresolved desire between flesh and discourse, immanence and transcendence, self and other, maternality can be narrated to disrupt views of mother as origin that would otherwise return motherhood to a figure of sameness and to construct a possibility of desire for intersubjective becoming that is at once beyond narration and entirely concrete. Maternality thus presents desires unrecognizable within a prevailing symbolic framework in a way that bears witness to the disruptiveness of those desires and engenders radical alterity.     

Exploring the cognitive development of children born to adolescent mothers in South Africa

This study explores the cognitive development of children born to adolescent mothers within South Africa compared to existing reference data, and explores development by child age bands to examine relative levels of development. Cross-sectional analyses present data from 954 adolescents (10–19 years) and their first-born children (0–68 months). All adolescents completed questionnaires relating to themselves and their children, and standardized child cognitive assessments (Mullen Scales of Early Learning) were undertaken. Cognitive development scores of the sample were lower than USA reference population scores and relative performance compared to the reference population was found to decline with increasing child age. When compared to children born to adult mothers in the sub-Saharan African region, children born to adolescent mothers (human immunodeficiency virus [HIV] unexposed; n = 724) were found to have lower cognitive development scores. Findings identify critical periods of development where intervention may be required to bolster outcomes for children born to adolescent mothers.

Highlights

• An exploration of the cognitive development of children born to adolescent mothers within South Africa utilizing the Mullen Scales of Early Learning.
• Cognitive development scores of children born to adolescent mothers within South Africa were lower compared to USA norm reference data and declined with child age.
• Previous studies utilizing the Mullen Scales of Early Learning within sub-Saharan Africa were summarized, and comparisons were made with the current sample.
• Findings highlight a potential risk of developmental delay among children born to adolescent mothers compared to children of adult mothers in the sub-Saharan African region.