Method of childbirth and its relationship to marital adjustment and parental crises

Abstract

This study was concerned with differences in role adjustment to parenthood between two different types of childbirth groups. The two groups were the prepared childbirth (PPM) and the conventional childbirth (NON-PPM) groups.

Twenty-five couples in each of the two groups were studied. Age range was 20 to 40 years for the majority of subjects. Babies’ ages ranged from two to thirty-six months. The couples had been married an average of 4.1 years before the birth of their first child.

Couples were given questionnaires separately to determine the extent of crisis in adjusting to the first child and their post-birth marital adjustment level.

T-tests for two independent samples were calculated both within and between the two childbirth groups on crisis scores and marital adjustment scores. There was a significant difference in mean crisis scores between husbands and wives in both groups, wives experiencing more crisis. Crisis score comparisons between PPM and NON-PPM groups showed no statistically significant differences between the two groups of fathers or the two groups of mothers studied. When comparisons were made on marital adjustment scores, no statistically significant differences appeared either within or between groups.