Author:

Keywords:

twins, pregnancy, prenatal, attachment, parenting, counselling, maternal-fetal attachment, mothers, child, birth, Social Sciences, Psychology, Developmental, Psychology, MATERNAL-FETAL ATTACHMENT, MOTHERS, CHILD, BIRTH, 1701 Psychology, 1702 Cognitive Sciences, Developmental & Child Psychology, 5201 Applied and developmental psychology, 5202 Biological psychology, 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology

Abstract:

The present study aims at contributing to a better understanding of prenatal attachment in parents expecting twins. In particular, the relationship between prenatal attachment (measured with the Questionnaire for Antenatal Emotional Attachment) and three other psychosocial factors-the parents' psychosocial well-being and the quality of the marital relationship (respectively assessed with the General Health Questionnaire and the Relational Interactional Satisfaction Scale) and the presence of older children in the family-was investigated in both future mothers and fathers at 27 weeks of gestation. Multiple regression analysis revealed no significant relationship between the intensity of prenatal attachment and either of the three variables. For the mothers, a significant positive relationship was found between the quality of attachment on the one hand and psychosocial well-being and quality of the marital relationship on the other hand. For the fathers, the quality of attachment was only significantly predicted by the quality of the marital relationship. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.