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Relationship of importance of family relationships to family functioning and parental sense of competence during the transition to parenting a newborn infant.
- Format:
- Book
- Thesis/Dissertation
- Author/Creator:
- Knauth, Donna G.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Families--Research.
- Families.
- Sociology--Research.
- Sociology.
- Developmental psychology.
- Nursing.
- Social psychology.
- 0451.
- 0569.
- 0620.
- 0628.
- Penn dissertations--Nursing.
- Nursing--Penn dissertations.
- Local Subjects:
- Penn dissertations--Nursing.
- Nursing--Penn dissertations.
- 0451.
- 0569.
- 0620.
- 0628.
- Physical Description:
- 225 pages
- Contained In:
- Dissertation Abstracts International 57-11B.
- System Details:
- Mode of access: World Wide Web.
- text file
- Summary:
- The purpose of this longitudinal panel study was to examine the relationship of importance of family relationships to family functioning and parental sense of competence during the transition to parenting a newborn infant. A family ecosystem theoretical framework was used to guide this family-related research. Importance of family relationships, family functioning, and parental sense of competence were measured with self-report structured questionnaires. A secondary data analysis was performed on data collected from 114 consecutively recruited couples at 24 to 34 weeks prenatally and at four and eight months postpartum. Data were analyzed at both individual and relational levels. Repeated measures analyses of variance and paired t-test analyses provided evidence that a significant decline in satisfaction with family functioning occurred for mothers and fathers from the prenatal to the four month postpartum test period, with mothers reporting a greater decline than fathers. Importance of family relationships did not change across time for mothers and remained greater at each test period than for fathers. In contrast, fathers reported an increase in the importance they attributed to family relationships prenatally to four months postpartum. Multiple regression analysis showed that for fathers, both family functioning and importance of family relationships helped to predict parental sense of competence at four months postpartum. For mothers, family functioning, but not importance of family relationships, predicted parental sense of competence at four months. Importance appeared to have different meanings for mothers and fathers. Mothers appeared to attribute more importance to family relationships when expectations of family functioning were not being met. An increase in importance reported by fathers was related to greater satisfaction with family functioning and sense of parental competence, possibly suggesting greater father involvement. These findings increase our understanding of family functioning and the differences in the importance that husbands and wives/partners attribute to family relationships prenatally to eight months postpartum. This knowledge can contribute to strategies for identifying problems that can be addressed through family-based interventions.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph.D. in Nursing) -- University of Pennsylvania, 1996.
- Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-11, Section: B, page: 6851.
- Supervisor: Florence S. Downs.
- Local Notes:
- School code: 0175.
- ISBN:
- 9780591204902
- Access Restriction:
- Restricted for use by site license.
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