J Korean Soc Matern Child Health.  2024 Jan;28(1):22-31. 10.21896/jksmch.2024.28.1.22.

Motherhood as Experienced by Women in a Prenatal and Early-Childhood Home Visitation Program, and Associated Factors

• Lee JY
• Khang YH
• Kim YM
• June KJ
• Cho SH
• Cho HJ

• KMID: 2551449
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.21896/jksmch.2024.28.1.22

Abstract

Purpose
This study is intended to examine the difficulties facing mothers of young children (early childhood) and to understand the associated factors. Method: We analyzed 1,003 data items of women with children under age 2 who participated in a prenatal and early-childhood home visitation program in Seoul from 2016 to 2019. For our research, we used self-administered registration and service monitoring data. The difficulties the women faced as mothers were measured using the “Being a Mother Scale” (BaM-13). This analysis considered covariates including maternal and infant ages, their number of children, economic conditions, presence of disabilities, single motherhood, multicultural migration background, employment status, unintended pregnancy, instrumental and emotional support, and depression scores.
Results
The average score for being a mother was 14.45 (standard deviation=6.61), and higher scores were recorded for women with spouses, Korean women (as opposed to multicultural immigrant women), women whose pregnancies were unplanned, women without instrumental support, and severely depressed women.
Conclusion
Motherhood poses great difficulties to women with children under age two. To help women transition from motherhood, it is important to understand their situations in relation to their social and psychological characteristics, as well as the cultural, social, and contextual perspectives they bring to motherhood.

Keyword

Mothers, Parenting, Stress, Transition, Woman

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