The Postpartum Psychological Experience Of First-Time Mothers In The First Year

Childbearing of the first child has been identified as a major life event for most women and their families.The transition to new motherhood embraces significant and uneasy psychological changes.The relevant academic research from the perspective of psychology in China is still in a start-up status.Though lots of results of the theory and practice have already achieved by the domestic and foreign scholars form other academic fields,due to the differences in research perspectives,social and cultural backgrounds,there is still plenty of room left for this exploration.Objective:This study attempts to gain a description and explanation of new mothers from the psychological perspective and construct a dynamic developing model of the new mothers’ general psychological changes and the influencing factors.Participants:8 women,with an average age of 27,all from the city of M in Guangdong Province were interviewed at the time of 6 to 12 months after they had given birth to their first child.Design:Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from the participants,and the interview transcripts were analyzed using the Grounded Theory,which was thought to be most appropriate method and specifically includes opening coding,axial coding and selective coding.Also a habit of recording the self-reflection and memo was kept during the whole process to maintain the validity of this research.Findings:Five categories ’changes and the awareness of changes’,’complicated feeling’,’learning and coping’,’regain confidence’,’the self as a mother develops’revealed a general dynamic process new mothers undergo in parenting.’The self as a mother develops’ emerged as the core category,which integrates all other subsidiary categories.Also explained are four factors influencing the general process and they are’baby factors’,’personal factors’,’social support’ and ’socialcultural environment’.Based on the results above,this study attempts to construct a dynamic developing model to demonstrate women’s psychological experience in the first motherhood.Conclusion:First-time mothers undergone a general psychological process with the starting point when they began realizing the impact the birth of their baby has on their life and the ending point indentified by women as "regain confidence".And this process of change was characterized by three themes:complicated feeling,learning and coping and the self as a mother develops.Also it was shown that four factors influenced first-time mothers’ experience of new motherhood:baby factors,personal factors,social support and socialcultural environmnent.