Browsing by Author "Vahtera, Laura"

Objective Pregnancy disorders are health problems that arise during the pregnancy, such as pre-eclampsia, gestational hypertension, obesity, overweight and gestational diabetes. Pregnancy disorders can effect on both mother’s and baby’s health and therefore pregnancy disorders can influence on mother-child interaction and on how mothers perceive their parenting. The parenting sense of competence assesses parental perceptions on efficacy and satisfaction in parenthood. The aim of the current study was to examine the relation between pregnancy disorders and parental competence and whether specific factors concerning parenthood have an effect on the relation. Methods The data of this thesis came from the PREDO-study. The sample consisted of 999 mothers who had pregnancy disorder (case mothers) and 1466 mothers who didn’t have any pregnancy disorder (control mothers). All mothers that were included in this study assessed their parental competence with the Parenting Sense of Competence (PSOC) scale. The relation between pregnancy disorders and the PSOC scales (parental efficacy and parental satisfaction) were analysed using regression analyses in three different models. The models were adjusted for child’s age as PSOC was assessed, child’s gender, gestational age and birth weight, mother’s education, whether the mother had also older children already or not, mother’s smoking and drinking during pregnancy and whether another parent lives at the same household. Results and conclusions It was found that only pre-eclampsia predicted lower satisfaction in parenthood, however the difference in satisfaction was small. Results remained the same when adjusted for potential confounders. This study was one of the first studies to examine connections between pregnancy disorders in disorder groups and parental competence. More research about relation between pregnancy disorders and parenthood altogether is needed.