Women's social opportunities and attitudes before and after childbirth

Abstract

In this enquiry an attempt has been made to assess the effect on the mother's social activities outside the family of caring for a child. A review has been made of previous work on social participation and of the aspects of studies of parent-child relations bearing on the subject of the enquiry. The results are presented of the study of 186 women who were interviewed in ante-natal and infant welfare clinics; 47 were expecting their first child, and 139 were the mothers of pre-school children. The first section deals with changes in social activities. The first pregnancy rather than marriage is is increasingly becoming the occasion of retirement from work, thereby producing a change from working in a social context to greater solitude at home. Friendship, membership of organised groups and kinds of interests were found not to change after the birth of the first child, though the frequency of visits to entertainments decreased. The second section considers the influence on these social activities of the availability of a baby-sitter, attitude towards social activity, the social aspects of the husband-wife relation and willingness to spend short intervals away from the child. Thirdly the incidence of physiological and psychological disturbances during pregnancy were determined, and related to the findings on social activities and attitudes. Finally the findings are summarised and their implications for the personality development of children, family relations and sociability are discussed.