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The impetus for this book originated from research on the relationship between psychosocial conflicts during pregnancy and selected complications that arise during labor. It became apparent during the interviews with expectant mothers that all the women experienced some conflict in relation to pregnancy and childbearing, and that the patterns of response to conflict could be identified as either adaptive or maladaptive. These patterns of adaptive responses were observed to be progressive in nature in that the gravid woman advanced toward an orientation to a maternal parenting role. When responses were maladaptive, the mother-to-be struggled with her ambivalence about pregnancy and motherhood, and little progress was made in role clarification in the current or in future pregnancies (based on our separate research projects with both primigravid and multigravid women).This book is an attempt to explicate the dimensions of maternal role development that are paramount during pregnancy, and to illustrate adaptive and maladaptive responses within each dimension. The prenatal dimensions, when assessed with parallel questionnaire scale items, yield statistically reliable results with numerous different populations, including multiethnic, lower socioeconomic, single and/or partnered women, employed and unemployed women, and teenage gravidas, as well as gravid women over 40 years. The questionnaire scales for the assessment of the prenatal dimensions were constructed to measure broad or universal components of each personality construct, and the consistent reliability results with diverse populations (presented in Chapters 1 and 11) and in several foreign countries provide evidence of the extent to which this goal was achieved, and of the utility of the original definition of each dimension as a personality construct. The results suggest that the framework of experience, as measured by these personality dimensions, is the same for many populations of gravid women on this continent and others. Therefore, the original work serves as a useful foundation to explicate each prenatal dimension and to relate replicated and new work.Each of the developmental dimensions may be conceived of as adaptive challenges that incur some anxiety, and which occur and can be measured on a continuum from

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