Factors Related to the Childcare Stress among Primiparous Women who delivered at Women's Health Hospitals

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the related factors of the childcare stress among the primiparous women in the late postpartum period. Methods: The study subjects were 352 healthy primiparous women who have delivered at three women's health hospitals and revisited the out patient departments for the routine check-up between 4 to 6 weeks after the childbirth in 2006. Data were collected by a self-report questionnaire which consisted of demographic factors, the infant difficulty, the feeding difficulty, the social support, the perceived health condition and the childcare stress (the perceived mother's stress during mothering behaviors). Collected data were analyzed by using the SPSS Win 14.0 program with descriptive statistics, ttest, one way ANOVA, pearson correlation coefficient, and stepwise multiple regression. Results: There were significant differences in the childcare stress depending on the family type, the educational level, and the feeding type. The childcare stress was significantly correlated with difficulties of infant (p<0.001) and the feeding (p<0.001), the social support (p<0.001), and the perceived health condition of mother (p<0.001). The stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that the childcare stress were significantly associated with difficulties of feeding and infant, the social support, the educational level (undergraduate or graduate school), the mixed feeding group, the family type and the perceived health condition. These variables explained 46.4% of the variance of the childcare stress. Conclusion: It is concluded that the nursing intervention for reducing the childcare stress should be focused on the education for managing difficulties of the feeding as well as the infant. The further studies are required to verify and substantiate the effect of the developed nursing intervention programs.