Wantedness of Pregnancy and Prenatal Health Behaviors

Abstract

This study examined the relationships between wantedness of pregnancy and the initiation of prenatal care as well as smoking and drinking alcohol during pregnancy. Three hundred and eighty post-partum women were interviewed in a randomly selected sample of Chicago area hospitals. Approximately half of the women said that they had wanted their recently completed pregnancy. Unadjusted analyses revealed that women who wanted their pregnancies were more likely to begin prenatal care in the first trimester and were less likely to smoke while there was no relationship between wantedness and alcohol use during pregnancy. After adjustment for sociodemographic variables, women who wanted their pregnancies were less likely to have smoked cigarettes or drunk alcohol during pregnancy, but were not more likely to have initiated prenatal care in the first trimester. These results suggest that positive health behaviors during pregnancy are influenced by wantedness of pregnancy as well as sociodemographic characteristics. Therefore, efforts to reduce unwanted pregnancies are an important strategy to improve the health of women and children.

Women's Knowledge, Views, and Experiences Regarding Alcohol Use and Pregnancy: Opportunities to Improve Health Messages

“…The segmentation design also separated women based on their age (ages 18-24 and 25-35), because age appears to moderate the use of alcohol at different stages of pregnancy, with younger women more likely to drink and binge drink prior to and during early pregnancy 4,20,28,29 and older women more likely to drink later in pregnancy. 6,24,[30][31][32] The design further segmented the focus groups based on race/ethnicity by having separate focus groups for White, Black/African American, and English-speaking Hispanic women (indicated by participant self-report). In general, racial/ethnic groups experience disparities in many areas related to health, including pregnancy and childbirth, 33,34 and have different cultural norms related to alcohol use.…”

Clinical, provider and sociodemographic predictors of late initiation of antenatal care in England and Wales

“…Furthermore, a number of intrinsic psychosocial or cultural barriers to early initiation of antenatal care have been reported. These include an unwanted pregnancy 23,25,33,38,39 , failure to recognise pregnancy symptoms 17 -19,24,25,35 , fear of parental response 35 and fear of drug use being detected 40 . The majority of the studies published to date have been conducted in the United States.…”

Unintended pregnancies and the use of maternal health services in southwestern Ethiopia

“…With regards to maternal health, several studies have linked unintended pregnancy with adverse maternal behavior during pregnancy including delayed and inadequate antenatal care use [24-27], maternal depression and anxiety [28-30], and smoking and drinking behaviors during pregnancy [31,32]. There is a large body of research that documents the negative consequences of unintended pregnancy on use of antenatal care services in developed countries [27,32,33]. Most of these studies showed that unintended pregnancy is associated with late initiation and inadequate use of antenatal care services.…”