Parenting desires, intentions, and the underlying motivation for parenthood are well documented in the context of heterosexual couple parenthood, while among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, ...intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) people research is limited. The main goal of this study was to explore parenting desire and different reasons to become a parent or remain childfree among LGBTIQ people in Croatia. 486 childless LGBTIQ people participated in an on-line survey. In the quantitative part of the study, parenting desire and reasons for and against parenthood were measured, while the qualitative part analysed the answers to open-ended questions about additional reasons that influence the desire to want or not to want children. The results showed that 46% of the participants want to become parents, 35% did not know, and 19% reported they do not want to have children. The main reasons for parenthood among the participants who want children were internal – the desire to give love, share knowledge, and develop a special bond with a child. The participants who do not want to have children also stressed internal reasons against parenthood, such as restricted personal freedom, high responsibility, and the amount of workload they perceive as a part of parenthood. Several additional reasons for and against parenthood emerged from the qualitative data. Some reasons reflected universal issues unrelated to sexual orientation or gender identity, while others conveyed concerns related to social and legal barriers that LGBTIQ people face when it comes to parenthood.
Constant availability, overtime and feeling overwhelmed by work can impact employees' wellbeing and their biological stress responses. Especially working parents often struggle to balance the demands ...of their work and family life and were found to be distracted from their work due to family responsibilities. The Family-to-Work Conflict (FWC) indicates the extent to which participating in work is made difficult by family demands. Recent studies have found associations between FWC and biological outcomes such as the Cortisol Awakening Response (CAR), a measure of an individual's Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA)-axis activity. This diary study investigates the effect of parental work demands on next day's cortisol response as well as the moderating role of FWC and the mediating role of fatigue.
Over the course of five consecutive days (from Monday to Friday), 168 observations were made on a total of 42 parents. Participants had at least one child and worked a minimum of 20 hours per week. Salivary cortisol samples were obtained immediately, 15 and 30 minutes after awakening each day. Work demands, FWC and fatigue were assessed using standardized questionnaires. Within-person effects were examined using multilevel modeling and mediation analyses.
Our results indicate that there are no main effects of work demands on next day's cortisol response. The multilevel analysis revealed that FWC predicts lower wakening cortisol levels and confirmed FWC as an increasing moderator between work demands and next day's HPA-axis activity. Further, work overload was found to increase fatigue, which in turn leads to higher CAR on the following day. This indicates that fatigue mediates the relationship between work demands and CAR. Our findings add to a growing body of research demonstrating further predictors for HPA-axis activity and emphasise the importance of considering family related demands when investigating biological outcomes for working parents.
•Parental work demands had no main effect on next day's cortisol levels.•Parental family-to-work conflict moderates the effects between work demands and next day's wakening cortisol.•Fatigue was identified as a mediator, as work overload increases fatigue, which in turn increased next day's CAR.
Stigma is among the most prevalent and disturbing consequences of being infertile among women, yet it remains unknown whether fertility stigma is affected by irrational parenthood cognitions (IPC). ...The current study aimed to assess IPC, infertility stigma, and their interrelationship among a group of Chinese women referred to an infertility center in Changsha, Hunan, China.
A cross-sectional study was conducted among 376 women seeking treatment for infertility in Changsha City, China. Pearson correlation test was used to explore the association between IPC and infertility stigma, while multivariate linear regression was used to explore the independent influencing factors of infertility stigma.
Participants had a mean score of 42.41±13.03 for IPC and 62.89±24.50 for ISS. IPC was highly correlated with infertility stigma with a large effect size (r=0.55, p<0.001). Multivariate linear regression showed that patients' infertility stigma was positively associated with IPC (β=1.06, p<0.001) while negatively associated with education (β=-5.4, p=0.036) and disclosure of infertility (β= -8.39, p=0.001) (R2=36%). In addition, various influencing factors were identified for the four dimensions of infertility stigma.
This study is the first to identify a positive association between irrational parenthood cognitions and infertility stigma among infertile women in China. Our findings provide useful guidance for the future development of effective anti-stigma intervention programs among infertile women.
By integrating insights from economic and sociological theories, this article investigates whether and through which mechanisms friends' fertility behavior affects an individual's transition to ...parenthood. By exploiting the survey design of the Add Health data, our strategy allows us to properly identify interaction effects and distinguish them from selection and contextual effects. We use a series of discrete-time event history models with random effects at the dyadic level. Results show that, net of confounding effects, a friend's childbearing increases an individual's risk of becoming a parent. We find a short-term, curvilinear effect: an individual's risk of childbearing starts increasing after a friend's childbearing, reaches its peak approximately two years later, and then decreases.
This research examined the impact of sexual orientation on heterosexuals' judgment of parental competence. Using a vignette approach, Study 1 presented participants with a lesbian, gay, or ...heterosexual couple who desired to have a child, either as adoptive parents or, in an additional heterosexual target condition, as biological parents. Study 2 presented a lesbian, gay, or heterosexual parent couple; heterosexual targets were either adoptive parents, reflecting the LG target conditions, or biological parents. Contradicting Hypothesis 1, neither target sexual orientation nor way to parenthood (with the latter varied in the heterosexual target condition only) had an impact on parental competence attributions. Confirming Hypothesis 2, participants with personal contact with lesbian and gay (LG) people provided higher ratings of LG target parental competence, mediated by positive attitudes toward homosexuality. Importantly, this mediation did not occur in the heterosexual target condition, corroborating the specificity of the intergroup contact effect.
Although there is an established link between parenting stress, postnatal depression, and anxiety, no study has yet investigated this link in first-time parental couples. The specific aims of this ...study were 1) to investigate whether there were any differences between first-time fathers' and mothers' postnatal parenting stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms and to see their evolution between three and 6 months after their child's birth; and 2) to explore how each parent's parenting stress and anxiety levels and the anxiety levels and depressive symptoms of their partners contributed to parental postnatal depression.
The sample included 362 parents (181 couples; mothers' M Age = 35.03, SD = 4.7; fathers' M Age = 37.9, SD = 5.6) of healthy babies. At three (T1) and 6 months (T2) postpartum, both parents filled out, in a counterbalanced order, the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form, the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.
The analyses showed that compared to fathers, mothers reported higher scores on postpartum anxiety, depression, and parenting stress. The scores for all measures for both mothers and fathers decreased from T1 to T2. However, a path analysis suggested that the persistence of both maternal and paternal postnatal depression was directly influenced by the parent's own levels of anxiety and parenting stress and by the presence of depression in his/her partner.
This study highlights the relevant impact and effects of both maternal and paternal stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms during the transition to parenthood. Therefore, to provide efficacious, targeted, early interventions, perinatal screening should be directed at both parents.
•Examined the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of Bangladeshi children.•Children were suffering from depression, anxiety, and sleeping disorder.•Estimates of moderate and severe mental ...disturbance were 19.3% and 7.2% respectively.•Children’s mental disturbance linked to parent’s stress, and abnormal behavior.•Psychological intervention and supportive care for children is urgently needed.
COVID-19 pandemic poses a significant mental health threat among children in Bangladesh. This study aims to explore the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of children during the lockdown in Bangladesh. An online cross-sectional study was conducted from 25th April to 9th May 2020 among 384 parents having at least one child aged between 5–15 years using non-probability sampling. K-means clustering used to group children according to mental health score and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) performed to identify the relationship among the parental behavior and child mental health, and also these associations were assessed through chi-square test. Children were classified into four groups where 43% of child had subthreshold mental disturbances (mean Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)-10; 2.8), 30.5% had mild (mean MDD-10; 8.9), 19.3% suffered moderately (mean MDD-10; 15.9), and 7.2% of child suffered from severe disturbances (mean MDD-10; 25.2). The higher percentage of mental health disturbances of children with the higher education level of parents, relative infected by COVID-19 (yes), parents still need to go the workplace (yes), and parent’s abnormal behavior but lower to their counterparts. This paper demonstrates large proportions of children are suffering from mental health disturbances in Bangladesh during the period of lockdown. Implementation of psychological intervention strategies and improvement in house-hold financial conditions, literacy of parents, taking care of children, and job security may help in improving the psychological/mental status of children and the authors believe that the findings will be beneficial to accelerate the rate of achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) linked to health status in Bangladesh.
The transition to parenthood can evoke a range of concerns in parents, profoundly impacting their psychological well-being. The literature regarding the transition to parenthood focuses primarily on ...functional aspects of parenthood, generally overlooking the psychological well-being of parents.
This comprehensive review synthesized studies describing emotional and psychological interventions during the transition to parenthood among participants between 2013 and 2022. A rigorous screening process, conducted by three of the authors, resulted in 18 studies that met the inclusion criteria.
This report provides detailed descriptions of these studies, including their characteristics, demographics, types of interventions, and main outcomes. The majority of interventions focused on mothers and mother-infant dyads, with fewer interventions targeting couples, and none addressing fathers or father-infant dyads.
The interventions examined were found to be effective in reducing symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and stress among mothers and had positive effects on infants' behaviors, mother-infant synchrony, and co-parenting.
This review stresses the necessity of interventions targeting the transition to parenthood, especially among fathers and marginalized populations, as well as serves to identify barriers faced by vulnerable and minority populations.
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