Abstract
Does the experience of childbirth create social bonds among first-time mothers? Previous research suggests that sharing emotionally intense or painful experiences with others leads to "identity fusion," a visceral feeling of oneness with a group that predicts strong forms of prosocial action and self-sacrifice for other group members. This study compared identity fusion with other mothers during pregnancy versus after childbirth in a sample of 164 U.S. women. Eighty-nine mothers in our sample were pregnant with their firstborn, and 75 mothers had given birth to their firstborn up to 6 months prior to the time of data collection. Results demonstrated that identity fusion with other mothers was higher for postpartum mothers than for antenatal mothers. As predicted, among postpartum mothers, those who thought that their childbirth was more painful than a typical childbirth experience reported greater identity fusion with mothers who reported having had a very difficult birth. Postpartum mothers' ruminative thought about the birth mediated the association between level of dysphoria and identity fusion, and identity fusion moderated the association between postpartum mothers' ruminative and reflective thought about the birth and their posttraumatic growth in complex ways. These findings provide evidence that perceived sharedness of the childbirth experience and thoughts about the birth are important to the process of identity fusion with other mothers, and highlight the importance of post-event processing for psychological health.
Highlights
A minority of mothers experience real or threatened injury or death to themselves or their child during the labor and delivery process
In the first model predicting fusion with mothers who have had a very difficult birth, when childbirth dysphoria was operationalized as item 2 of perceived sharedness, we found that thinking that one’s childbirth was more painful than a typical childbirth experience was associated with more ruminative thought, b = 0.80, t(73) = 2.37, p = .02, and more ruminative thought was associated with greater identity fusion with mothers who have had a very difficult birth, b = 0.06, t(72) = 3.63, p
Postpartum mothers have access to a detailed autobiographical memory that consists of the exact minutes, hours, or days in which their firstborn arrived into the world; they belong to a symbolic sisterhood of women who have gone through similar childbirth experiences
Summary
A minority of mothers experience real or threatened injury or death to themselves or their child during the labor and delivery process. A meta-analysis of 28 studies found evidence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a small but significant proportion of mothers in the postpartum period. Prevalence of PTSD with respect to childbirth is 4.0% in low-risk or general community samples, but 18.5% in groups of women who are at high risk of physical or mental health complications The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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