Leisure reading experience promoting prenatal attachment among pregnant women: A moderated mediation model

Abstract

While leisure activities have been illustrated to enhance women’s psychological health, the study of leisure reading experiences and their impact on prenatal attachment has not been investigated to date. Addressing this research gap, a moderated mediation model is built to explain the indirect effects of leisure reading experiences on prenatal attachment through subjective vitality conditioned by the moderating role of optimism. 494 valid responses from pregnant women were obtained from obstetrical centers for testing the hypothesized model. The results indicated that subjective vitality fully mediates the relationship between hedonic experience and prenatal attachment, and also partially mediates the relationship between other leisure reading experiences (flow and transcendent) and prenatal attachment. In addition, the mediating effect was observed to be significant at higher levels of optimism. The proposed framework signifies novel contributions to the understanding of pregnant women’s mental health and their bond with the baby through leisure reading experiences.