Social Support and Pregnancy

Abstract

In the 1970s, following the publication of influential papers by authors such as Caplan (1974), Cassel (1976), and Cobb (1976), investigators began to study social support (Norbeck, 1988). One oft-cited early study highlighted the potential importance of social support in pregnancy by considering social support as an element of “psychosocial assets” and showing that pregnant women with a combination of high life stress and few psychosocial assets experienced more pregnancy complications than did women with low life stress and a higher level of psychosocial assets (Nuckolls, Cassel, & Kaplan, 1972). Since then, a number of studies have attempted to clarify the role of social support in pregnancy outcomes.