Abstract
This study examined the effect of a brief psycho-educational program, Time Together, on maternal self-efficacy, mother-infant bonding, and mood/anxiety for community-based mothers. This program centered on maternal voice, timing of interplay, and recognition of infant cues. A convergent parallel mixed-methods design included quantitative measures: the Karitane Parenting Confidence Scale, the Mother-Infant Bonding Scale, Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and State & Trait Anxiety Inventory, and a sequential qualitative analysis to elaborate on the quantitative findings. Significant changes on the Karitane Parenting Confidence Scale were found. Qualitative analysis of the participant interviews and reflective diaries from the two weeks following the psycho-educational program confirmed that participation enhanced mothers’ ability to understand their infant, to soothe their infant when distressed, to play and to establish an effective bedtime routine. This feasibility study indicated that this is a promising approach to improve early mother-infant interaction and maternal self-efficacy.
Highlights
Building on Bandura’s personal efficacy theory [1,2], parental self-efficacy (PSE) is thought to be a key cognitive construct in parenting, reflecting the beliefs parents hold about their capabilities of successfully executing parenting tasks [3,4]
A Shapiro–Wilks test indicated a normal distribution of the data for the State & Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and KPCS, and a non-normal distribution for the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and MIBS, warranting the use of non-parametric statistics for these tests
The aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of Time Together on measures of self-efficacy (KPCS), infant bonding (MIBS), depression (EPDS), and anxiety (STAI) in new mothers in a community setting
Summary
Building on Bandura’s personal efficacy theory [1,2], parental self-efficacy (PSE) is thought to be a key cognitive construct in parenting, reflecting the beliefs parents hold about their capabilities of successfully executing parenting tasks [3,4]. Parental self-efficacy can strongly influence parenting behavior [6]. Self-efficacy has been a target for parental psycho-educational programs, which seek to modify parental behaviors at the beginning of a parent-infant relationship. Such programs may be administered individually but are more typically group-based interventions which use didactic teaching, group discussions, demonstrations, role-play, and modelling of different aspects of infant care and parenting. Meta-analyses demonstrated that PSE is significantly enhanced by universal preventive psycho-educational programs, concluding that “providing universal parent education interventions that focus on enhancing PSE may be protective against the detrimental effects of fatigue and psychological distress that parents may experience” [11]
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