The Association Between Parenting Stress and Personal Growth in the Transition to Motherhood - The Role of Maternal Compassion Preoccupation, Mentalization, Perfectionism and the Baby’s Age

For many women the transition to motherhood is a formative event, encompassing positive emotions alongside stress and difficulties. In recent years there is a growing understanding that this transition can lead to personal growth. The present study relied on the model of Life Crises and Personal Growth proposed by Schaefer and Moos (1992), and examined the association between parenting stress and personal growth. The study examined the role of variables representing the mother’s perception of herself, her relationship with the infant, and their interaction. Specifically, the study explored the mediating role of maternal compassion preoccupation (including: self-compassion, compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue), and the moderating roles of mentalization and perfectionism, in the association between parenting stress and personal growth. The terms self-compassion, mentalization and perfectionism represent different aspects of the mother’s perception of herself. Compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue, on the other hand, examine different aspects of the mother’s perception of her relationship with her infant. Moreover, we examined the association between the infant’s age (representing the time that elapsed since childbirth) and the mother’s personal growth.  

This is a quantitative correlational study that included 348 first-time mothers of infants aged 3-15 months (mean=9.05, SD=4.64), divided, in part of the study, into two groups for purposes of comparison (135 mothers of infants aged 3-6 months and 143 mothers of infants aged 12-15 months. The rest 70 mothers of infants aged 6-12 months didn't participate in this comparison). Data was collected via electronic self-report questionnaires that were distributed on social networks and using “snowball” sampling. Questionnaires included scales assessing personal growth, parent stress, maternal compassion preoccupation, mentalization, perfectionism and socio-demographic details.

The study findings present a general trend of a negative association between parenting stress and personal growth, as well as a curvilinear correlation between these two variables. Additionally, maternal compassion preoccupation was associated with personal growth so that higher levels of self-compassion and compassion satisfaction, and lower levels of compassion fatigue, were associated with higher personal growth.  Moreover, maternal compassion preoccupation was found to mediate the association between parenting stress and personal growth. Higher levels of parenting stress were associated with lower levels of self-compassion and compassion satisfaction, and higher levels of compassion fatigue. These, in turn, were associated with lower levels of personal growth. Personal growth was also found to be positively associated with the certainty dimension of mentalization, and negatively associated with the uncertainty dimension of mentalization. Additionally, there was a positive association between personal growth and adaptive perfectionism, but no significant association between growth and maladaptive perfectionism. Yet, after controlling for background and other study variables in the regression model, both dimensions of perfectionism were positively associated with personal growth. In the current study, mentalization and perfectionism were not found to moderate the association between parenting stress and growth. Finally, the two study groups did not differ in levels of personal growth, suggesting that growth does not differ by time since childbirth.

This is the first study to examine the association between the emotional experiences of first-time mothers adapting to their new role as infant caregivers and personal growth. The findings of the study suggest that this aspect of the transition to parenthood is related to possible personal growth among first-time mothers. These findings are innovative and open the door to further exploration of this aspect of the transition to parenthood. On a practical level, the findings of the study support the need to adjust pre- and postnatal interventions to include an aspect addressing the mother’s perception of herself and her emotional experience adapting to her role as an infant caregiver. There are many programs in place that assist women experiencing high level of stress as part of the transition to motherhood. But unlike previous studies, the findings of the current study suggest that low-moderate levels of parenting stress do not prevent the development of a change process that can eventually lead to personal growth. Thus, women who do not report high levels of parenting stress may also benefit from professional guidance tailored to the process of transition to motherhood, in either group or individual format.