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Men's health status during pregnancy and early fatherhood
Author(s) -
Ferketich Sandra L.,
Mercer Ramona T.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
research in nursing and health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.836
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1098-240X
pISSN - 0160-6891
DOI - 10.1002/nur.4770120304
Subject(s) - anxiety , pregnancy , predictive power , psychology , variance (accounting) , explained variation , perception , developmental psychology , postpartum period , depression (economics) , medicine , clinical psychology , psychiatry , statistics , philosophy , genetics , mathematics , accounting , epistemology , neuroscience , business , biology , macroeconomics , economics
The findings in this study of 147 men agreed with earlier research that health status declines over the first 8 months of fatherhood. The study extends previous work in that causes of this decline were tested. Empirical respecified models predicting health perception during pregnancy, early postpartum 1, 4, and 8 months were able to predict from 20 to 60% of the variance. These models were substantively more powerful than the hypothesized theoretical model that was tested, which explained from 12 to 38% of the variance. At all time periods there was a link between negative life events and a director indirect predictor of health perception. Other variables that consistently entered the models with either direct or indirect links were self‐esteem, mastery, and either depression or anxiety. The empirical respecified models showed moderate to strong predictive power and provide a base for future model testing and subsequent intervention studies.