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Agency and Communion in mothers related to paranatal adaptation, fathers' personality and the marriage
Author(s) -
LIPPE ANNA LOUISE VON DER,
TORGERSEN SVENN
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1986.tb01204.x
Subject(s) - psychology , developmental psychology , personality , social psychology , agency (philosophy) , pregnancy , interpersonal relationship , philosophy , epistemology , biology , genetics
The relationship between Agency (self‐assertion and independence) and Communion (nurturance and expressivity) and paranatal adjustment was studied in 32 primi‐parious women. It was predicted that Agentic women would be ambivalent about the maternal role during pregnancy, but would adjust to the role subsequently. Communal women were anticipated to be unambivalent and adjust without problems to the role. Agency and Communion scores were constructed from the women's self‐descriptions and their mothers' descriptions of them on a 56 item adjective Q‐sort. Attitudes to the maternal role were assessed by a projective technique and paranatal adjustment by the Goldberg Health Questionnaire at 4 points: shortly before pregnancy, after the 1st trimester of pregnancy and 6 weeks and 12 months after delivery. The predictions were confirmed. Contextual relationships were sought by studying husbands and the marriage. The matching of personality characteristics in the couples were found to create interpersonal climates similar to those the wives had experienced with their mothers. The husbands emphasized satisfactions in those areas of the marital relationship where their Agentic or Communal wives had their primary social competence, factors which may also have contributed to the adaptation of the wives as mothers.