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Together Forever? Romantic Relationship Characteristics and Prenatal Health Behaviors
Author(s) -
Kimbro Rachel Tolbert
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of marriage and family
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.578
H-Index - 159
eISSN - 1741-3737
pISSN - 0022-2445
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2008.00518.x
Subject(s) - socioeconomic status , psychology , developmental psychology , interpersonal relationship , interpersonal communication , confounding , child health , social psychology , environmental health , medicine , population , pathology , pediatrics
Using Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Data ( N = 4,871), this paper examines why relationship status matters for prenatal health behaviors. The paper argues that a mother’s potential investments in her child’s health are conditioned by socioeconomic and interpersonal resources, including the quality of her relationship with the child’s father. Mothers in strained relationships may experience more stress, which is associated with poor prenatal health behaviors. Results show that married mothers exhibit the healthiest prenatal behaviors and that relationship characteristics and dynamics measures, including physical abuse and relationship conflict, predict poor prenatal health behaviors above and beyond confounding factors. In addition, these relationship characteristics explain some of the advantage in prenatal health behaviors married mothers have over unmarried mothers.