Background and Goal: early mother-child bonding plays an important role in the child's psychological development and various factors affect the promotion of this relationship. The present study aimed at investigating the effect of attachment behaviors ‘on perceived stress, parental expectations in primiparous women.
Material and Methods:
In this randomized clinical trial study, 90 primiparous pregnant women referring to health centers of Zahedan city in 2015 to receive prenatal care, who had the inclusion criteria, were selected by convenience sampling and randomly assigned to two experimental (n = 45) and control (n = 45) groups. Data collection tools included a questionnaire on demographic information and the perceived stress scale(PSS) questionnaire, parental expectations questionnaire. The experimental group members individually underwent attachment behaviors’ training in four sessions, two sessions per week, for 90 minutes and the control group only received prenatal care. All statistical analyses were performed using the using SPSS version 20 and Chi-square and independent t-test at the significant level of p < .05.
Findings: The results of the present study regarding attachment behaviors’ training effect on perceived stress indicated that the intervention group perceived stress score mean has decreased and also, the results of the present study regarding the attachment behaviors training effect on parental expectations indicated that the intervention group parental expectation score mean has increased (p < .05).
Conclusion:
According to the results, it seems that training attachment behaviors during pregnancy can reduce of perceived stress and increase parental expectations primiparous mothers’ care as an easy, low-cost and effective way. It is recommended to teach these behaviors to health workers, especially nurses and midwives so as to take a major step toward improving parents- child relations in order to reduce mothers’ perceived stress and thus, ensure their children's mental health.
