It would be simplistic to offer an overall prescriptive list of the risk factors associated with pregnancy distress.
The experiences of pregnancy distress are highly individual while embedded in a social network of influences both explicit and invisible. Additionally, personal past history, which has influenced each woman’s maternal subjectivity towards what it means to be a mother exerts an added nuance to a woman’s current experience; other material, medical, environmental, relational and embodied factors, along with race, class and cultural messages of motherhood all work to affect maternal perceptions of self, the baby, pregnancy and future parenting.
Keeping in mind this both fixed but also dynamic and temporal depiction of the phenomenon, I have developed a list with recommendations about the factors that may need to be explored to better understand maternal distress during pregnancy, both based on the findings from my work and also identified as factors which welcome future exploration.
| Factors influencing pregnancy distress | |
| Social Context | Historical |
| Political | |
| Economic | |
| Cultural discourses on sexuality, birth control and reproduction | |
| Social norms | Pro-natalism and beliefs about femininity and motherhood |
| Good woman ideology | |
| Good mother and Intensive motherhood ideologies | |
| Pregnancy shoulds and shouldn’ts | |
| Background | Ethnicity |
| Race | |
| Class | |
| Financial status | |
| Gender identity | |
| Sexual Orientation | |
| Family structure | |
| Relationships | Everyday context |
| Other women | |
| Woman’s own mother | |
| Partner’s mother | |
| Other family members | |
| Partner | |
| Other children | |
| Baby in-utero | |
| Past experiences | Childhood trauma |
| Experiences of sexual violence, abuse | |
| Past miscarriage, baby loss | |
| Past pregnancy and/or postnatal distress | |
| Mental health | Stressors (current and chronic) |
| Past diagnosis and experiences of treatment | |
| Experiences of stigma | |
| Current mental health experiences and management | |
| Pregnancy | Mode of conception |
| Planned (unplanned) pregnancy | |
| Wanted (unwanted) pregnancy | |
| Birth culture | Politics of birth |
| Medicalization | |
| Relationships with doctors, midwives, etc. | |
| Access to antenatal care | |
| Ideas about birth (fears, empowerment) | |
| Social norms about birth (good vs bad birth stories) | |
| Previous trauma birth experiences | |
| Body | Medical conditions |
| Pain and nausea | |
| Body image and Weight gain perceptions | |
| Sexuality | |
| Maternal subjectivity | Individual experiences and perceptions of pregnancy |
| Perceptions of time(-liness; -lessness) | |
| Self-care | |
| Motherself beliefs and expectations | |
| Maternal ambivalence | |
| Sense of coherence | |
| Maternal orientations (Facilitator, Regulator, Reciprocator) | |
Aleksandra Staneva, PhD 