TOP-OF-THE-HEAD DESCRIPTIONS OF BABY AND SELF - LINKS TO REPORTED HEALTH BEHAVIORS AND SOCIAL-CONTEXT IN EARLY-PREGNANCY

This research investigated pregnant women's spontaneous descriptions o f their babies and themselves as mothers early in pregnancy as related to prenatal health behaviors, family background characteristics and w omen's work status. In semistructured interviews, 59 married women in their 4th month of pregnancy described the fetus, the baby after birth , and themselves as mothers to the expected child. Consistent with con struct accessibility theory and recent representation-based models of parenting, the amount and kinds of content that women used to describe their babies and themselves as mothers varied systematically as a fun ction of women's prenatal health behaviors, parity and marital adjustm ent. Suggestive evidence also was found for a relationship between the content of women's descriptions of themselves as mothers and women's work status. The authors discuss clinical and methodological implicati ons of the findings.