Pregnancy and Relationships

Impact of Pregnancy on Human Relationships

Women often express concerns about the changes that may occur in their relationships during pregnancy. Women pregnant for the first time tend to be particularly concerned that their relationship with their husband or other committed partner may decline as a result of the changes that they are undergoing. However, studies find that husbands typically feel closer to their wives during pregnancy and that both partners experience an increase in marital satisfaction prenatally (during pregnancy). This changes after birth, however, especially after the birth of a first child, when marital satisfaction usually declines. Relationship satisfaction may also be associated with sexual interest and activity: Many women report that they experience enhanced sexual pleasure during pregnancy compared with other times in their life. Although there is much individual variability in sexuality, studies find that women on average experience decreased sexual interest and activity in the first trimester of pregnancy, increases in the second trimester, and a decrease in the third trimester and after birth.

Pregnant women who are already mothers typically express concern about the impact of being pregnant on their other children. There is little research examining this type of impact, nor on how pregnancy affects a woman's relationship with her other family members. Some nonscientific sources have suggested that being pregnant leads a woman to desire a closer relationship with her mother and to resolve any existing relationship difficulties with her.

Pregnant women often seek out other women for information and inspiration to help them adjust to the changes they are experiencing, particularly women who have just had babies. Pregnancy also affects pregnant women's interactions with strangers. Some studies find that strangers, especially men, react to a pregnant woman by staringoravoidance. However, otherresearch indicates that a pregnant woman is more likely than a nonpregnant woman to receive assistance in daily life, such as having a door held open for her. Pregnant women also report that strangers frequently offer unsolicited advice, touch their pregnant bellies, and make comments about their physical size. Such experiences, which pregnant women widely report as aversive, may help explain why they tend to stand at greater distances from other people than do nonpregnant women, a phenomenon that is often attributed to pregnant women's distorted body image, but that also may reflect an attempt to avoid some interactions.

Impact of Human Relationships on Pregnancy

Supportive human relationships provide a variety of benefits to pregnant women. The term social support is used to describe these beneficial provisions of relationships. As it is typically defined, social support includes emotional concern, affirmation, material or tangible assistance, and the provision of information.

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