Stressful postpartum psychologic reactions in adult and adolescent African-American mothers of low birthweight infants

Date

1994-08

Authors

Oelman, Kristen C.

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Abstract

A descriptive cross-sectional study was designed (Campbell & Stanley, 1963) to determine if adolescent African-American mothers of low birthweight infants would have a greater degree of postpartum stressful psychologic reaction than adult African-American mothers of low birthweight infants. The sample consisted of 28 adults and 25 adolescents, all of whom had given birth to low birthweight infants in an urban city in the Southwest region of the United States. The Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist Today Scale (Zuckerman & Lubin, 1965) was used to measure stressful psychologic reaction. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. Using the t-test for independent samples (SPSS, 1988), no significant difference was found between the adolescent and adult mothers in stressful postpartum psychologic reaction. Further, it was concluded that little or no stress is imposed by the birth of an infant weighing less than 2500 grams for the mothers studied in this research.

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Keywords

Obstetrics, Health and environmental sciences, Gynecology

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