Social support, stress, and health: a comparison of expectant mothers and fathers

The influence of social support and stress on expectant mothers' and fathers' health was determined by testing and comparing different predictive models. Instruments used were the Support Behaviors Inventory, Stress Amount Checklist, and Health Responses Scale. Regression analyses were performed on data from questionnaires completed by 313 couples in the second half of pregnancy to predict health, using the same independent variables for women and men. The regression analyses began with a model that included the variables of stress, satisfaction with partner support, satisfaction with other persons' support, history of chronic illness, education, age, employment status, military status, and family income. The effects of four variables, satisfaction with partner support, satisfaction with others' support, stress, and chronic illness, were tested separately for men and women. Subsets of these variables were deleted to create a series of nested comparisons. Results indicated that social support and stress were useful in predicting health. Partner support appeared to be the most important variable in understanding expectant fathers' health, but social support for mothers included a larger domain and social networks contributed to their health in the same way as partner support. Both stress and chronic illness were more important explanatory variables for pregnant women's health than for their partners' health. These data suggest that nursing interventions targeted at reducing stress and improving expectant parents' satisfaction with their partner support might enhance their health.