Expectant Mothers’ Reflections on Childhood and Parenting: Cross-Sectional Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The significance of parenting practices for children's development and health has gained increased attention, aligning with life course perspectives on health. Adverse childhood experiences are widespread and linked to impaired parenting in adulthood. Understanding how expectant parents reflect on their childhoods, and how such reflections can be fostered as part of antenatal care, is essential for supporting healthier caregiving and helping to break cycles of intergenerational adversity. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore pregnant women's perspectives on parenting and sources of support in light of their childhood experiences, including responses to a key question about what they want to pass on to their child. METHODS: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted in 2022 among pregnant women recruited through social media platforms, including Facebook groups and Instagram accounts. The Pearson chi-square test was used to examine associations between the assessment of childhood and 4 parenting-related variables. Free-text responses were analyzed for content, categorized, and quantified. RESULTS: Among 1402 pregnant women across Norway, 10% (139/1393) reported difficult childhoods. Among them, 28.1% (39/139) felt that their upbringing would significantly influence their parenting, compared to 15.9% (171/1074) of those with good childhoods (P<.001). Most participants expressed a desire to pass on positive values. For some, the key question prompted disclosure of difficult childhoods and a strong wish to break with their past. Approximately 10% (139/1389) of the participants reported they lacked someone to turn to for parenting advice. This was more common among those with difficult childhoods (37/139, 26.6%) than those with average (28/176, 15.9%) or good childhoods (74/1067, 6.9%; P<.001). CONCLUSIONS: Expectant women's upbringing shapes their parenting expectations and support needs. Many, especially those with difficult pasts, expect these experiences to affect parenting. These findings highlight the role of intergenerational transmission and the value of inviting such reflection as part of antenatal care to identify support needs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".