MATERNAL SOCIAL SUPPORT AND THE QUALITY OF DELIVERY 

Introduction. Social support plays a significant role on physical and psychological wellbeing of pregnant women. The aim of this study was to test a complex theoretical model hypothesizing that social support mothers perceive during pregnancy, could influence clinical delivery indices, both directly and indirectly, through the mediate effects of the mothers’ anxiety states and their prenatal attachment to their child. Method. A longitudinal design at two different times was carried out on 167 pregnant women (age M = 31.84, SD = 4.92). Inclusion criteria were to be nulliparous native Italian women, no risk pregnancy, and single fetus. All participant completed the Maternal Social Support Scale (MSS; Webster et al., 2000; Dabrassi et al., 2009) that allow to measure a global score about the maternal perceived social support; the State Anxiety Inventory (STAI-Y2; Spielberger et al., 1983; Predabissi et al., 1989), which assesses the state of anxiety; and the Prenatal Attachment Inventory (PAI; Muller, 1993; Della Vedova et al., 2008) that measures the mother’s attachment bond to child during pregnancy. Moreover, at the first day after childbirth, clinical data of delivery were collected. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to investigate the theoretical hypothesized model. Results. The results confirmed that the social support mothers perceived during pregnancy promote a more positive experience of delivery, both directly, protecting women from clinical difficulties of the delivery, and indirectly, reducing the occurrence of maternal anxiety states and promoting a more secure prenatal attachment to child.