Soon after giving birth, mothers typically experience a self-esteem dip lasting at least three years

By Emma Young “After decades of debate, a consensus is emerging about the way self-esteem develops across the lifespan.” So wrote a pair of psychologists – one from Kings College London, the other from the University of California Davis – in a paper published back in 2005. That “consensus” is that self-esteem is relatively high in childhood, drops during adolescence, rises gradually through adulthood before dropping sharply in old age. But a new paper suggests that there’s a major blip in this pattern for one huge part of the population. Becoming a mother triggers a decline in self-esteem and relationship satisfaction over at least the next three years, according to research on nearly 85,000 mothers in Norway, forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Wiebke Bleidorn of Tilburg University in the Netherlands and UC Davis led a team that assessed the mothers’ self-esteem and relationship satisfaction by asking them to complete questionnaires before, during and several times after giving birth, with the last completed when their child was 36 months old. “Self-esteem decreased during pregnancy, increased until the child was six months old and then gradually decreased over following years,” they reported. The consistency of the data suggests that this is a “normative change pattern” – something that’s standard in a population. The pattern they found is consistent with the idea that physical changes during pregnanc...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Emotion Mental health Source Type: blogs