This article was downloaded by: [Simon Fraser University]On: 19 November 2014, At: 09:02Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

The Journal of Psychology:Interdisciplinary and AppliedPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjrl20

Self-Structure and PostpartumDejection in First-Time MothersWarren A. Reich a , Beth A. Silbert-Mazzarella b ,Jennifer A. Spence b & Harold I. Siegel ca The State University of New Jersey-Newark Rutgersb The State University of New Jersey-New BrunswickRutgersc The State University of New Jersey-Newark RutgersPublished online: 07 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Warren A. Reich , Beth A. Silbert-Mazzarella , Jennifer A. Spence& Harold I. Siegel (2005) Self-Structure and Postpartum Dejection in First-TimeMothers, The Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, 139:5, 426-438,DOI: 10.3200/JRLP.139.5.426-438

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.3200/JRLP.139.5.426-438

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or

indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone isexpressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

The Journal of Psychology, 2005, 139(5), 426–438

426

Self-Structure and Postpartum Dejectionin First-Time Mothers

WARREN A. REICHRutgers, The State University of New Jersey–Newark

BETH A. SILBERT-MAZZARELLA JENNIFER A. SPENCE

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey–New Brunswick

HAROLD I. SIEGELRutgers, The State University of New Jersey–Newark

ABSTRACT. Twenty-nine first-time mothers completed the Beck Depression Inventory(A. T. Beck, C. H. Ward, M. Mendelson, J. Mock, & J. Erbaugh, 1961) at Time 1 (3rdtrimester) and at Time 2 (3–6 months after delivery). At Time 1, women described each of20 self-aspects by repeatedly selecting from a list of 36 traits; they also reported the sizeof their social support network in a structured interview. At Time 2, the new mothers com-pleted a short measure of mother role stress and described postpartum difficulties to aninterviewer. The authors used HIerarchical CLASses (HICLAS; P. De Boeck & S. Rosen-berg, 1988) to idiographically model each woman’s self-descriptive data and to identifythe class that contained each woman’s most superordinate (cardinal) traits, which werethen coded either as agentic or social–emotional. Postpartum difficulty predicted Time 2dejection, but mother role stress and social network size did not. However, the content ofthe most superordinate trait class moderated the latter two effects. New mothers coded asagentic were more dejected than were new mothers coded as social–emotional when therewas high mother role stress and when there was a large social support network.

Key words: identity, mothers, postpartum depression, self-structure

CLINICAL POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION is documented to occur in 10% to15% of mothers, and a related nonclinical dysphoria, postpartum blues, is evenmore common (O’Hara & Swain, 1996; Swendsen & Mazure, 2000). In the past,it was believed that hormonal changes led to experiences of postpartum blues.However, research to date has found no reliable support for this conjecture(Cooper & Murray, 1997). Recent research suggests that one of the more reliableantecedents to postpartum depression and blues is the presence of stressful lifeevents, particularly those contingent on the transition into the mother role, suchas birth complications or childcare demands (O’Hara, Schlechte, Lewis, &Wright, 1991; Swendsen & Mazure). Lack of social support has also been shownto predict postpartum blues, both as a main effect (Areias, Kumar, Barros, &

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

Reich, Silbert-Mazzarella, Spence, & Siegel 427

Figueredo, 1996) and as a moderator of stress (Cutrona, 1984). Having a sup-portive social network provides instrumental, informational, and emotional assis-tance and may also boost a new or expecting mother’s self-efficacy in this chal-lenging role (Cutrona & Troutman, 1986).

Self-conception is potentially implicated in the causal paths from motherrole stress and from small social network size to postpartum dejection. Becausethe role identity of a new mother is likely to be a salient one that is functionallyrelated to other aspects of the woman’s self, the affective consequences of moth-er role stressors may be magnified relative to the demands of more peripheralrole identities (Thoits, 1991). In addition, a new mother with a small social sup-port network may find the lack of routine interpersonal contact and validation ofself to be stressful. A lack of social support would not only deprive her of valu-able material and social resources but would also make it difficult to maintainstability in her self-structure (Stryker & Serpe, 1982).

In this study, we examined the role of self-structure as a moderator of thehypothesized main effects of mother role stress and social network size. Per-sonality characteristics such as hardiness (Kobasa, 1982) have been shown tomoderate the effect of psychosocial stress and stress-related illness. Evidenceis also emerging for individual differences that moderate the psychologicalbenefits of social support (Brissette, Scheier, & Carver, 2002; Sarason, Pierce,& Sarason, 1990). We evaluated the possibility that the organization of contentin the self-structure renders a new mother more or less susceptible to stressfulevents in the mother role and more or less receptive to social network support.

We assessed self-structure in terms of the set-theoretical model of identityproposed by Rosenberg and his colleagues (Rosenberg, 1997; Rosenberg &Gara, 1985). According to this model, a self-aspect, such as a social role or rela-tionship with a significant other, is experienced as an amalgam of traits. Forexample, a woman may describe her mother self-aspect using the traits tender,loving, and knowledgeable, and her employee self-aspect using the traitsassertive, extraverted, and accomplished. Self-aspects are arranged into a hierar-chy of classes in terms of their shared and nonshared traits. Traits in the self-structure are organized hierarchically into classes according to the self-aspectswith which they are associated. The set-theoretical model distinguishes superor-dinate from subordinate traits. Superordinate traits are more pervasive than sub-ordinate traits in that they are associated with a greater number of self-aspects.Analogous to cardinal traits, these characteristics appear most consistently across

This study was partially funded by a Rutgers Undergraduate Research Fellow award toHarold I. Siegel and Warren A. Reich. We wish to thank Alyson Slutzky for her diligentwork in data collection and Eric Parr and Emily Perlberg for coding audiotapes.

Warren A. Reich is now at The Family Center, New York, NY, and Beth A. Silbert-Maz-zarella is in the Department of Psychology, Montclair State University.

Address correspondence to Warren A. Reich, The Family Center, 66 Reade St., NewYork, NY 10007; wreich@thefamilycenter.org (e-mail).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

428 The Journal of Psychology

situations, roles, and relationships and may function to preserve a sense of sta-bility in the self (Ogilvie & Ashmore, 1991; Ogilvie, Fleming, & Pennell, 1998).

In this study, we were concerned with whether a new mother’s most super-ordinate traits reflect an agentic or a social–emotional theme. Generally speak-ing, to be agentic is to assert oneself or attempt to master one’s environment,and to be communal is to embed oneself in an interpersonal context of related-ness (McAdams, 1988). Emmons and McAdams (1991) and Roberts andRobins (2000) demonstrated that the personal strivings of those withsocial–emotional traits (e.g., agreeableness) or motives (e.g., intimacy) arequalitatively different from those with agentic traits (e.g., conscientiousness) ormotives (e.g., achievement).

Because the image of the mother role commonly evokes communal or nur-turing traits (Chodorow, 1978), its enactment would likely be less self-congruentfor new mothers whose superordinate traits are agentic (whom we call agenti-cally traited) than for new mothers whose superordinate traits are social–emo-tional (whom we call social–emotionally traited). Agentically traited women inthe new mother role may face a challenge to the integrity of their most consistentpersonal qualities that social–emotionally traited new mothers do not.

Given the strong motive to present oneself in terms of important self-concepts(Schlenker, 1985; Swann, 1990), we proposed that stresses, strains, and hassles inthe mother role should be more psychologically distressing for agentically traitedwomen than for social–emotionally traited women. Consistent with this reason-ing, we expected agentically traited mothers to show higher postpartum dejectionin response to high mother role stress. We also expected social–emotionally trait-ed mothers to feel more dejected in response to a small social support networkthan would agentically traited mothers, because having few supportive audiencesshould be less self-congruent for mothers who see themselves as interdependent-ly related to a network of helpers and more self-congruent for mothers whose cen-tral self-concepts emphasize autonomy and independence.

Thus, we predicted a positive correlation between mother role stress andpostpartum dejection and a negative correlation between social support networksize and postpartum dejection. In line with the main purpose of this study, wealso expected self-structure to moderate both effects. Specifically, we hypothe-sized an interaction between the agentic versus social–emotional content of thesuperordinate traits in the self-structure and each main effect: (a) mother rolestress and (b) social network size. Finally, consistent with prior research(Cutrona, 1984), we tested for an interaction between mother role stress andsocial network size.

Method

Participants

Thirty-three first-time expectant mothers in the third trimester of their preg-nancy responded to newspaper advertisements or were recruited by word of

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

Reich, Silbert-Mazzarella, Spence, & Siegel 429

mouth. Motherhood was new to all participants; although 10 women had previ-ously been pregnant, none had actually delivered a child. All but 2 indicated thatthe current pregnancy was planned. Twenty-seven self-identified as White, 3 asAfrican American, 1 as Asian American, and 1 as Latina (one respondent’sanswer to this item was uncodable). Twenty-seven had completed at least somecollege, and 28 were married. Twenty-nine of the 33 original participants com-pleted the study (M age = 32.41, SD = 4.66; Mdn household income = $80,000).

Procedure

After an initial phone screening during which the purpose of the study wasdescribed, the participants met individually with a female interviewer, either atthe Rutgers University Attachment Laboratory in Newark, NJ, or at the partici-pant’s home. They signed an informed consent and agreed to participate for $15for the first session during their third trimester (Time 1), and $25 for the secondsession, which took place 3 to 6 months after delivery (Time 2). At Time 1, thewomen completed a self-description task and reported the size of their social sup-port network in a structured interview. At Time 2, they completed a short mea-sure of mother role stress and described postpartum difficulties to an interview-er. The participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck et al.,1961) at both times. After the second session, they were debriefed.

Self-description task. Women described each of 20 self-aspects by repeatedlyselecting from a set of 36 traits in a checklist. Self-aspects included roles andidentities such as me as an expecting mother and me with my best female friend,prototypical selves such as myself in the future and “real me,” and one generalimage: the typical American mother of today. The trait checklist contained threecategories of trait terms: agentic (e.g., powerful, accomplished), social–emotion-al (e.g., nurturing, loving), and negative (e.g., stupid, argumentative). There wasno limit on the number of traits that could be selected to describe a given self-aspect, or how often a particular trait could be used.

Structural analysis of self-descriptive data. Each woman’s self-descriptive datawas converted to a binary matrix, each row corresponding to a self-aspect andeach column representing a trait (1 = trait i associated with self-aspect j, 0 oth-erwise). Each woman’s binary matrix was individually analyzed using HICLAS,a hierarchical classification program for binary data (De Boeck & Rosenberg,1988; Rosenberg, 1997). HICLAS places self-aspects (rows) into classes basedon their shared and nonshared traits (columns) and simultaneously places traitsinto classes in terms of their co-occurrence across self-aspects. Self-aspects andtraits that do not fit well into the structure are placed into an undefined residualclass not connected to the rest of the structure. HICLAS creates a hierarchy ofclasses both for traits and for self-aspects. We used the trait structure to identifythe most superordinate trait class in each woman’s output. The most superordi-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

430 The Journal of Psychology

nate trait class is the one that, like a cardinal trait, is linked to the greatest num-ber of self-aspect classes.

We used Rank 3 HICLAS solutions, which produce three base classes of self-aspects and three base classes of traits (see Figure 1). In this study, we did notcode the part of the HICLAS outputs representing the structure of self-aspects.HICLAS computes a goodness-of-fit coefficient indicating the extent to which theraw data (i.e., the Binary Self-Aspects × Traits matrix) are accurately representedin the model. Higher ranks produce higher goodness-of-fit coefficients but are lessparsimonious (De Boeck & Rosenberg, 1988). The mean goodness-of-fit for ourRank 3 solutions was .715. That is, over 70% of the average woman’s trait attri-butions—1s in her checklist data set—were accurately modeled.

Figure 1 shows a HICLAS output for one participant. The structure of self-aspects is shown on the top half of the figure, and the structure of traits is shown inthe bottom half. The bold vertical lines illustrate the link between the two structuresin the HICLAS output. This woman’s most superordinate trait class contains joy,loyal, caring, nurturing, and warm; it is this class of traits that is associated with thelargest number (six) of self-aspect classes (compare the trait class containingachievement, controlling, and in control, which is linked only to four self-aspectclasses). We dummy-coded each woman’s HICLAS output according to the contentof the most superordinate trait class (SUPTRAIT): 1 if her most superordinate traitclass contained at least a two-thirds majority of agentic terms, or 2 if it contained atleast a two thirds majority of social–emotional terms. The woman depicted in Fig-ure 1 was assigned a code of 2. Another woman whose most superordinate trait classcontained achievement, focused, knowledgeable, accomplished, and determinedwas assigned a code of 1. Nine women were identified as agentically traited and 20as social–emotionally traited.

Social support network size. Social support network size (NUMHELP) wasindexed as the number of people named in response to the interviewer’s question,“How many people can you count on for help with childcare?” Similar indiceshave been used in studies of postpartum depression (Areias et al., 1996) andidentity commitment (Reich, 1997; Stryker & Serpe, 1982). The mean socialsupport network size was 2.81 (SD = 1.39).

Mother role stress. At Time 2, participants completed a 4-item measure of moth-er role stress (MOMSTRES): “The major source of stress in my life is my child,”“Having a child leaves little time and flexibility in my life,” “It is difficult to bal-ance different responsibilities because of my child,” and “I feel overwhelmed bythe responsibility of being a parent” on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strong-ly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). This scale was adequately reliable, α = .74.

Postpartum difficulty. At Time 2, we audiotaped new mothers’ responses to anopen-ended question posed by an interviewer concerning her experiences since

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

Reich, Silbert-Mazzarella, Spence, & Siegel 431

delivering her child: “What problems have you experienced since the birth ofyour baby?” Two undergraduate raters (trained using audiotapes from pilot inter-views) listened to each mother’s narrative account and assigned a rating from 1(little difficulty) to 3 (great deal of difficulty). Though raters’ scores never dif-

4 Self Aspects(e.g., Future Me)

FIGURE 1. HICLAS output for 1 participant.

2 Self Aspects(e.g., Typical Ameri-

can Mom)

3 Self Aspects(e.g., Real Me)

2 Self Aspects(e.g., Me in My

Family)

2 Self Aspects(e.g., Me as Expect-

ing Mom)

3 Self Aspects(e.g., Me With Father

of Baby)

Achievement Controlling

In Control, etc.Courage Argumentative

TendernessTrust

PowerfulKnowledgeablePassionate, etc.

LoveFocused

JoyLoyalCaring

NurturingWarm

3 Residual Self-Aspects

15 Residual Traits

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

432 The Journal of Psychology

fered by more than one point, reliability was not high, r(29) = .43. Inter-rater dis-agreements were resolved by having a third trained undergraduate judge theaudiotapes, unaware of the previous ratings.

Dejection. Participants completed the 21-item BDI (Beck et al., 1961) at Time 1(DEP1) and Time 2 (DEP2).

Results

Descriptive Analyses

Zero-order correlations among the predictor variables and depression areshown in Table 1. Age was correlated with depression at both times and wastherefore used as a control variable in multiple regression analyses. Dejectiondecreased from Time 1 to Time 2, M = 9.62 versus 7.20, paired t(28) = 3.66, p <.001. Sixteen women at Time 1 (55.17%) and 9 women at Time 2 (31.03%)scored above the cut-off point on the BDI (Beck et al., 1961) for mild depression(Groth-Marnat, 1990). No woman in our sample was moderately or severelydepressed according to the BDI.

We used HICLAS nomothetically for one target, the typical American moth-er of today. For this analysis, the binary matrix consisted of 29 rows, each con-taining one woman’s description of this target, and 36 columns, each represent-ing a trait (as in the earlier idiographic analyses). Agentic, social–emotional, andnegative trait terms were all present in the HICLAS structure. However, the mostsuperordinate trait class in this structural output (i.e., the class of traits most com-

TABLE 1. Zero-Order Correlations Among Major Variables in This Study(N = 29)

Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Age —2. SUPTRAIT –.143. MOMSTRES –.20 –.034. PPDIFF .24 –.12 .38*5. NUMHELP –.08 –.23 –.18 –.306. DEP1 –.52** .19 .14 .00 –.297. DEP2 –.41* –.00 .20 .30 –.15 .47**

Note. SUPTRAIT = content of most superordinate trait class (1 = agentic, 2 = social–emo-tional); MOMSTRES = mother role stress; NUMHELP = social support network size;PPDIFF = postpartum difficulty; DEP1 = Beck Depression Inventory score at Time 1; DEP2= Beck Depression Inventory score at Time 2.*p < .05. **p < .01.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

Reich, Silbert-Mazzarella, Spence, & Siegel 433

monly endorsed as descriptive of the typical American mother) contained love,joy, caring, knowledgeable, tender, and nurturing, all but one of which we cate-gorized as social–emotional. Consistent with Chodorow’s (1978) reasoning, theprototypical mother role most frequently evoked images of social–emotionaltraits, in fact, for nearly all of the women in our sample.

Hypothesis Tests

Table 2 shows that MOMSTRES was not predictive of DEP2 as a maineffect after controlling for age and DEP1. As hypothesized, however, we found asignificant interaction between MOMSTRES and SUPTRAIT. This interactionremained significant after controlling for whether a negative trait class waslinked to me as an expecting mother and whether a negative trait class was linkedto the “real me” (semipartial rs = –.33 in both cases, ps < .05). A procedure rec-ommended by Aiken and West (1991) for plotting regression interactionsrevealed that for agentically traited women, a significant positive relationshipwas obtained between MOMSTRES and DEP2, ß = .71, p < .05. For social–emo-tionally traited women, however, no relationship was observed between thesevariables, ß = –.08, p > .60.

In a follow-up analysis, we counted the number of agentic and social–emo-tional traits in each woman’s HICLAS structure (recall that poorly fitting traitsare discarded into a residual class that is not included in the structure). Neitherthe coefficient for MOMSTRES × Number of Agentic Traits nor the coefficientfor MOMSTRES × Number of Social-Emotional Traits was significant (semi-partial rs = –.04 and –.16, respectively, ps > .38). Thus, it seems that the criticalmoderating variable was not the mere number of agentic or social–emotionaltraits but their structural location in the most superordinate class (i.e., the classof cardinal traits).

Table 2 also shows that our second measure of stress, PPDIFF, was predic-tive of DEP2, controlling for age and DEP1 (the bivariate correlation betweenPPDIFF and DEP2 was positive but not significant). Adjusting for the controlvariables, women who reported more difficulty after delivering their child weremore dejected than those who reported less difficulty. We found no evidence foran interaction with SUPTRAIT, however.

We did not find that NUMHELP was predictive of DEP2 as a main effect(see Table 2). A significant interaction was obtained, however, betweenNUMHELP and SUPTRAIT, as hypothesized. As was the case in the previousanalysis, this interaction remained significant after controlling for whether a neg-ative trait class was linked to me as an expecting mother, and whether a negativetrait class was linked to the “real me” (interaction semipartial rs = –.36 and –.38,respectively, ps < .05). For social–emotionally traited women, the obtained mar-ginally significant negative slope (ß = –.38, p < .07) reflects the typical effect ofsocial support networks (larger networks associated with lower depression). For

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

434 The Journal of Psychology

agentically traited women, however, the slope was positive, though not signifi-cant (ß = .50, p > .10).

In a follow-up analysis similar to the one reported here, we found no evi-

TABLE 2. Hierarchical Regressions to Predict Time 2 Dejection FromMother Role Stress, Content of Most Superordinate Traits, Postpartum Dif-ficulty, and Social Support Network Size

Cumulative ChangeVariable R 2 in R 2 sr2 sr

Mother role stress

Step 1: .27*Age .03 –.17DEP1 .09 .30MOMSTRES .01 .11

Step 2: .28 .01SUPTRAIT .01 –.10

Step 3: .39* .11*MOMSTRES × SUPTRAIT .11* –.33*

Postpartum difficulty

Step 1: .39*Age .08 –.28DEP1 .06 .25PPDIFF .13* .36*

Step 2: .39* .00SUPTRAIT .00 –.06

Step 3:PPDIFF × SUPTRAIT .01 .11

Social support

Step 1: .26*Age .04 –.20DEP1 .07 .26NUMHELP .00 –.07

Step 2: .28 .01SUPTRAIT .01 –.12

Step 3: .44** .16**NUMHELP × SUPTRAIT .16** –.40**

Note. DEP1 = Beck Depression Inventory score at Time 1; MOMSTRES = mother rolestress; SUPTRAIT = content of most superordinate trait class (1 = agentic, 2 = social-emo-tional); PPDIFF = postpartum difficulty; NUMHELP = social support network size.*p < .05. **p < .01.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

Reich, Silbert-Mazzarella, Spence, & Siegel 435

dence for an interaction between NUMHELP and either the number of nonresid-ual agentic traits or the number of nonresidual social–emotional traits (semipar-tial rs = –.04 and .22, respectively, ps > .22). Again, it seems that the moderatingeffect was due to the structural location and not to the number of agentic versussocial–emotional traits.

We found no evidence for an interaction between MOMSTRES andNUMHELP, semipartial r = .29, p > .10. Nor did we find a significant PPDIFF ×NUMHELP interaction, semipartial r = .10, p > .50. Thus, our third hypothesizedinteraction was not supported.

Discussion

We first used HICLAS to identify the pattern of traits associated with theimage of the typical mother and found that the most commonly endorsed attri-butes for this image were social–emotional. The two significant interactions wefound in our main analyses indicated that (a) agentically traited women showeda stronger association between mother role stress and postpartum dejection thandid social–emotionally traited women, and (b) agentically traited women report-ed higher postpartum dejection with larger social support networks than didsocial–emotionally traited women. Although we did find that postpartum diffi-culty was associated with higher Time 2 dejection, we did not find main effectsfor mother role stress or for social network size. Nor did our results demonstratean interaction between these two variables.

Our findings are generally consistent with Swann’s (1990) self-verificationtheory, which states that people desire and attempt to construct social environ-ments that provide feedback consistent with their central self-concepts (see alsoSchlenker, 1985). Stressors relevant to the mother role are likely to haveincreased the salience and personal relevance of self-as-mother (Ruble & Seid-man, 1996). Conceivably, the mother role stress experienced by agentically trait-ed women threatened central self-images, such as powerful and in control,through negative feedback for important role performances. The self-verificationformulation suggests that obstacles to the efficient performance of the new moth-er role prevented these women from experiencing and presenting themselves inagentic ways, as they normally would in most situations.

Mother role stress experienced by social–emotionally traited women mayhave been seen as consistent, or at least not inconsistent, with their cardinal traits(as our nomothetic HICLAS analysis of the typical American mother suggests)and thus may not have posed a challenge or threat to central self-concepts. Role-related stressors may have psychologically magnified the congruence betweenself and role for social–emotionally traited women and self–role incongruencefor agentically traited women, which ultimately led to feelings of dejection.

Similarly, whereas agentically traited women may have experienced a largesocial support network as antithetical to their independent, autonomous self-con-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

436 The Journal of Psychology

cepts, social–emotionally traited women may have felt their more communalself-concepts threatened when their social support networks were small. Think-ing of oneself as powerful, for example, becomes less functional when sur-rounded by helpers; conversely, one’s self-concept as trusting becomes difficultto enact in the absence of receptive audiences. Having a large number of audi-ences has been associated with higher role commitment (Reich, 1997; Reich,Ramos, & Jaipal, 2000; Stryker & Serpe, 1982). The heightened salience of themother role brought on by a large social support network may have primed andamplified self–role congruence for social–emotionally traited women, andself–role incongruence for agentically traited women.

According to self-verification theory, a person whose self-concept has beenchallenged or invalidated will feel distressed and will engage in crisis self-verifica-tion (Swann, 1987) by actively attempting to restore congruity between the self andsocial experience. Self-verification theory does not, however, explicitly account forwhy women whose cardinal traits were not congruent with the size of their supportnetworks were more dejected after delivering their child than women whose traitswere congruent with the new mother role. We conjecture that a sense of loss, andpossibly a desire to psychologically withdraw from the role, followed repeatedfailed attempts to self-verify (Alexander & Higgins, 1993; Schlenker, 1985). Asocial–emotionally traited woman may not have been able to find new friends oracquaintances to help with child care; an agentically traited woman may not havebeen able to tackle problems with a temperamental child (or husband) in the sameway she typically handled difficulties on the job. The relationship between self-verification and postpartum dejection would be clarified in future work usingindices of self-verification, such as having mothers rate the importance or self-relevance of trait terms in a separate task from describing their role identities.

Our results were in line with the main effect of mother role stress on post-partum dejection found by several researchers (reviewed in Swendsen & Mazure,2000). We did not, however, find evidence for an interaction between role stressand social network size, as others have (e.g., Cutrona, 1984). Future researchwould benefit from a more highly differentiated conceptual definition and oper-ationalization of mother role stress and of social support. Measures of motherrole stress may include specific indicators of problems in delivery, reduced self-efficacy, marital discord, or infant temperament (Swendsen & Mazure).

Measures of actual (vs. perceived) support, support from the father of thechild (as opposed to a global index of support), and quality of or satisfaction withsupport (O’Hara & Swain, 1996; Sarason, Sarason, & Pierce, 1990) may yieldresults—main effects and interactions—obscured by the simple index of socialnetwork size that we used in this study. Longitudinal assessments of both thequantity and quality of support would be particularly valuable.

On a final methodological note, our data analysis using HICLAS provided atheoretically interesting person-centered moderator variable. Prediction of post-partum dejection was not improved by a count of the agentic or social–emotion-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

Reich, Silbert-Mazzarella, Spence, & Siegel 437

al traits endorsed by our participants, but rather the placement of agentic orsocial–emotional traits in the most superordinate class. We would not have beenable to identify discrete sets of cardinal traits had we not used HICLAS to struc-turally model individuals’ self-descriptive data. This analytic strategy offers anidiographic advantage in the assessment of the self (Pelham, 1993; Reich, Tuske-nis, Slutzky, & Siegel, 2000), allowing researchers to explicitly represent pat-terns of self-beliefs that, in interaction with the social environment, have impor-tant affective consequences.

REFERENCES

Aiken, L. S., & West, S. G. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interac-tions. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Alexander, M. J., & Higgins, E. T. (1993). Emotional trade-offs of becoming a parent:How social roles influence self-discrepancy effects. Journal of Personality and SocialPsychology, 65, 1259–1269.

Areias, M. E. G., Kumar, R., Barros, H., & Figueredo, E. (1996). Correlates of postnataldepression in mothers and fathers. British Journal of Psychiatry, 169, 36–41.

Beck, A. T., Ward, C. H., Mendelson, M., Mock, J., & Erbaugh, J. (1961). An inventoryfor measuring depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 4, 561–571.

Brissette, I., Scheier, M. F., & Carver, C. S. (2002). The role of optimism in social net-work development, coping, and psychological adjustment during a life transition. Jour-nal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 102–111.

Chodorow, N. (1978). The reproduction of mothering: Psychoanalysis and the sociologyof gender. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Cooper, P. J., & Murray, L. (1997). Prediction, detection, and treatment of postnataldepression. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 77, 97–99.

Cutrona, C. E. (1984). Social support and stress in the transition to parenthood. Journalof Abnormal Psychology, 93, 378–390.

Cutrona, C. E., & Troutman, B. R. (1986). Social support, infant temperament, and par-enting self-efficacy: A mediational model of postpartum depression. Child Develop-ment, 57, 1507–1518.

De Boeck, P., & Rosenberg, S. (1988). Hierarchical classes: Model and data analysis. Psy-chometrika, 53, 361–381.

Emmons, R. A., & McAdams, D. P. (1991). Personal strivings and motive dispositions:Exploring the links. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17, 648–654.

Groth-Marnat, G. (1990). Handbook of psychological assessment (2nd ed.). New York:Wiley Interscience.

Kobasa, S. C. (1982). Commitment and coping in stress resistance among lawyers. Jour-nal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 707–717.

McAdams, D. P. (1988). Power, intimacy, and the life story: Personological inquiries intoidentity. New York: Guilford.

Ogilvie, D. M., & Ashmore, R. D. (1991). Self-with-other representation as a unit of analy-sis in self-concept research. In R. A. Curtis (Ed.), The relational self: Theoretical con-vergences in psychoanalysis and social psychology (pp. 282–314). New York: Guilford.

Ogilvie, D. M., Fleming, C. J., & Pennell, G. E. (1998). Self-with-other representations.In D. F. Barone, M. Hersen, & V. B. Van Hesselt (Eds.), Advanced personality (pp.353–375). New York: Plenum Press.

O’Hara, M. W., Schlechte, J. A., Lewis, D. A., & Wright, E. J. (1991). Prospective studyof postpartum blues: Biological and psychosocial factors. Archives of General Psychi-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014

438 The Journal of Psychology

atry, 48, 801–806.O’Hara, M. W., & Swain, A. M. (1996). Rates and risk of postpartum depression: A meta-

analysis. International Review of Psychiatry, 8, 37–54.Pelham, B. W. (1993). The idiographic nature of human personality: Examples of the idio-

graphic self-concept. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 665–677.Reich, W. A. (1997). Social audiences and role commitment. The Journal of Psychology,

131, 453–462.Reich, W. A., Ramos, J. M., & Jaipal, R. (2000). Ethnic identity and interethnic dating in

Portuguese young adults. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 3, 153–161.Reich, W. A., Tuskenis, A. D., Slutzky, A. W., & Siegel, H. I. (2000). Combining idio-

graphic and nomothetic methods in the study of internal working models. PersonalRelationships, 7, 165–183.

Roberts, B. W., & Robins, R. W. (2000). Broad dispositions, broad aspirations: The inter-section of personality traits and major life goals. Personality and Social PsychologyBulletin, 26, 1284–1296.

Rosenberg, S. (1997). Multiplicity of selves. In R. D. Ashmore & L. Jussim (Eds.), Selfand identity: Fundamental issues. Rutgers series on self and social identity (Vol. 1, pp.23–45). New York: Oxford University Press.

Rosenberg, S., & Gara, M. A. (1985). The multiplicity of personal identity. In P. Shaver(Ed.), Review of personality and social psychology (Vol. 6, pp. 87–113). Newbury Park,CA: Sage.

Ruble, D. N., & Seidman, E. (1996). Social transitions: Windows into social psychologi-cal processes. In E. T. Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Hand-book of basic principles (pp. 830–856). New York: Guilford.

Sarason, B. R., Pierce, G. R., & Sarason, I. G. (1990). Social support: The sense of accep-tance and the role of relationships. In B. R. Sarason, I. R. Sarason, & G. R. Pierce(Eds.), Social support: An interactional view (pp. 97–128). New York: Wiley.

Sarason, B. R., Sarason, I. G., & Pierce, G. R. (1990). Traditional views of social supportand their impact on assessment. In B. R. Sarason, I. R. Sarason, & G. R. Pierce (Eds.),Social support: An interactional view (pp. 9–25). New York: Wiley.

Schlenker, B. R. (1985). Identity and self-identification. In B. R. Schlenker (Ed.), The selfand social life (pp. 65–99). New York: Plenum Press.

Stryker, S., & Serpe, R. T. (1982). Commitment, identity salience, and role behavior. InW. Ickes & E. S. Knowles (Eds.), Personality, roles, and social behavior (pp. 199–218).New York: Springer-Verlag.

Swann, W. B., Jr. (1987). Identity negotiation: Where two roads meet. Journal of Person-ality and Social Psychology, 53, 1038–1051.

Swann, W. B., Jr. (1990). To be adored or to be known? The interplay of self-enhancementand self-verification. In E. T. Higgins & R. M. Sorrentino (Eds.), Handbook of motiva-tion and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (Vol. 2, pp. 408–448). New York:Guilford.

Swendsen, J. D., & Mazure, C. M. (2000). Life stress as a risk factor for postpartumdepression: Current research and methodological issues. Clinical Psychology: Scienceand Practice, 7, 17–31.

Thoits, P. A. (1991). On merging identity theory and stress research. Social PsychologyQuarterly, 54, 101–112.

Original manuscript received April 1, 2004Final revision accepted November 3, 2004

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Sim

on F

rase

r U

nive

rsity

] at

09:

03 1

9 N

ovem

ber

2014