What is it about?
Mothers often experience a mix of positive and negative feelings toward their children. While it's normal to have these ambivalent emotions, problems can arise if mothers find it difficult to acknowledge and manage these emotions without becoming overwhelmed. This paper introduces a new psychological tool designed to assess how mothers handle their ambivalent feelings and examines the impact this has on their psychological well-being.
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Why is it important?
The study identifies five key factors that help mothers manage their ambivalent feelings. It emphasizes the importance of mothers being able to recognize and explore their conflicting feelings openly and honestly, and without judging themselves or blaming their children. The findings also suggest that struggling to deal with ambivalent feelings can negatively affect mothers' psychological well-being, leading to increased parenting stress and symptoms of depression.
Perspectives
As a society, we expect mothers to have only loving feelings toward their children. This expectation makes it difficult for mothers to acknowledge their normal ambivalent feelings and can lead to self-doubt, guilt, and anxiety. Therefore, it's crucial to normalize and validate maternal ambivalence as part of our efforts to support and promote mothers' psychological well-being.
Agne Raneberg
University of Warwick
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Maternal Ambivalence Questionnaire (MAQ): Development and preliminary validation., Journal of Family Psychology, May 2024, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/fam0001234.
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