RESEARCH ARTICLE
Fathers’ Feelings and Experience Related to their Wife/Partner’s Delivery in Northern Greece
Despina Sapountzi-Krepia*, 1, 2, Maria Lavdaniti1, Alexandra Dimitriadou1, Maria Psychogiou2, Markos Sgantzos3, Hong-Gu He4, Eythimios Faros5, Katri Vehviläinen-Julkunen2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2010Volume: 4
First Page: 48
Last Page: 54
Publisher ID: TONURSJ-4-48
DOI: 10.2174/1874434601004010048
PMID: 21347210
PMCID: PMC3043266
Article History:
Received Date: 20/3/2010Revision Received Date: 22/9/2010
Acceptance Date: 27/9/2010
Electronic publication date: 5/11/2010
Collection year: 2010
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Objectives:
The study aims at exploring the feelings and the experience of fathers about their wife/partner’s delivery.
Background:
During the last decades birth attendance by fathers is a common phenomenon across many countries. Fathers’ birth attendance may evoke both positive and negative feelings.
Methodology:
The study was conducted in a city of Northern Greece. The sample consisted of 417 fathers whose wife/partner had given birth during the previous one week to one year. Data were collected using the Kuopio Instrument for Fathers (KIF).
Results:
Father’s feelings about their wife or partner were very positive as nearly all (82.1%) of the participants were proud to become fathers and agree that they felt love and were grateful to their wife/partner. However, half of the fathers felt anxious and nervous. 40.7% quite agree that the staff was very professional, that they trusted the staff (45%) and that they were grateful to the staff (38.8%). There is correlation between the “feelings related to the wife/partner” and education (r=0.156, p=0.0047), “being afraid during the preparatory visit at the obstetric hospital” (r=-0.238, p=0.009), and “anxiety during the preparatory visit” (r=0.295 p=0.005). The subscale “feelings related to the environment and staff” correlates with “usefulness of preparatory visit” (r=-0.223, p=0.004) and the subscale of “experiences related to delivery” correlates with “usefulness of preparatory visit” (r=-0.357, p=0.001).
Conclusions:
Our results support the findings of previous studies, which indicated that birth attendance by fathers has evoked positive feelings about their wife/partner, the delivery, the staff and the hospital environment.
