The Effect of the Order of a Birth on Women's Experience of Childbearing

200 women who had borne a child within the last 2-7 months and were therefore completing a childbearing year were interviewed in order to compare the experience of a childbearing year by women having their 1st 2nd 3rd 4th or later children. The objective was to delineate the variations and constances in womens experience of successive childbearing. It was hypothesized that there would be significant differences between the experiences of women of different parity there being more negative and less positive reactions to later childbearing. The attitudes of these Sydney Australia women were assessed by asking them to specify the degree of stress that they had experienced in regard to each of 9 potentially negative aspects of childbearing and the degree of satisfaction that they had experienced from 9 potentially positive aspects. There was application of 12 content analysis affect scales to their recollections. There tended to be greater mutiliation anxiety more negative and less positive attitudes with increasing parity but similar affective arousal (anxiety hostility and positive feelings). This occurred in all groups indicating that disproportionate emphasis has been given to the problems of primiparous women. With later births there was greater rejection of pregnancy but no dimunition of the maternal wamth expressed.