ABSTRACT The transition to motherhood is a period of psychological vulnerability but also offers important opportunities to refine and strengthen resilience capacities that support long‐term mental health. The Systematic Self‐Reflection Model of Resilience Strengthening proposes dynamic, reciprocal relationships between self‐reflection, coping insight, and capacities for resilience, but this model has not been tested during the transition to motherhood. We aimed to clarify: (i) how self‐reflection and coping insight change across this life transition, and (ii) to examine the relationships among self‐reflection, coping insight, and depressive symptoms in first‐time mothers. It explored their bidirectional and indirect interactions, with a focus on how these processes contribute to resilience and mental health. First‐time pregnant women in Australia ( N = 147) completed longitudinal surveys across three time points (two prenatal, one postnatal). Multi‐level modeling assessed changes in self‐reflection, coping insight, and depressive symptoms over time, and tested mediating relationships at both within‐ and between‐person levels. Cross‐lagged panel models evaluated the directionality and reciprocity of these associations. Findings showed that coping insight consistently predicted lower depressive symptoms across multiple models. However, the pathway from self‐reflection to insight was less stable, suggesting that reflection alone may not reliably foster adaptive insight. Conversely, depressive symptoms more consistently influenced later self‐reflection indirectly via reduced insight, indicating that depression may undermine cognitive processes that support resilience. These findings provide novel evidence of how self‐reflection, coping insight, and depression interact during the transition to motherhood, highlighting the importance of targeting coping insight in perinatal interventions to strengthen resilience and protect maternal mental health.
Maxwell et al. (Thu,) studied this question.