(PS13-A5) Awaiting Bundles of Joy: Psychological Flexibility as a Moderator of the Association Between Couple Satisfaction and Quality of Life in Pregnant Women

Although pregnancy is often portrayed as a time of great joy, pregnant women are vulnerable to many forms of psychological distress (Poggi Davis & Narayan, 2021; Priya et al., 2018), and this can have substantial effects on both maternal and child well-being (DeSocio, 2018; Van den Bergh et al., 2020). COVID-19 has heightened distress in this population (Basu et al., 2021; Lopez-Morales et al., 2021). It is thus pivotal to examine protective factors in this population, both interpersonal and intrapersonal, and to understand relations among them.

Shahid et al. (2021) found that relationship satisfaction was a protective factor with regard to fear of childbirth and depressive symptoms. Couple satisfaction has been shown to moderate the association between stressful life events and depressive symptom severity for fathers in the perinatal period (Kumar et al., 2022). The same, however, did not hold for mothers. Given these inconsistent findings, it may be that other factors are at play. How mothers relate to their emotional experiences may contribute to the association between couple satisfaction and well-being. The purpose of the present study is to examine psychological flexibility as a moderator of the association between couple satisfaction and perceived quality of life in women in their second or third trimester of pregnancy in the wake of COVID-19.

One hundred seven women (88% white, 75% heterosexual, 78% married, and 73% whose highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree) between the ages of 25-40 (M = 29.93, SD = 4.60) were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk in December 2022 as part of a larger study examining predictors of well-being in pregnant women. Participants completed a slightly modified version of the Couples Satisfaction Index (CSI; Funk & Rogge, 2007), the Quality of Life Scale (QoLs; Burckhardt & Anderson, 2003), and the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II; Bond et al., 2011). Data were analyzed with PROCESS for SPSS (Version 4.2; Hayes, 2022); we employed 10,000 bootstrapped samples and 95% confidence intervals. 

Results indicate a significant interaction effect between couples satisfaction and psychological flexibility, b = .1006, SE = .0485, t = 2.0754, p = .0404, [.0045-.1968]; the highest levels of psychological flexibility were associated with a nonsignificant association between couples satisfaction and quality of life. In other words, participants with lower levels of psychological flexibility were more vulnerable to the effects of dissatisfaction with their relationship partner. This finding suggests that approaches that foster the development of psychological flexibility, including acceptance and commitment therapy or training (ACT; Hayes et al., 2012) may buffer the effects of lower levels of relationship satisfaction on quality of life. Future studies should utilize more diverse samples and multimodal assessment and prospectively examine these processes, along with contextual factors including public health emergencies like COVID-19,  to further inform implications for prevention and intervention.