Abstract:
The purposes of this descriptive research were to examine maternal role attainment, to examine the relationship between anxiety, self esteem, perception of infant cues and social support and to determine the predictors of maternal role attainment in low birth weight infant mothers. The subjects of this study were 100 low birth weight infant mothers who were selected through inclusion criteria method. Data were collected by using demographic questionnaire, Anxiety, Self esteem, Perception of infant cues, Social support and Maternal role attainment questionnaire. The instruments were content validated and tested for reliability. The cronbach's alpha were between .80 and .89. The statistics used in this study were percentage, mean, standard deviation, Pearson's product moment correlation and multiple regression analysis. The result revealed that: 1.The mean score of maternal role attainment in low birth weight infant mothers was good ( x = 3.27 , S.D. = .332 ) 2.Self esteem, Social support related to maternal role attainment in low birth weight infant mothers were positively significant (r = .684, .579 , p<.05 at respectively) However, Perception of infant cues and anxiety not associated with maternal role attainment in low birth weight infant mothers (r = -.195, .037, p>.05 at respectively) 3. Self esteem, Social support, Perception of infant cues and anxiety were found to contribute significantly to the prediction of maternal role attainment in low birth weight infant mothers. these predictors accounted for 62.8 percent of the variance (R2 = .628, F = 40.062, P<.05 ) The equation derived from regression analysis showed as follows: Z maternal role attainment= .538 (Self esteem) + .397 (Social support) -.184 (Perception of infant cues) - .163 (anxiety)