The pregnancy intention to have a second child and antenatal depressive symptoms in Chinese women under the new two-child-per-couple policy

Abstract Background: Few studies investigated the association between the pregnancy intention to have a second child and antenatal depressive symptoms.The aim of this study was to explore the association between the pregnancy intention to have a second child by pregnant women’s own desires, pregnant women’s husband own desires, parents who want to grandchild desires, couple’s concordance desires and antenatal depressive symptoms. Methods: A total of 306 participants who completed questionnaire were included in our analysis. Antenatal depressive symptom was assessed using the Chinese version of Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. Logistic regression models were used to estimate the association between the pregnancy intention to have a second child by pregnant women’s own desires, pregnant women’s husband own desires, parents who want to grandchild desires and antenatal depressive symptoms. Results: the prevalence of antenatal depressive symptoms was 36.3% among the second child pregnant women. Of the 306 participants, the proportion of the pregnancy intention to have a second child by pregnant women’s own desires, pregnant women’s husband desires, parents who want to grandchild desires and couple’s concordance desires was 8.5%, 8.5%, 10.8% and 72.2% respectively. Compared with the pregnancy intention by couple’s concordance desires, pregnant women’s own desires to have a second child had higher risk of antenatal depressive symptoms after adjustment for potential confounders (OR=4.560, 95%CI: 1.603,12.973). No association was found between the pregnancy intention to have a second child by pregnant women’s husband own desires, parents who want to grandchild desires and antenatal depressive symptoms after adjustment for confounders (OR=1.996, 95%CI:0.781,5.105; OR=0.744, 95%CI: 0.306,1.811, respectively). Conclusion: These findings suggest the pregnancy intention to have a second child by pregnant women own’s desires may be a risk factors for antenatal depressive symptoms among two-child pregnant women. A qualitative study should be carried out to investigate the real reason for the intention by pregnant women’s own desires and antenatal depressive symptoms in the future, because of this study was a quantitative study. Key words: pregnancy intention; antenatal depressive symptoms; second child