DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF MATERNAL AMBIVALENCE SCALE (MAS)

Abstract

In most cultures, including Pakistan, the image of motherhood is portrayed as a total sacrifice, unconditional love, selflessness, where mothers do not have space for other emotions that may surface during motherhood, like frustration, resentment, emotional conflict etc. The social silence of ambivalence is further reinforced by the absence of a psychometrically sound instrument measuring the ambivalence in a mother's cultural context, as most of the instruments developed are western origins and have demonstrated to measure parenting stress and burnout. This was addressed in the present study by developing and validation of Maternal Ambivalence Scale (MAS) which was grounded on themes arising from Pakistani mothers' lived narratives. Expert panel review for content, clarity and cultural appropriateness of the items, and pilot testing, resulted in a final item pool of 78 items. The scale was administered to 280 women between the ages of 22–45 years with different education and work status from Pakistan using convenience sampling technique both in paper and online. The 21 item final scale was derived from a pool of items using item-total correlation and iterative exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with Varimax rotation. The KMO measure of sampling adequacy was .819 and the Bartlett's test of sphericity was significant, meaning the data was suitable for factor extraction. The results showed that there were five factors: Role Burden and Identity Depletion, Perfectionism-Driven Role Overload, Shame-Based Parenting Anxiety and Perceived Failure, Emotional Duality in Maternal Experience and Obligation-Driven Maternal Strain, with total variance being 76.44%. Convergent validity was determined by positive correlation with the Guilt About Parenting Scale and divergent validity was determined by a negative correlation with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Results suggest that the MAS is a reliable, valid and culturally sensitive instrument that can be used for assessing maternal ambivalence among Pakistani mothers. The MAS is the first validated instrument of this kind in this cultural context for researchers and clinical practitioners to systematically explore and psychoeducate and/or offer therapeutic support for the hitherto unspoken emotional ambivalence of motherhood