Date of Award

8-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School

College for Community Health

Department/Program

Counseling

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Leslie Kooyman

Committee Member

Matthew Shurts

Committee Member

Pablo Tinio

Abstract

This study examined how maternal attachment style, parity, race, and motherhood expectations, individually and in interaction, predicted the quality of the mother-infant bond during the postpartum period. Grounded in a maternal feminist framework, the study used a quantitative, cross-sectional correlational design. Postpartum mothers aged 20–39 (N = 87) completed validated measures of maternal attachment style, motherhood expectations, mother-infant bonding, and depressive symptoms. Multiple regression compared a Primary Model containing the four focal predictors and planned interaction terms with a Secondary Model that added maternal depressive symptoms as a covariate. Depressive symptoms emerged as the strongest single predictor of bonding, and the association between motherhood expectations and bonding was no longer statistically significant after depressive symptoms were entered. A significant Race × Parity interaction indicated a crossover pattern in predicted bonding scores between White and racial-minority mothers by parity status. Findings suggest that maternal bonding reflects the combined influence of psychological and structural factors and that depressive symptoms warrant routine attention in perinatal counseling. Implications include culturally responsive, relationship-centered assessment and intervention in counseling practice, integration of perinatal mental health content into counselor education and supervision, and advocacy addressing systemic contributors to maternal distress. Replication with larger, more diverse samples is needed, particularly for race-by-parity comparisons.

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