The Effect of Cognitive Group Counseling on Women’s Motivation for Childbearing-an Interventional Study

Background: Postponing parenthood is associated with decreased number of offspring and increased pregnancy risks. Objectives: The present study aimed to investigate the effect of cognitive group counseling on childless couples' decision motivation for childbearing and preconception checkup. Methods: This experimental study was performed on 62 fertile women referred to health care centers in Qom. Signing the written consent form, the participants who were selected by the convenience sampling method entered the study. Childbearing Questionnaire (CBQ) was used to collect data. 6 cognitive group counseling sessions were conducted for the intervention group while the control group did not receive any training except one session on the disadvantages of postponed childbearing by the midwife under the supervision of the researcher. After the intervention, childbearing motivation was evaluated in both groups. The samples were also evaluated in one and two months after the intervention to see whether they have referred for pre-pregnancy checkups. The data were analyzed by SPSS20 using chi-square, and independent t-test. P-value was considered to be less than 0.05. Results: The results showed that after the intervention, the mean of Positive Childbearing Motivation (PCM) in the intervention group was significantly higher than that of the control group and the mean of Negative Childbearing Motivation (NCM) was significantly lower than that of the control group (p <0.001). The frequency of booking pre-pregnancy checkups two months after intervention was 69.57% and 10% in the intervention and control groups, respectively. Conclusion: Counseling could be more effective to motivate women to start booking for prepregnancy checkups.