Rainbow babies: Trauma and parenting after pregnancy loss

Parents with a history of pregnancy loss may be at greater risk for less secure attachment (Côté-Arsenault et al., 2020) and likely experience parenting differently than those without pregnancy loss. However, existing literature regarding pregnancy loss and parenting has focused nearly exclusively on attachment and has produced inconsistent findings. The present study aims to expand the scope of previously studied parenting indices by examining the role of pregnancy loss in relation to beliefs about parenthood as well as levels of parental support, satisfaction, involvement, and limit-setting. Cumulative trauma was included in the model to assess the role of trauma exposure.

Two hundred twenty-one parents (M_age = 41.69, SD = 12.73; 72.9% female) with at least one living child were recruited from either Amazon's Mechanical Turk or a midwestern university.

Pregnancy loss was associated with lower levels of parental support, but did not evince links with parenting perceptions or other aspects of the parent-child relationship. Mothers reported receiving less support than fathers. Racial minorities endorsed less positive child perceptions and lower levels of parental satisfaction and involvement. Cumulative trauma, surprisingly, was unrelated to all of the parenting indices.

Pregnancy loss may be related to lower perceptions of parental support, but may not be tied to parenting beliefs or aspects of the parent-child relationship. Future research should further consider context of the loss experience to better unpack how pregnancy loss may be related to specific parenting factors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).