Communication Style: a clue to unplanned pregnancy

This investigation compared the communication patterns of women who had never been pregnant with those of women who had had two or more unplanned pregnancies. A six-part questionnaire assessing communication skills, social orientation and involvement, self-disclosure, physical accessibility and verbal defensiveness was administered to fifty-six paid subjects from family planning clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area. Significant differences in communication skills, depth of self-disclosure, physical accessibility, and verbal defensiveness were found. The study suggests that the communicative inadequacies in the women with multiple unplanned pregnancies may be critical factors in contraceptive failure.