Maternal personality change from pregnancy until 12 months postpartum: Associations with parenting.

Although many studies have shown that personality-as a relatively stable characteristic-is a predictor of parenting behavior, personality changes occur during adulthood. Therefore, we do not know whether previous findings based on personality assessed (long) after the birth of the child indicate that personality as assessed before the child is born predicts behaviors parents eventually display. Possibly, personality changes are additionally predictive for parenting behavior. With this three-wave longitudinal study, we aimed to examine whether mothers' personality change from pregnancy to postpartum predicts maternal parenting behavior above and beyond personality traits as assessed during pregnancy. A sample of 239 pregnant women participated in the study (