The relationship between family functioning, life events, family structure, and the outcome of pregnancy.

A prospective study was undertaken to evaluate the relationship of family functioning, family structure, and life events with pregnancy outcome. Family functioning was assessed utilizing the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales (FACES) and the Family APGAR. One hundred twenty-five infants were delivered with a mean birth weight of 3,283 g and a mean gestational age of 281.2 days. Listwise deletion of missing data reduced the study sample to 102 mother-infant pairs with no bias in the dependent or predetermined variables in the subsample. Birth weight was regressed on medical, anthropometric, risk-behavior, sociodemographic, and life-events variables, which together explained 42 percent of the variance. Family functioning was found to contribute an additional 7 percent of the variance (adjusted R2 = 0.49). Family structure accounted for 4.5 percent of the variance in birth weight, and life events added 5 percent. As a complementary analysis, infant birth weight was regressed on the medical, anthropometric, sociodemographic, risk-behavior, and life-events variables, and the residuals from this equation were then regressed on the measures of family functioning. Again, abnormal family functioning proved to be a powerful and significant contributor to the explained variance.