Anxiety and Worry During the Perinatal Period: Why They Cannot Be Ignored

This chapter focuses on perinatal anxiety, addressing the content of worries, pathological versus typical anxiety, and correlates of anxiety. It also delves into cultural conceptions of clinically significant worry or anxiety during pregnancy and the postpartum period, specifically addressing the content of Latina Spanish-speaking women’s worries in different contexts, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Several studies emphasize that the environments of pregnant Latinas present unique characteristics that may have implications for maternal and infant well-being, highlighting the cultural value of motherhood as a desirable and respectable role in Latino cultures and a woman’s responsibility for her pregnancy and her assumed sacrifice. Research conducted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic points to new pregnancy worries about the uncertainty associated with the disease, highlighting concerns about contagion, the effects of the vaccine, the consequences of COVID-19 on mother and baby, and the difficulty of adequate healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth. Specific research carried out on pregnant Latinas reveals similar concerns, which seems to indicate a certain “universality” of COVID-19-related pregnancy worries relatively independent of country or culture. However, COVID-19-related pregnancy worries may increase depending on the common pregnancy worries in one’s culture and context. Thus, during the COVID-19 pandemic, concern about adequate healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth may become more intense in Hispanic women of immigrant origin since this is already a common concern (i.e., medical care) among these women.