Objective: family resilience refers to the ability of a family group to adapt to challenging circumstances.
For families residing in the inner-city, the concept of resilience is of particular salience as these families
often encounter multiple stressors. The purpose of this study was to determine the factors associated
with low family resilience during pregnancy among inner-city women.
Design: secondary analysis of data from a case-control study of factors related to inadequate
antenatal care.
Setting/participants: participants consisted of 603 postpartum women who gave birth to a live infant and
resided in one of eight inner-city neighbourhoods in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Methods: participants were designated as having low family resilience (n¼155) or moderate to high
family resilience (n¼448) based on scores on the Family Hardiness Index. Univariate analyses were
conducted to explore the association between a variety of factors during pregnancy and family resilience,
and crude odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. Factors significant at po.10
were then entered into a multivariate logistic regression model, yielding adjusted ORs and 95% CI.
Results: the following factors were significantly associated with low family resilience among pregnant
inner-city women in the final model: maternal age o25 years (AOR 1.69), low self-esteem (AOR 2.82),
high perceived stress (AOR 3.01), alcohol use during pregnancy (AOR 3.20), and low interpersonal
support (AOR 6.24).
Key conclusions: inner-city women who are young or have low self-esteem, high perceived stress, low
interpersonal support, or who use alcohol during pregnancy are more likely to report lower levels of
family resilience.
Implications for practice: midwives have the opportunity to develop ongoing relationships with their
clients and families. As such, they are in an excellent position to understand the specific needs and
strengths of individual families and foster the abilities of these families to strengthen and support
resilience.