Psychosocial factors associated with mother–infant bonding in Indonesian samples

Background: Mother–infant bonding is an important factor that supports an infant’s socio-emotional development. Therefore, every family member should acknowledge these processes, especially in an extended family set-up like in Indonesia. The general study objective was to predict several socio-demographic factors associated with mother–infant bonding in Indonesian samples. Method: This is a cross-sectional study. The participants included 168 mothers who had infants aged 0 to 36 months and willingly joined the study by signing the informed consent form. The Indonesian version of mother–infant bonding scale and a socio-demographic questionnaire were administered to all mothers. Logistic regression was applied to identify the socio-demographic factors that had any association with the mother–infant bonding scale. The data were analyzed using the SPSS program version 21 for Mac. Results: The study showed that 13.1% of the participants were categorized as having a moderate-to-high level of impaired mother–infant bonding. Logistic regression analysis showed that vaginal or normal delivery mode was 4.07 (95% CI [1.27, 13.09]) times more likely to exhibit low levels of impaired mother–infant bonding compared to a cesarean section. The model explained 18.6% (Nagelkerke R²) of the variance in impaired mother–infant bonding and accurately classified 86.9% of cases. Conclusion: The findings support prior studies that have been conducted in several countries. Psychoeducation on supporting mother–infant bonding may consist of several topics, such as the advantages of vaginal delivery mode and the importance of family support. It may be delivered in the early adulthood period and, hopefully, basic knowledge during those periods may help strengthen the understanding of mother–infant dyad issues among all family members.