Personal factors as determinants of motherhood emotion among HIV-positive women in HIV/AIDS referral centres in south-west Nigeria

Abstract

A glaring challenge facing women living with HIV/AIDS is emotional coping. Poor emotional stability can facilitate the risk of the disease progression and vertical transmission. This could further trigger a large scale HIV epidemic among children. This study investigated the direct and indirect influences of six psycho -social factors (locus of control, age, educational qualification, marital status, religion and socio - economic status) on motherhood emotion of HIV-positive women in South-west Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 1,653 participants in six HIV/AIDS referral centres for the study. The results showed that there were significant relationships among the six predictor variables in the study and they joi ntly predict motherhood emotion directly and indirectly. The composite effects amount to 3.957, with direct 2.369 and 1.588 indirect. The result showed positive direct effect 0.392 in educational background but decrease by -0.066 for every one standard deviation in age. The study concluded that, psycho-social factors had effects on motherhood emotion of HIV-positive women in the selected HIV/AIDS centres in South-west Nigeria.

Key Word: Motherhood Emotion, Vertical transmission, HIV/AIDS Referral Centres, South-West, Nigeria.