Navigating Uncertainty: Maternal Anxiety, Caregiving and Meaning Making in Daughter’s Menstrual and Hormonal Health

Abstract

Mothers, as primary caregivers play a significant role in health management but still their emotional experiences remain underexplored, specially in Indian socio-cultural context. The study based on qualitative framework, investigated mother’s experiences, anxiety due to their daughter’s, menstrual and hormonal health concerns. Interviews were taken in a semi-structured format, taken across nine participants, bilingually, in both, Hindi and English. The transcripts were transcribed, translated and later manually coded. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyze data following Braun and Clarke’s (2006) approach. Five themes were made from the transcripts (1) maternal anxiety and emotional burden around menstrual and hormonal uncertainty, (2) caregiving through lifestyle regulation and preventive control, (3) navigating healthcare pathways, treatment ambiguity and medical trust, (4) mother-daughter dynamics and shared responsibility in health management and (5) socio-cultural stigma, meaning-making and maternal resilience. Evidence indicates that mothers experienced sustained anxiety, prospective fears about fertility and wellbeing and psycho, social vulnerability driven by the unpredictability of symptoms. Mothers applied pragmatic care, giving behaviors and knowledge focusing on routine, diet and exercise in combination with managing medical uncertainties and apprehensions surrounding hormone therapy. Their management of menstrual health was also informed by dyadic communication with daughters, cultural stigmas surrounding menstruation and silencing effects. In general, this study marks the psychosocial and relational effects of maternal experience with menstrual and hormonal health issues. These points to the importance of a more comprehensive, family, focused reproductive health care approach and particular attention to maternal mental health.