ORIGINAL ARTICLE Correlation between the parenthood self-efficacy of pregnant women and their prenatal adaptations in a middle-income country Hilal Yıldırım 1 & Behice Erci 1 Received: 22 September 2017 /Accepted: 29 January 2018 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Aim The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between pregnant women’ s parenthood self-efficacy and their prenatal adaptations in a middle-income country by using a descriptive correlational research method. Objectives and methods The subjects of the study comprised 220 women in the last trimester of their pregnancy. Each woman had one or more children aged between 1 and 3 years and received health care from one of the ten community health centres in Turkey where this study took place. The researcher did not use sampling because the purpose of the study was to include the entire population of pregnant women from these community health centres. Eventually, 212 of the 220 women participated in the study and the researcher reached 95% of the population. The data were collected from the participants when they visited the community health centres between 25 July 2014 and 1 December 2014. The data analysis used correlation and regression analysis. Results The study showed that the participants had medium-level prenatal adaptation and parenthood self-efficacy. In addition, there was a statistically significant relationship between prenatal adaptation and parenthood self-efficacy. At the same time, participants’ demographic characteristics also influenced their prenatal adaptation and parenthood self-efficacy scores. Conclusions (1) This study found that increasing the parenthood self-efficacy levels of pregnant women improves their adapta- tion to the prenatal period. (2) The participants displayed a medium level of prenatal adaptation and parenting self-efficacy. (3) The demographic characteristics of the participants affected their prenatal adaptation and self-efficacy levels for parenting tasks. In addition to improving the prenatal adjustment by increasing the parenting self-efficacy of pregnant women, the government should arrange programmes that will enhance their parenting self-efficacy. Keywords Pregnancy . Adaptation to pregnancy . Prenatal self-evaluation . Self-efficacy Introduction To achieve real social and economic development and create a healthy society, it is important that governments and other stakeholders address the health problems of mothers and chil- dren, as this group comprises the majority of the population and faces several risks to good health (Darvill et al. 2010; Egata et al. 2014). A woman should be healthy, plan her pregnancy con- sciously, have a high level of self-efficacy, and protect and improve her health so that her children are born and raised in a healthy environment. Studies have reported that parents’ perceptions of their own self-efficacy provide a good prediction of parental behaviours and that parents with a perception of high self-efficacy apply more suitable parenting practices (Coleman and Karraker 2000; Coleman and Karraker 2003; Nystrom and Ohrling 2004). Coleman and Karraker (2000, 2003) investigated the rela- tion between the mother’ s parenting abilities and the child’ s growth and behaviours and found a direct link between the mother’ s perception of self-efficacy and the child’ s growth and negative behaviours (avoidance from mother, submis- sion). Nyström and Ohrling (2004) found a relation between the mother’ s high self-efficacy and the quietness of the child. An infant’ s stress was associated with the mother’ s low self- * Hilal Yıldırım firat.hilal@inonu.edu.tr Behice Erci behice.erci@inonu.edu.tr 1 Department of Public Health Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, Inonu University, 44280 Malatya, Turkey Journal of Public Health: From Theory to Practice https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-018-0903-y