Prevalence and Predictors of "Nesting"

Throughout ancestral times, women faced significant adaptive challenges during pregnancy, and thus evolution may have selected for psychological mechanisms designed to help women prepare for birth and motherhood. Previous researchers have conceptualized such mechanisms as comprising a form of “nesting,” which may consist primarily of a tendency to be highly selective in one’s social relationships and to prepare a safe physical space for childbirth (Anderson & Rutherford, 2013). The current study was aimed at replicating and extending previous evidence for nesting. Consistent with previous work, results demonstrated that pregnant women engaged in more nesting than nonpregnant women, and that degree of nesting increased across week of gestation. Among pregnant women, high levels of germ aversion and having relatively high socioeconomic status (SES) were both associated with high levels of nesting. High levels of progesterone were not responsible for observed variability in nesting. Although we measured a number of life history-related variables, none of those variables predicted nesting within pregnant women. The present work suggests that nesting is a pervasive phenomenon among pregnant women. Future directions are discussed.