Préparation à la naissance et à la parentalité : l’effet de Halo ou quand les femmes enceintes éduquées éduquent à leur tour leur conjoint.

Introduction: Antenatal education (PNP) in France is a 7-session, one-hour education program delivered by midwives to all pregnant women who are volunteers. Spouses can participate, but in the majority of cases, the transmission of knowledge and skills is up to the mother. The existence of this “secondary” education has been demonstrated in the context of therapeutic patient education (TPE) under the name of “Halo effect”. We wished here to verify the existence of such an effect in the context of the PNP. Method: Pregnant women who participated in a PNP in 2021 and their spouses were given two separate questionnaires to be filled in during the maternity stay, following the birth of their child. The replies of mothers (m) and fathers (p) were compared. Results: 96 mothers (mean age: 31 years) and 93 fathers (mean age: 34 years) answered the questionnaires. 97% of mothers (m) declared having transmitted knowledge/skills to fathers (p), which 96% of them confirmed. For the fathers interviewed, this transmission allowed them to better understand obstetrical screening examinations (m = 78%; p = 80%), physical changes during pregnancy (m = 75%; p = 82%), the stress of becoming a parent (m = 74%; p = 81%), the choice of breastfeeding or bottle feeding (m = 78%; p = 85%) as well as changes in parental sleep with a newborn (m = 80%; p = 82%). This learning allowed fathers to provide significant help to the mother during delivery and birth (m = 83%; p = 93%), in the affective relationship with the baby (m = 86%; p = 89%) as well as in its daily management (m = 82%; p = 82%). Mothers and fathers expressed concordant opinions, with no statistically significant difference. Both wanted the father to participate in PNP, but only partially (m = 62%; p = 51%). Discussion and conclusion: Our study confirms that there is indeed a Halo effect. The mothers trained in the PNP in turn educated the father and earned for themselves useful help on a daily basis during the gestational period and, after, in the postpartum period. The Halo effect, which is characterized by a diffusion of knowledge and skills beyond the first beneficiaries of education, opens several research perspectives and must be taken into account in our reflection on the true purpose of health education programs.