A survey of contemporary antenatal parental education in Sweden : What is offered to expectant parents and midwives’ experiences

Objective: To explore how antenatal parental education is provided in southern Sweden and midwives’ experiences of it. Methods: A cross-sectional survey with data collection from 66 antenatal clinics and 189 midwives during 2016. Descriptive and comparative statistics, chi-square and t-tests, were used to present the findings. Results: Antenatal parental education was most commonly offered in small parental groups and the number of hours provided varied between two and ten (mean 5.8) hours. A common and structured program for the sessions was used at 37.3% of the clinics. Normal birth, pain relief, partner role during birth, breastfeeding advantages and breastfeeding initiation were the topics most extensively covered. Topic coverage was in 12 topics, mostly related to the time after birth, lower than midwives’ rated importance of the topic: p-values between 0.05 and