The decision to have a child can be perceived as indecisive, and women who experience maternal indecisiveness avoid pregnancy. However, as women age, fertility anxiety also increases. The investigators aimed to investigate the mediating role of aging anxiety in the relationship between maternal ambivalence and avoidance of pregnancy in women.

The decision to have a child can be perceived as indecisive, and women who experience maternal indecisiveness avoid pregnancy. However, as women age, fertility anxiety also increases. We aimed to investigate the mediating role of aging anxiety in the relationship between maternal ambivalence and avoidance of pregnancy in women. Data collection tools included a "Personal Information Form," "the Maternal Ambivalence Scale," "the Desire to Avoid Pregnancy Scale," and "The Relational Aging Anxiety Scale." Regression models assessed the association between Maternal Ambivalence Scale, Desire to Avoid Pregnancy Scale and Relational Aging Anxiety Scale. SPSS Process v.3.4 analysis was performed to make a mediator effect assessment. It was found that the model was significant and 3% of the desire to avoid pregnancy was explained by maternal ambivalence (F=9.088; p=0.003) (n=300). Since the confidence interval (95% CI [0.019; 0.096]) of the indirect effect did not include "0", a mediating effect was detected. It was found that the model was significant and 17.6% of the desire to avoid pregnancy was explained by the doubts sub-dimension (F=9.477; p=0.002). Since the confidence interval (95% CI [0.024; 0.200]) of the indirect effect did not include "0", a mediating effect was identified. The collective affinity for older people sub-dimension had a partial mediating effect between rejection and the desire to avoid pregnancy. Results indicated that 20.5% of the total effect on the desire to avoid pregnancy was provided by the mediating effect. It was found that women's perceptions of aging caused maternal ambivalence and that this situation was effective in avoiding pregnancy.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Volunteering to participate in the study,
• Having no communication barriers,
• Age ≥20 years, and
• Being married.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Unwilling to participate in the study,
• Having a psychiatric health problem according to medical records,
• Being single, and
• Being pregnant.

The population of the study consisted of women aged ≥20 years who applied to the obstetrics and gynecology clinic of XXX hospital for any reason. A literature review was conducted and a power analysis was performed on the G-power 3.9.1 software to calculate the sample size following a literature review (Guney et al., 2022; Gipson et al., 2021). The minimum sample size required to expect a significant relationship with a large effect size (Cohen's d=0.0784314) in terms of women's tendency to avoid pregnancy was found to be 300 individuals (α=0.05, 1-β=0.95). Totally, 312 women were reached, but 12 were not included in the study as they dropped out. Eventually, the study sample consisted of 300 women.