Another limitation to this research is that we were unable to suitably control for or verify "difficult" pregnancies. We did not have independent corroboration of women's reported symptoms or reported ratings of the ease or dif-ficulty of their pregnancies. Our sole measure of the ease or difficulty of women's pregnancies was their self-report. That said, the LOT-R measures what is referred to as dispositional (trait) optimism/pessimism -or something that is seen as relatively stable over time. Other measures of situational (state) optimism may have been more responsive to changes over time and may have been influenced by easy or difficult pregnancies. However, for the purposes of this research, we believe that a measure of dispositional optimism/pessimism is the most appropriate and that it should not have been differentially influenced by women's pregnancies. This is corroborated by the finding that despite reporting the easiest pregnancies of the three groups of women, Chinese women in our sample reported the lowest levels of optimism.