Relationship discord at childbirth and parental postpartum depressive symptoms 435 Table III. Relationship discord for mothers and fathers with and without depressive symptoms, calculated with the Mann–Whitney test. EPDS cut-off of >9. Mothers Fathers With depressive symptoms Without depressive symptoms Mean rank Mean rank With depressive symptoms Without depressive symptoms Mean rank Mean rank 130.46 131.28 127.51 134.30 129.93 133.33 132.73 131.63 130.97 132.84 132.32 131.22 131.22 127.37 P value 0.380 0.065 0.108 0.003** 0.096 0.002** 0.017* 0.092 0.170 0.032* 0.034* 0.124 0.135 0.004** 102.64 93.14 121.45 109.23 104.83 109.36 98.30 111.48 83.59 88.59 84.71 82.86 99.93 67.74 128.78 129.69 122.59 128.15 123.54 127.06 128.66 125.77 129.54 130.13 129.24 130.67 127.97 118.79 P value 0.059 0.009** 0.929 0.182 0.192 0.229 0.035* 0.322 0.001** 0.004** 0.002** 0.001** 0.048* 0.002** Item content Handling ﬁnances Recreational activities Religion Friends Conventions (correct or proper behaviour) Philosophy of life Socializing with family and friends Aims and life goals Time together Important decisions Household tasks Leisure time interests and activities Decisions regarding career/personal development Total DCS score 121.32 110.90 112.24 101.07 111.84 100.20 106.32 112.09 115.57 108.77 108.46 114.24 114.23 92.73 Note: Signiﬁcant p-values are bold-faced. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.* scored higher discord compared to the mothers with- out depressive symptoms and all fathers concerning the items Friends and Philosophy of life. However, fathers with self-reported depressive symptoms per- ceived higher level of discord compared to the fathers without depressive symptoms and all mothers, regard- ing the items Recreational activities, Time together, Leisure time interests and activities, and Decisions regard- ing career/personal development (Table III). Discussion The ﬁndings indicated differences in perceived levels of discord between mothers and fathers regarding the issues: Recreational activities, Friends, Aims and life goals, Time together, Household tasks, Leisure time interests and activities, and Decisions regarding career/ personal development. For all of the items, except Household tasks, the fathers estimated that the couple disagreed more than the mothers did. An explanation may be that mothers actually expect to do more chores than fathers (40). Another explanation might be that the father thinks that the spouse is more annoyed about the household than she really is. This demands knowledge about issues where parents disagree and about how to encourage the couples to communicate about those issues. An interesting ﬁnding was that the parents did not perceive that they disagreed about the issue Handling ﬁnances, while previous research has concluded that disagree- ments about ﬁnances are a major source of marital conﬂicts (41). The results of the present study provide further evidence that postpartum depressive symptoms among both mothers and fathers are common. In our study, 16.5% of the mothers and 8.7% of the fathers self-reported depressive symptoms, which was in accordance with previous studies (4–6). Our results indicated that nearly a quarter (23%) of the children had at least one parent with postpartum depressive symptoms. According to Pinheiro et al. at least one parent experienced depressive symptoms in 29% of the couples studied (18). For a young child, to live with one or both parents suffering from depressive symptoms can have a negative effect on the parent– infant interaction and the child’s behavioural and vocabulary development (12–14). In the present study, there was a correlation between marital discord and perceived depressive symptoms. This was consistent with previous research which found that higher levels of depressive symptoms were correlated with lower levels of