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Maternal expectations about infant development of pre‐term and full‐term infants: a cross‐national comparison
Author(s) -
van Beek Y.,
Genta M.L.,
Costabile A.,
Sansavini A.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
infant and child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.87
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1522-7219
pISSN - 1522-7227
DOI - 10.1002/icd.428
Subject(s) - term (time) , psychology , pessimism , developmental psychology , perspective (graphical) , developmental milestone , child development , full term , pregnancy , philosophy , physics , epistemology , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , biology , computer science , genetics
In three European regions (The Netherlands, Northern Italy and Southern Italy) we investigated whether mothers of healthy pre‐term infants ( n =92) adjust their expectations for the timing of developmental milestones in the first years of life as compared to mothers of full‐term infants ( n =140). We examined whether these adjustments could be seen as reflecting a pessimistic view, as would be predicted from the ‘prematurity stereotype’ perspective. Partial corrections for prematurity were regularly made, but no indications were found for an overly pessimistic view. Moreover, the differences between the regions in the anticipated timing of mastery of milestones were larger than the effects of prematurity. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.