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Parental stress and toddler behaviour at age 18 months after pre‐term birth
Author(s) -
Jackson Karin,
Ternestedt BrittMarie,
Magnuson Anders,
Schollin Jens
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
acta pædiatrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.772
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1651-2227
pISSN - 0803-5253
DOI - 10.1111/j.1651-2227.2007.00015.x
Subject(s) - toddler , medicine , gestational age , pediatrics , developmental psychology , pregnancy , psychology , genetics , biology
Aim: To describe the parent's judgement of their own stress and the child's behaviour at 18 months after pre‐term birth and if there are any correlations between these assessments, the morbidity in the neonatal period, the gestational age at birth and the occurrence of twin/triplet births. Method: Twenty‐one mothers and 19 fathers of pre‐term infants answered two questionnaires, The Swedish Parenthood Stress Questionnaire (SPSQ) and The Toddler Behaviour Questionnaire (TBQ). Results: Mothers scored somewhat higher than fathers concerning parental stress. Parents with twins/triplets and of children born in gestational week 25–30 felt more stress, though the differences were not statistically significant. High‐risk diagnoses did not correlate to any of the dimensions. The parents judged the behaviour of the children similar except that parents of children born in gestational week 25–30 scored significantly higher for intensity/activity (p = 0.002). The correlation between parental stress and judgement of their children's behaviour did not show any significant association except for the dimension regularity in TBQ (p = 0.016). Conclusions: The mothers' and fathers' assessments of their own stress and of the children's behaviour were similar. Parents of very pre‐term children felt more stress and judged the children somewhat delayed in their social behaviours, probably due to their low gestational age.