Parental stress and toddler behaviour at age 18 months after pre-term birth

Authors: Jackson, Karin; Ternestedt, Britt-Marie; Magnuson, Anders¹; Schollin, Jens²

Source: Acta Pædiatrica, Volume 96, Number 2, February 2007 , pp. 227-232(6)

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Abstract:

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.

Keywords: Parental stress; Pre-term infant; Toddler behaviour

Document Type: Regular article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2007.00015.x

Affiliations: 1: Clinical Research Centre, Örebro University Hospital, Örebro, Sweden 2: Department of Paediatrics, Örebro University Hospital, Örebro, Sweden

Publication date: 2007-02-01

Parental stress and toddler behaviour at age 18 months after pre-term birth

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