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


METHODS
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.
Jackson
Karin
K
Department of Health Science, Orebro University, Orebro, Sweden. karin.jackson@hi.oru.se
Ternestedt
Britt-Marie
BM
Magnuson
Anders
A
Schollin
Jens
J
D002657:Child Development; D005220:Fathers / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D011247:Pregnancy; D047928:Premature Birth / Q000523:psychology*; D012647:Self-Assessment; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000209:etiology*