Rethinking Stress in Parents of Preterm Infants: A Meta-Analysis

Renske Schappin, Lex Wijnroks, Monica M A T Uniken Venema and Marian J Jongmans

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 2, 1-19

Abstract: Background: With improved medical outcome in preterm infants, the psychosocial situation of their families is receiving increasing attention. For parents, the birth of a preterm infant is generally regarded as a stressful experience, and therefore many interventions are based on reducing parental stress. Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether parents of children born preterm experience more stress than parents of term-born children, which would justify these interventions. This meta-analysis provides a comprehensive account of parental stress in parents of preterm infants, from birth of the infant through to their adolescence. Mean levels of stress in specific domains of family functioning were investigated, and stress levels in parents of preterm and term infants, and fathers and mothers of preterm infants, were compared. Furthermore, we investigated moderators of parental stress. Methods and Findings: A random-effects meta-analysis was conducted including 38 studies describing 3025 parents of preterm (

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0054992 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 54992&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0054992

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0054992

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().