Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Jan-Feb:38:e53-e58.
doi: 10.1016/j.pedn.2017.10.006. Epub 2017 Oct 26.

Hope in Parents of Very-Low Birth Weight Infants and its Association with Parenting Stress and Quality of Life

Trond Nordheim  1 , Tone Rustøen  2 , Anne Lee Solevåg  3 , Milada Cvancarova Småstuen  4 , Britt Nakstad  5
Affiliations

Hope in Parents of Very-Low Birth Weight Infants and its Association with Parenting Stress and Quality of Life

Trond Nordheim et al. J Pediatr Nurs. 2018 Jan-Feb.

Abstract

Purpose: Being a parent of a very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) infant can be stressful. We aimed to describe parental hope 42months after the birth of a VLBW infant and determine whether there is an association between hope and parenting stress with quality of life (QoL), respectively.

Design and methods: Fifty-nine parents of VLBW infants completed questionnaires about hope, parenting stress and QoL. Pearson correlation coefficients (r) and linear regression models were used to examine the relationship between the selected variables. To compare groups, t-test was used and Cohen's d for effect size was calculated.

Results: Parents of VLBW infants were more hopeful than the general population (p<0.001). Parenting stress and hope were both independently associated with QoL (p<0.001). The subgroup of parents of infants with birth weight <1000g had less hope (p=0.041) and higher parenting stress (p=0.041) than parents of infants with birth weight 1000-1500g.

Conclusions: Hope and parenting stress were both independent determinants of QoL. Parents of the presumably sickest infants had less hope and higher parenting stress than parents of VLBW infants with a birth weight over 1000g. Hope should be further explored as a coping mechanism in parents of VLBW infants.

Practice implications: The clinical implications of the strong association between hope, parenting stress and QoL remain to be determined, but reducing stress and strengthening hope seem to be important. This should be taken into account both at hospital discharge and at follow-up, especially for lower-birth-weight infants.

Keywords: Hope; Parenting stress; Parents; Premature; Quality of life; Very low birth weight (VLBW).

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

LinkOut - more resources