| Summary: | The impact of childbirth is widely regarded as a 'normal crisis', with the impact on a couples relationship being generally reported as negative, particularly for women. The impact of the 'crisis' of premature birth and the consequent extensive period of infant hospitalisation in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) on the parental relationship has been little researched. It was hypothesised that mothers and fathers of premature infants would report lower levels of dyadic adjustment than mothers and fathers of full term infants, and that the mothers of premature infants would report lower levels of adjustment than their spouses. In this study the mothers and fathers of healthy full term and hospitalised prematurely born infants completed Spanier's (1976) Dyadic Adjustment Scale immediately following the birth of their baby and again at six to eight weeks post-discharge. The dyadic adjustment total and sub-scale scores were compared for the four groups. Semi-structured interviews with mothers and fathers of premature infants individually at follow-up, on the scores of marital stress in the NICU, were transcribed and their content analysed. The findings and their implications were discussed.
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