First-time Mothers and Their Partners
Conditions
Keywords
Universal, Prevention, Parental competence, Socioemotional, Public health nurses
Brief summary
In Understanding Your Baby first-time parents receive research-based knowledge on how to interpret their infants' socioemotional needs based on their behavior, and how to meet their infants' socioemotional needs in accordance with their developmental stage. This information is delivered to parents at routine home visits by public health nurses, who are trained in the research base behind the program, and using cue cards and short video clips, which concretely exemplify how infants signal their socioemotional needs and inspire to positive activities between parents and their infants. The aim of Understanding Your Baby is to support infant socioemotional development by increasing parents' abilities at perceiving, understanding, and responding to their infant's socioemotional signals. Evaluation is based on a parallel group study, with half of the participants receiving care as usual and half of the participants receiving care as usual and Understanding Your Baby. The primary outcome is parental sense of competence and secondary outcomes are parental stress and child socioemotional development.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALUnderstanding Your Baby
Research-based knowledge on the understanding and meeting of the baby's socioemotional needs is delivered to the parents systematically by public health visitors based on a manual, cue cards, and video clips at four time points from 1 to 10 months postpartum.
BEHAVIORALPostnatal care as usual
In accordance with Danish national guidelines, health visitors visit families during the infants first year of life, where they weigh and measure the infant. Further, they offer individual guidance and support regarding for instance feeding, sleeping, how to stimulate the infant, and the developmental stages that the infant goes through.
Sponsors
University of Copenhagen
Nordea-fonden
Study design
Allocation
NON_RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
SUPPORTIVE_CARE
Masking
NONE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
* First-time mother or father/partner * Singleton pregnancy * Mother living together with the baby * Mother living in the Danish municipalities of Køge, Hvidovre, Høje-Taastrup, Frederiksberg, Lolland, Holbæk, Næstved, Middelfart, Nyborg or Aalborg. * Understands Danish or English
Exclusion criteria
* Under the age of 18 when the child is born
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Maternal Parenting Competence | T4 (infant age 11-11.5 months) | Maternal Parenting Competence is assessed via self-report using the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale (PSOC; Gibaud-Wallston, 1977). |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Maternal and Paternal Parenting Competence | T1 (infant age 2-2.5 months), T2 (infant age 4-4.5 months), and T3 (infant age 7-7.5 months) | Maternal and paternal parenting competence is assessed via self-report using the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale (PSOC; Gibaud-Wallston, 1977). |
| Maternal and Paternal Parenting Stress | T2 (infant age 4-4.5 months) and T4 (infant age 11-11.5 months) | Maternal and paternal parenting stress is assessed via self-report using the Parenting Stress Index™, Third Edition Short Form (PSI-3-SF; Abidin, 1995). |
| Maternal and Paternal Parental Mentalizing | T2 (infant age 4-4.5 months), T3 (infant age 7-7.5 months), and T4 (infant age 11-11.5 months) | Maternal and paternal parental mentalizing is assessed via self-report using the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ; Luyten, Mayes, Nijssens, \& Fonagy, 2017). |
| Maternal and Paternal Mind-Mindedness | T1 (infant age 2-2.5 months), T2 (infant age 4-4.5 months), T3 (infant age 7-7.5 months), and T4 (infant age 11-11.5 months) | Maternal and paternal mind-mindedness are assessed using a written response to the first question from the "Describe you child" interview (Meins et al., 1998). Mind-mindedness is coded according to the criteria specified in the mind-mindedness coding manual (Meins \& Fernyhough, 2015). |
| Maternal, paternal and child screen use | T1 (infant age 2-2.5 months), T2 (infant age 4-4.5 months), T3 (infant age 7-7.5 months), and T4 (infant age 11-11.5 months) | Maternal, paternal and child screen use is measured using a questionnaire developed specifically for this research project. |
| Infant socio-emotional development | T4 (infant age 11-11.5 months) | Infant socio-emotional development is assessed via parental report using the Ages \& Stages Questionnaires®: Social-Emotional, Second Edition (ASQ:SE-2; Squires, Bricker, \& Twombly, 2015). |
Countries
Denmark
Contacts
PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATORMette S. Væver
University of Copenhagen
Outcome results
None listed