The parental stress and the development of babies

Abstract

Stress manifests itself as a reaction of the body in situations that are extremely difficult and exciting. The stress level of an individual is directly related to the number of changes it undergoes in a given time period (ELKIND, 1981; LUCARELLI, 2000 apud GOMES; BOSA, 2004). The birth of a child, despite being considered a normative event in the life cycle of a family, can be considered a source of stress because it requires care and individual, family, and professional reorganization (MOURA-RAMOS; CANAVARRO, 2007). This study will be emphasized the explanatory model of parental stress developed by Abidin (1992). According to this model, the main sources of stress and determinants of parental behavior are: (a) child characteristics and parental perceptions of child characteristics and their impact on the parental figure, (b) characteristics of the parental figure, and (c) situational stress of life, including life events that may influence parenting and lead to a more negative parental functioning(ABIDIN; SANTOS, 2003; ABIDIN, 1995 apud BAIÃO, 2009). Whereas, as highlighted by Minetto, Crepaldi, Bigras, and Moreira (2012), the child's development depends on the quality of interactions established in the family, study parental stress may help the understanding of this influence on the development of babies. This study aims to characterize the stress of mothers of infants and verify the influence upon the development of babies in the areas of Cognition, Motor Development, Socialization, Language, and Self Care. This study involves 50 mothers and their babies from four to five months old. The mothers will be identified in the extension project "Monitoring the development of infants: evaluation and guidance to parents" and invited to participle in this project. Data collection will be conducted in a consulting room at the Center for Applied Psychology (CPA) of UNESP-Bauru, in order to ensure privacy and favorable conditions for the implementation of the procedure. The process of data collection will be performed primarily an Initial Interview to collect sociodemographic information of the baby and his family. To assess parental stress will be used the Parental Stress Index (PSI) (Abidin, 1995). To evaluate the development of babies will be used the Inventory Portage Operated (IPO), (WILLIAMS; AIELLO, 2001). At the birth of babies, maternity Santa Isabel, in Bauru, SP, mothers will be invited to participate in the extension project and, if accepted the first call will be scheduled. In the first meeting is explained to mothers' phases of the project and informed the absence of cost and ensuring privacy if the data obtained are used in research and presented /published. Then they respond to the Initial Interview and the baby is assessed. In the evaluation of development in the 4th or 5th month of the baby, mothers are invited to participate in this survey. After getting accepted, participants will sign a Statement of Informed Consent in accordance with the standards of CONEP (196 \ 96). Then the "Parental Stress Index" will be applied. The data of the Initial Interview will be used to characterize the sample. Data on babies' development will be analyzed considering the behaviors present in the same directory of the fourth to fifth month. These results will be compared with the presence/absence of indicators of maternal stress. To study the correlation between variables will be used the Pearson correlation coefficient or the Spearman correlation coefficient. If comparisons between groups will be used the T-test of Student. (AU)