Family functioning 2 to 4 years after preterm birth.

The purpose of the study was to determine if selected risk factors related to preterm birth continued to be associated with family functioning when preterm children were 2 to 4 years of age. A convenience sample of 55 mothers and 27 fathers participated in the survey. Parents completed the Family Dynamics Measure and the family APGAR. Multiple regression analyses were computed to examine the associations between the dependent variables for family functioning and the independent variables, which included child's developmental status, neonatal hospitalization length, adequacy of family economics, parental age, and marital status. Of these risk factors, longer neonatal hospitalizations continued to be associated with poorer family role functioning for mothers (R2 = .237, F = 2.43, p = .039).