Psychosocial Factors and Preterm Birth Among Black Mothers and Fathers

Objective: Black women are more likely to live in disadvantaged neighborhoods and experience racial discrimination and psychological stress compared with White women. These factors have been related to preterm birth (PTB). However, research is limited on the associations of disadvantaged neighborhoods, racial discrimination, and psychological stress among expectant Black fathers and PTB. This review focuses on what is known about psychosocial factors in relation to PTB among Black parents. Methods: The Scopus database was used to search for studies using keywords of adverse childhood experiences, neighborhood environment, racial discrimination, psychological stress, depressive symptoms/depression, coping, locus of control, social support, and mother–father relationship. Each of these keywords was combined with the term preterm birth. This review focused on the associations of these psychosocial factors collected during the prenatal period and risk for PTB. However, due to lack of data for some of these factors during the prenatal period, studies conducted in the immediate period after birth were included. The focus of this review was on research conducted with Black expectant fathers given the limited data on the association between paternal psychosocial factors and PTB. This review only highlights studies that examined the associations of maternal psychosocial factors and PTB. It does not present a comprehensive review of studies on maternal factors given the extent o...
Source: MCN: The American Journal of Maternal Child Nursing - Category: Nursing Tags: Feature: CE Connection Source Type: research