Parental Relationship with Twins from Pregnancy to 3 Months: The Relation Among Parenting Stress, Infant Temperament, and Well-Being.

The transition to parenthood, from pregnancy to postpartum period, is a critical process, particularly for couples expecting twins. There is very little literature regarding the links between anxiety, depression, dyadic adjustment, parental stress, and infant temperament spanning from pregnancy to postpartum. This study has two aims: first, to examine whether mothers' and fathers' anxiety, depression, and dyadic adjustment, assessed at the sixth month of pregnancy and 3 months postpartum, are associated with infants' negative affectivity (NA) and parenting stress; second, to examine whether there is any difference between fathers' and mothers' levels of parenting stress and perception of the twins' temperament, as well as to evaluate, separately for mothers and fathers, whether the levels of parenting stress and perception of child temperament differ for each twin.