21-06-08_momcope_path_db

This database includes the raw data linked with the paper “Parental maternal stress during the COVID-19 pandemic and infant regulatory capacity at 3 months: A longitudinal study”, published on Development and Psychopathology, doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579421000766. This publication is part of the longitudinal and multi-centric “Measuring the outcomes of maternal COVID-19-related prenatal exposure (MOM-COPE)” research project. In this paper we report longitudinal data on the effects of prenatal pandemic-related stress reported by mothers on the temperament profile of their infants 3 months after birth. Specifically, a path analysis model was adopted testing (a) the effects of pandemic-related prenatal stress and prenatal social support on post-natal maternal anxiety, (b) the effects of the previous three variables on mother-infant bonding and parenting stress 3 months after delivery, and (c) the cumulative effects of these variables on infants’ temperament (i.e., regulatory capacity).

Data were obtained as follows:

1. Maternal pandemic-related prenatal stress: ad-hoc questionnaire attached (file name: 21-06-08_momcope_path_adhoc.pdf). This questionnaire includes six 5-point Likert scale items on the emotional stress response to the COVID-19 emergency and rated from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). The pandemic-related stress score was obtained by computing a mean of the ratings obtained for each item (raw score range: 1–5).
2. Prenatal social support was assessed and quantified using the global score of the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, MSPSS (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, & Farley, 1988).
3. Postnatal maternal state anxiety was assessed with the well-validated State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, STAI-Y (Spielberger, 1983).
4. mother–infant bonding was assessed with the Maternal Postpartum Attachment Scale, MPAS (Condon & Corkindale, 1998).
5. Maternal parenting stress was measured using the Parenting Stress Index Short Form, PSI-SF (Abidin, 1995).

The analytical plan was as follows:

The path analysis model focused on the effects of maternal psychosocial wellbeing (i.e., prenatal stress and prenatal support), postnatal maternal anxiety, and caregiving environment variables (i.e., mother–infant bonding and parenting stress) on infants’ regulatory capacity at 3 months. The final model included all the direct and indirect effects resulting in 17 free parameters and four degrees of freedom. Parameters were estimated using the maximum likelihood method. The covariances between prenatal stress and prenatal support (prenatal assessment) as well as between parenting stress and mother–infant bonding (3-month assessment) were also included in the model. This model was built according to the literature reviewed and reported in the introduction section of this manuscript and the final set of effects included in the path analysis was selected to maximize parsimony and model fit. A detailed description of the approximation models that led to the final path analysis model tested and their relative indexes of fit is reported in the Supplementary Material, Supplementary File S1. All analyses were conducted using R (R Core Team, 2020) and the path analysis was performed using the lavaan package (Rosseel, 2012).

The following indexes were used to confirm the goodness of fit of the model: nonsignificant chi-square statistic, comparative fit index (CFI) and Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) close to .95, root mean squared error of approximation (RMSEA) smaller than .06, root mean square residual (SRMR) smaller than .08.

The findings revealed that women who experienced emotional stress and received partial social support during pregnancy reported higher anxious symptoms. Moreover, maternal postnatal anxiety was indirectly linked to the infants’ regulatory capacity at 3 months, mediated by parenting stress and mother–infant bonding.