Emotional and behavioural problems of children born preterm and maternal sensitivity: An individual participant data meta‐analysis

Children born preterm, before 37 weeks of pregnancy, grow up with a high risk of emotional and behavioural problems. These problems include difficulties with regulating emotions, managing frustration, or interacting with other people. Early parent–child interactions play a major role in shaping children's development. This is why we examined whether maternal sensitivity – warm, prompt, and appropriate responses to child behaviour – helps to support emotional and behavioural regulation as children born preterm grow up. We used the individual data of 2469 mother–child pairs from seven international birth cohort studies and analysed them together. This large sample allowed us to control for other variables beyond parenting that are related to emotional regulation such as child sex, maternal education, etc. Our findings show that higher maternal sensitivity is consistently linked to fewer emotional and behavioural problems in children. Lower gestational age at birth is also associated with more emotional and behavioural problems, but importantly, maternal sensitivity partly explains (mediates) this relationship. In other words, some of the increased risk associated with being born too early is reduced when mothers show high sensitivity in interactions with their children. All children benefit equally from sensitive interactions, regardless of how early they were born. The same was found for a subgroup of 1062 mother–child pairs who were followed into adolescence: higher maternal sensitivity was consistently linked to fewer emotional and behavioural problems in adolescents.