CREATING MOTHERING FOR PRETERM INFANTS: A GROUNDED THEORY OF VETERAN PARENT SUPPORT INITIATED IN A NEONATAL INTENSIVE CARE SETTING.
Contributors: Michigan State University.
Published: 1988
Number of pages: 241
Subjects: Sociology, Individual and Family Studies.; Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Public Health.
Description: Lack of research about the processes and outcomes of veteran parent-to-parent support that is initiated in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) has restricted the development of this clinical intervention and has threatened the continued subsidization of such programs by health care organizations. This study was undertaken to conceptualize the processes of NICU veteran parent support so that relationships between process and outcomes of the intervention could be tested in the future. Additionally, the research will provide information to professionals who provide service to families with NICU-involved children.

This study was a component of a comprehensive demonstration and research evaluation program entitled: NICU/Perinatal Positive Parenting, a program for families with high risk infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Grounded theory methodology was used to identify and describe the processes of parent-to-parent support. Ethnographic interviews, observations and document inspection were the primary methods of data collection. Data were collected from NICU parents and their veteran support parent over a two year period of time from 1985 to 1987. An emerging conceptual model of parent-to-parent support was the study outcome that could be used to generate future research questions and propositions.

The findings of the study suggest that the central process which explains and clarifies the interaction between parents is a process called being with/creating mothering. This process can be defined as a physical and/or psychological proximity between an experienced NICU parent and an NICU parent, a space that is non-judgmental and caring, that enables the new mother to see, hear and create for herself a new mothering style that is sensitive to both the needs of her vulnerable infant and herself. Preliminary processes of parent support and conditional variables that affect the process were identified and integrated into a conceptual model from which propositions and research questions were developed.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-05, Section: A, page: 1280.

Thesis (PH.D.)--MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY, 1988.

School code: 0128.