You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Evidence based practice
Research
Effects of parenting interventions for at-risk parents with infants: a systematic review and meta-analyses
  1. Signe B Rayce1,
  2. Ida S Rasmussen1,
  3. Sihu K Klest2,
  4. Joshua Patras2,
  5. Maiken Pontoppidan1
  1. 1 Department for Child and Family, VIVE – The Danish Centre of Applied Social Science, Copenhagen, Denmark
  2. 2 Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tromsø, Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
  1. Correspondence to Dr Maiken Pontoppidan; mpo{at}sfi.dk

Abstract

Objectives Infancy is a critical stage of life, and a secure relationship with caring and responsive caregivers is crucial for healthy infant development. Early parenting interventions aim to support families in which infants are at risk of developmental harm. Our objective is to systematically review the effects of parenting interventions on child development and on parent–child relationship for at-risk families with infants aged 0–12 months.

Design This is a systematic review and meta-analyses. We extracted publications from 10 databases in June 2013, January 2015 and June 2016, and supplemented with grey literature and hand search. We assessed risk of bias, calculated effect sizes and conducted meta-analyses.

Inclusion criteria (1) Randomised controlled trials of structured psychosocial interventions offered to at-risk families with infants aged 0–12 months in Western Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, (2) interventions with a minimum of three sessions and at least half of these delivered postnatally and (3) outcomes reported for child development or parent–child relationship.

Results Sixteen studies were included. Meta-analyses were conducted on seven outcomes represented in 13 studies. Parenting interventions significantly improved child behaviour (d=0.14; 95% CI 0.03 to 0.26), parent–child relationship (d=0.44; 95% CI 0.09 to 0.80) and maternal sensitivity (d=0.46; 95% CI 0.26 to 0.65) postintervention. There were no significant effects on cognitive development (d=0.13; 95% CI −0.08 to 0.41), internalising behaviour (d=0.16; 95% CI −0.03 to 0.33) or externalising behaviour (d=0.16; 95% CI −0.01 to 0.30) post-intervention. At long-term follow-up we found no significant effect on child behaviour (d=0.15; 95% CI −0.03 to 0.31).

Conclusions Interventions offered to at-risk families in the first year of the child’s life appear to improve child behaviour, parent–child relationship and maternal sensitivity post-intervention, but not child cognitive development and internalising or externalising behaviour. Future studies should incorporate follow-up assessments to examine long-term effects of early interventions.

  • child development
  • infant development
  • parent-child relationship
  • systematic review

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-015707

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors SBR co-led the review process, contributed to study design, screening, data extraction and data synthesis, performed risk of bias judgement and meta-analysis, drafted the first manuscript, critically revised the manuscript, and approved the final manuscript as submitted. ISR contributed to study design, contributed to screening, data extraction and data synthesis, performed risk of bias, drafted the first manuscript, critically revised the manuscript, and approved the final manuscript as submitted. SKK and JP contributed to study design and data synthesis, critically revised the manuscript, and approved the final manuscript as submitted. MP conceptualized and designed the study, co-led the review process, contributed to screening, data extraction and data synthesis, drafted the first manuscript, critically revised the manuscript, and approved the final manuscript as submitted.

    • Funding SBR and ISR were supported by a grant from the Danish Ministry of Social Affairs and the Interior. MP was supported by the Danish Ministry of Social Affairs and the Interior and grant number 7-12-0195 from TrygFonden.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement No additional data are available.