Parenting stress and psychosocial well-being among parents with twins conceived naturally or by reproductive technology

This study compared parenting stress and psychosocial well-being among pare nts with 1 year old twins conceived in three different ways: (i) spontaneou sly without any medical assistance (54 families), (ii) spontaneously follow ing hormonal treatment (25 families) and (iii) following in-vitro fertiliza tion (IVF) or artificial insemination (AI) with the semen of the social fat her (24 families). The investigation included the Parenting Stress Index (P SI) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-30). Since the presence of ol der children differed significantly between the three groups, this factor w as included in the statistical analysis. Overall, no significant difference s were found between the three study groups, either for the mothers or for the fathers. Nevertheless, we found a main effect of the presence of older children and an interaction effect of the presence of older children and th e conception mode on some of the scales for the mothers: first-time mothers showed significantly higher stress related to parental competence, health and the partner relationship compared with mothers who had older children. First-time mothers with a history of infertility obtained significantly hig her stress scores for parental competence and health and showed lower psych osocial well-being compared with naturally conceiving first-time mothers an d mothers with a history of infertility who already had children.