Relationships between the family's way of functioning and children's temperament as rated by parents of pre-term children.

This study examined the relationships between parents' perceptions of their family's way of functioning and their pre-term child's temperament. Forty-seven parents of infants born before the gestation age (GA) of 28 weeks during 1991, 1994 and 1997 answered the Family Relations Scale (FARS) and the Temperament Scale. One family function factor, enmeshment, was significantly higher in families with pre-term children than in other families, thus indicating certain difficulties in the inner life of the family (p < 0.001). Parents' perceptions of their pre-term child's temperament did not differ from those of other parents. There was a strong correlation both between temperament dimensions and the family's way of functioning (p < 0.0001) and between single-dimension impulsivity and the total scores for the family's way of functioning (p < 0.01).