Lone parents are more vulnerable to stress and therefore marginally less responsive to cues from their infants, according to the latest report from the Growing Up in Ireland study.

However, the report added that “the strength of the relationship (between being a single parent and experiencing stress) was relatively small”.

The report, which is the latest to emerge from the project, a Government-funded national longitudinal study of children, is focused on parenting and infant development.  

In particular, it examines how sensitive parents are to cues from their infant children.  

The study found that parental stress and depression “were directly negatively associated with parental sensitivity”.

The report said that this finding suggested “that higher levels of stress and depression are linked with lower levels of sensitivity”.

The report also found that mothers in two-parent households “had slightly, but statistically significantly higher sensitivity scores than mothers in one-parent households”.

However the report added that “the magnitude of the difference was negligible”.  

It added that mothers in one-parent households had “slightly, but significantly higher stress scores than mothers in two-parent households, but this difference had a small effect size”.

Growing Up in Ireland is a government funded study following the progress of almost 20,000 children and their families – a Child Cohort and an Infant Cohort.

The study is being conducted by a consortium of researchers led by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and Trinity College Dublin.