ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Children and Health
This article is part of the Research TopicUN World Children’s Day 2025 - Special Research Topic. Healthy Beginnings, Lifelong Impact: Advancing Child Health for a Sustainable FutureView all articles
Application Effect of the Nurturing Care Model Constructed by the Timing Theory on Childcare Competence and Parental Stress in Primiparous Women
Provisionally accepted
- Maternity and Child Health Care Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective To explore the effect of the nurturing care model constructed by the timing theory on childcare competence and parental stress in primiparous women, and to provide empirical evidence for optimizing the perinatal maternal and infant care service system. Methods This study adopted a non-concurrent controlled design. By convenient sampling, primiparous women and their infants admitted to the obstetrics department were selected and divided into control and experimental groups based on admission time. The control group was treated with routine infant care skill demonstrations and discharge guidance, while the experimental group was added with the nurturing care model constructed by the timing theory on the basis of the control group. Results The score of childcare competence in the experimental group was higher than that in the control group at both 1 month and 3 months after childbirth (P < 0.001). The total score of the Parental Stress Scale in the experimental group was lower than that in the control group at both 1 month and 3 months after childbirth (P < 0.001). Conclusion The nurturing care model constructed by the timing theory can precisely match the phased needs of primiparous women. Therefore, it shows high potential for application and promotion and offers a reference paradigm for upgrading perinatal healthcare services.
Keywords: care service system, childcare competence, nurturing care model, Parental stress, Timing theory
Received: 14 Jan 2026; Accepted: 16 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Yin and Guo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Bingbing Guo
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.