The results may be helpful in identifying families who need early professional support and call for studies where the prenatal phase is explored as a proactive phase for the development of the child-parent relationship.

The mother's bond to her baby starts to develop during pregnancy, and it is related to the baby's attachment. We study how the mother's prenatal expectations of her unborn baby, the mother's adult relationships, and postnatal psycho‐social factors (stress, depression, and anxiety) are related to the risk of bonding disturbance. The study comprised 1398 mothers and their unborn babies assessed both during pregnancy and when the babies were 3 months old (47.7% girls). The mother's risk of bonding disturbance was investigated using Brockington's Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire. According to the results, 71 (5.1%) of all the mothers in the study had a risk of a bonding disturbance. In a final adjusted logistic regression model, the most important risk factors were the mother's inability to form positive expectations about relationships with the baby during the third trimester of pregnancy (AOR = 7.78, p ≤ .001), maternal postnatal stress (AOR = 4.95, p ≤ .001) and maternal postnatal depression (AOR = 3.46, p ≤ .01). The results challenge healthcare professionals to screen pregnant mothers to identify at‐risk groups for post‐partum bonding disturbances. Intervention programs to prevent the development of bonding disturbances, and thus their possible serious consequences for children's development, should be considered.

The focus of this study is on Open University students' entry-level critical thinking skills. The research questions were: how are students' age, and level and discipline of previous education related to critical thinking skills; is the level and discipline of previous education connected to the accuracy of students' self-evaluation of their critical thinking skills? Totally 138 students participated altogether. Critical thinking skills were measured by the constructed-response task of the Collegiate Learning Assessment and retrospective self-evaluation scale. The results showed that students' critical thinking skills, as measured by both the constructed-response task and the self-evaluation scale, differed statistically between groups of different educational levels. The students with higher education degrees had the most developed critical thinking skills. Furthermore, the students who had previous higher education studies in hard sciences succeeded better in critical thinking than those of soft sciences. Between age-groups there were no differences in critical thinking. Students with prior higher education studies evaluated their skills more accurately. A variety of teaching and learning methods and ample feedback are needed in order to learn critical thinking. In addition, to learn metacognitive skills, students should rehearse self-evaluation skills.

In this longitudinal study, we examined how maternal bonding and psycho-social factors are associated with social-emotional problems in two-year-old children. Our data came from a birth cohort from which data were collected at four timepoints: prenatally during the third trimester, and postnatally at 3, 8 and 24 months. The participants were 1,667 mothers, of which 943 (56.6%) returned the questionnaire at each timepoint of the longitudinal study. The Children’s social-emotional problems were examined using the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment. According to linear regression analysis, maternal bonding difficulties at three and eight months, maternal expectations of the unborn baby during pregnancy, and maternal relationships within and outside the family were related to social-emotional problems in children of two years of age. The results highlight the importance of screening mothers who already prenatally have bonding problems or mothers who have bonding problems postnatally to provide effective and targeted intervention support.