Introduction: the psychoemotional state of parents is affected when their newborn is hospitalized when facing a new environment, dealing with strangers and delegating their first protective care. Objective: to determine the level of parental stress and theperception of parental nursing care in the neonatology service of a national hospital in Peru. Methodology: quantitative, descriptive-correlational, cross-sectional study. With a sample of 75 parents of babies hospitalized in neonatology. Questionnaires were applied: Parental Stress Scale - PPS:NIICU with α=0.7 and Nursing Parent Support Tool - NPST (α = 0.96). Results: 68.7% of the participants presented moderate level of parental stress, the main sources of stress were: alteration of parental role, impact of appearance, treatment and behavior of the baby. They considered parental nursing care to be low, with deficienciesin emotional, communicational and informational support; however, they recognized good nursing care. Finally, no significant relationship was found between both variables (Tau-b: -0.07; with p < 0.05). Conclusions: there is an urgent need to implement initiatives thatinvolve parents in different processes during the hospitalization of their babies, in addition to the training of nurses to identify and attend to psychoemotional needs.