What is hindering research on psychological aspects of fathers of premature infants?

This Letter to the Editor highlights that most research projects and current support programs in the area of infant prematurity have concentrated mainly or exclusively on infants and mothers. Then, the reasons because only few studies have also focused their investigations on fathers are explored and three factors are identified and discussed: (1) the insufficient recognition of the problem; (2) the relative invisibility of the fathers’ emotional difficulties and their need to be supported; and (3) methodological limits in those studies that do focus on the fathers of preterm babies -limits that indicate difficulties in recruiting and engaging fathers, and inevitably influence the validity of the results.