Intrduction: Born premature newborns makes a lot of tension in parents and could have consequences for parents and newborn.  By focusing on family-centered care, identifing the amount of tension and its causes can be an incentive for developing new strategies or modifying of existing strategies to reduce tension. This study was conducted to determine the amount and causes of  tensions in parents of premature infants hospitalized in neonatal intensive care unit.

Method: This In this analytical-descriptive study 120 parents of hospitalized premature infants in neonatal intensive care unit of Yazd in 1394 were recruited by convenience sampling.After collecting data using parental tension questionnaires, analysis of data was performed using descriptive statistics and independent t-test.

Results::Results showed that the mean and standard deviation of tension 152.65)6.83(  in mothers and 136.82)5.64(  in fathers and the independent t-test showed a significant difference between stress  of  mothers and fathers ( p< 0.001 ) .As well as the stress caused by the neonate  behavior and appearance of neonate  was more in mothers than fathers  and the stress caused by the parental role of parent and communicating with neonate was more in fathers than mothers, independent t-test showed a significant difference.

Conclusion:. As mothers' tension was more than fathers' and tension causes were different in parents, when designing interventions, focusing on identified causes seems necessary to reduce tensions