Levels of anxiety and stress vary throughout the lifespan and across cultures. Uncertainty appears particularly relevant during emerging adulthood, thus potentially affecting both stress and anxiety. Uncertainty as a construct was identified by Hofstede (i.e., Uncertainty Avoidance Index, UAI), who defined it as the extent to which members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations and tend to avoid them. The UAI was considered as a means to understand cultures in addition to the “classic” distinction between collectivist and individualistic cultures. The present study compared levels of anxiety and stress in 1790 university students (18–21 years old) from two individualistic (Italy and the US) and two collectivistic (China and Russia) countries, with a consideration of country UAI levels. Results showed that country-level UAI scores were associated with levels of anxiety and stress, controlling for age and sex. Italian and Russian students reported greater anxiety than American and Chinese ones. Chinese emerging adults reported the lowest stress levels, followed by American, Italian, and Russian students. The study findings provide initial evidence that anxiety and stress in emerging adults are associated with how a culture deals with perceived instability and uncertainty about the future.

Although establishing an affective tie with a child during perinatality is considered one of the most important maternal tasks, little is still known about the mediators of the association between maternal antenatal and postnatal bonding with the infant. This prospective study addresses this gap by evaluating a community sample of 110 Italian women to assess whether maternal pre- and postnatal bonds with the infant are mediated by parental reflective functioning (PRF), as assessed at the third trimester of pregnancy and three months postpartum. Controlling for confounding variables, the hierarchical regression analyses show the maternal prenatal quality of attachment to the fetus as the main predictor of maternal postnatal attachment to the child (β = 0.315; t = 0.2.86; p = 0.005). The mediation analyses show that mothers’ PRF (b = 0.245; SE = 0.119; 95% CI = 0.071, 0.531) explains 39% of the relationship between maternal pre- and postnatal bonding with the child. The findings of this study contribute to research on the association between prenatal and mother-to-infant bonding by additionally investigating the importance of taking into account maternal PRF as a mediating variable. This provides support for the clinical utility of interventions focused on maternal PRF.