Parenting knowledge and parenting self-efficacy of mothers with borderline personality disorder and depression: “I know what to do but think I am not doing it”

Abstract

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a complex mental health condition often associated with previous childhood adversity including maladaptive parenting. When becoming a parent themselves, mothers with BPD have difficulties with various parenting cognitions and practices, but unknown is whether they have appropriate knowledge of sensitive parenting. This study explored whether differences in parenting knowledge or self-efficacy are specific to BPD or also found in mothers with depression, and whether symptom severity or specific diagnosis better explain parenting perceptions. Mothers with BPD (n = 26), depression (n = 25) or HCs (n = 25) completed a Q-sort parenting knowledge task and a parenting self-efficacy questionnaire. Results showed mothers with BPD had the same knowledge of sensitive parenting behaviors as mothers with depression and healthy mothers. Self-reported parenting self-efficacy was lower in mothers with BPD and depression compared with healthy mothers, with symptom severity most strongly associated. A significant but low correlation was found between parenting self-efficacy and knowledge. Findings suggest that mothers with BPD and depression know what good parenting is but think they are not parenting well. Mental health difficulties are not associated with parenting knowledge, but symptom severity appears to be a common pathway to lower parenting self-efficacy. Future interventions should test whether reduction of symptom severity or positive parenting feedback could improve parenting self-efficacy.

Pregnancy Decision Making for Women With Mental Health Conditions: The Roles of Distress, Lay Beliefs, and Self-Efficacy

“…This bidirectional relation was also found in a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies on the topic (Goodman et al, 2022). Another compelling study compared United Kingdom women with depression to a control group with no mental health diagnoses, and found no differences in parenting knowledge, but that women with depression had lower parenting self-efficacy, predicted by their symptom severity (Eyden et al, 2023). Thus, we hypothesized that women who have more psychological distress and who report lower mental health resilience would also have lower parenting self-efficacy and a higher likelihood of accessing abortion.…”