The Mediating Role of Parental Reflective Functioning in Child Social–emotional Development

Abstract

Parental attachment and parental reflective functioning (PRF) have been shown to be related to attachment, mentalizing capacities, and psychopathology in children. Studies also suggest that parental insecure attachment is related to lower levels of PRF. However, no study has directly investigated whether PRF dimensions mediate the relationship between parental attachment dimensions and features of social-emotional development other than attachment, mentalizing, and psychopathology. We prospectively investigated whether PRF mediates the relationship between parental attachment dimensions (i.e., levels of attachment avoidance and anxiety) and socialemotional competences and problems, using data from a 1-year longitudinal study of first-time parents and their biological children (N = 106). We found that low PRF as assessed with the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire at one-year follow-up, was an intervening variable in the relationship between parental attachment dimensions at time 1 and child social-emotional development at time 2. In particular, maternal attachment avoidance and paternal attachment anxiety were indirectly related to child competences and problems through high levels of prementalizing modes (i.e., attributing malevolent mental states to the child and an inability to enter the child's internal world). Additionally, in mothers only, there was a partial mediation effect of PM in the relation between attachment anxiety and child competences.

Parental reflective functioning and theory of mind acquisition: A developmental perspective

“…More specifically, there was a quadratic association between PM and these ToM dimensions, consistent with the notion that higher levels of maternal PM may hamper ToM acquisition, particularly with regard to emotion understanding (i.e., recognizing and attributing emotions). These results are congruent with theoretical assumptions that maladaptive PRF negatively influences child social-emotional development (e.g., Ensink & Mayes, 2010;Fonagy & Target, 2005;Sharp & Fonagy, 2008;Slade, 2005) and previous research indicating the role of PM in understanding the development of emotional problems (Burkhart, Borelli, Rasmussen, Brody, & Sbarra, 2017;Krink, Muehlhan, Luyten, Romer, & Ramsauer, 2018;Nijssens, Vliegen, & Luyten, 2020;Pazzagli, Delvecchio, Raspa, Mazzeschi, & Luyten, 2018;Rostad & Whitaker, 2016;Rutherford, Booth, Luyten, Bridgett, & Mayes, 2015). Indeed, PM is characterized by misreading the child's mind and making inaccurate assumptions about the child's behaviour, often leading to an incongruent response to the child's mental state.…”

SAGA-Supporting Social-Emotional Development in Early Childhood Education: The Development of a Mentalizing-Based Intervention

“…Mentalizing is the core concept used as a base for SAGA intervention. However, parental reflective functioning is sometimes referred to as (1) the operationalization of the mental processes that underpin the capacity to mentalize, as well as (2) the observed manifestation of the capacity to mentalize when interacting with the child, or (3) simply as parallel concepts [18]. Others define mentalizing as having three components: parental mind-mindedness, parental insightfulness, and parental reflective functioning [19].…”

Parental Reflective Functioning and Its Association With Parenting Behaviors in Infancy and Early Childhood: A Systematic Review

“…Both forms of RF in parents have been linked not only with parent–child attachment security but also with further aspects of child social–emotional development such as mentalizing abilities, emotion regulation, adolescent adjustment, and mental health ( Benbassat and Priel, 2012 ; Esbjørn et al, 2013 ; Borelli et al, 2016 ; Ensink et al, 2016a ; Nijssens et al, 2020 ; Bianco et al, 2021 ).…”