Parental Reflective Functioning in First-Time Parents and Associations with Infant Socioemotional Development

Abstract

Parental reflective functioning (PRF) refers to parents’ capacity to reflect on mental states such as their own and their child’s feelings, thoughts, and intentions. Studies suggest that PRF is an important factor in parental behavior; however, only a few studies have examined the effect of early PRF on infant socioemotional development. The Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ) was developed as a brief, multidimensional measure to assess PRF. Recently, a modified version, the PRFQ-I, was suggested as a more accurate measure of PRF in an at-risk sample of mothers of infants. The study aims were to examine the factor structure and factorial invariance across parental gender of the PRFQ-I in a community sample, to compare PRF dimensions across mothers and fathers, and to investigate the association between PRF dimensions and infant socioemotional development. We examined this within a longitudinal design in a community sample of 1243 first-time mothers and 512 fathers. The results supported the expected factor structure of PRFQ-I and invariance across parental gender. Significant differences between mothers and fathers were found on the three PRF dimensions comprised by the questionnaire. The PRF dimensions of pre-mentalizing and certainty about mental states significantly predicted infant socioemotional development. Findings show that the PRFQ-I is a valid measure in parents of infants and suggest that PRF in early parenthood is an important factor in infant socioemotional development. Identification of first-time parents with limited PRF enables early intervention and may thus prevent limited PRF from having potentially adverse effects on infant socioemotional development.

A preliminary validation of PMQ—A four-factor questionnaire measuring parental mentalizing

“…In this context, it is worth noting that the estimate for internal consistency for PRFQ’s PM subscale had relatively low reliability. The internal consistencies of the PRFQ subscales have been partly low or questionable also in some previous studies ( Stuhrmann et al, 2022 ), and one suggested reason for this is that the PM items may measure various aspects of a broad construct, and this may result in low reliability ( Ye et al, 2022 ; Madsen et al, 2023 ). This might be also the case with the PRFQ’s PM factor’s correlation with the PMQ’s LE factor.…”

“…Despite the positive correlation, the items of these two factors are mostly different. Four items of PM factor target two types of distorted child perception: either interpretations derived exclusively from external features or interpretations completely alienated from reality ( Madsen et al, 2023 ). The Lack of effort factor’s (LE) items, in turn, describe acting “on autopilot” with the child or having obstacles preventing the pursuit of the child’s mind.…”

“…Older mothers tend to use more appropriate mind-related comments with more positive tone when interacting with their 18-month-old children when compared to younger mothers ( Demers et al, 2010 ). Mothers may also be more interested in their children’s mental states and more confident about them than fathers ( Madsen et al, 2023 ). However, one study conducted in a Finnish population found that differences in the fathers’ and the mothers’ “interest and wondering about the mental states and appropriateness of reasoning” may not be significant as the child gets older ( Salo et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Within the family, the parent may mentalize another child better than her sibling with a different temperament ( Jovanc Ević et al, 2021 ), and there may be differences in parental mentalizing abilities between parents ( Luyten et al, 2017 ; Madsen et al, 2023 ). Mentalizing profiles can also vary between cultures given that linguistic factors, value preferences, and parenting characteristics may affect how mentalization manifests itself in a certain cultural environment ( Aival-Naveh et al, 2019 ).…”

The significance of parental mentalizing for four-year-old children’s solitary pretend play

“…In the context of the parent-child relationship, parental mentalizing is defined as the parent's tendency to treat their child as a psychological agent with a mind of their own, that is, the parent's willingness to guess and envision what mental states may lie behind the child's immediate behavior [40,41]. Theory and empirical findings suggest that parental mentalizing is vital for a range of child psychosocial outcomes, such as the development of emotion regulation and emotion understanding in self, and others (e.g., [42][43][44][45][46][47][48]), executive functions, and language development [49]. It is assumed that mentalizing enables parents to provide a framework of presenting the child to internal experiences by "playing along" with the child's mental world [50,51] and that this process is fundamental for the child's emerging understanding of the representational nature of the external world [40,51].…”