The Association Between Reflective Functioning and Parent–Child Relationship Quality

Rostad, Whitney L.; Whitaker, Daniel J.

doi:10.1007/s10826-016-0388-7

Cited by 99 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…It seems that the reflective function construct captures these ''facilitative social conditions or states.'' Our finding that parental reflective function, but not parental behaviors of warmth and control, predicts outcomes during early adulthood extends previous conclusions about the significance of parental reflective function for the adjustment of their children (Katznelson 2014;Rostad and Whitaker 2016).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

The Significance of Parental Reflective Function in the Adjustment of Young Adults

Benbassat

Shulman

2016

J Child Fam Stud

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reflective function is the capacity to reflect on one's own thoughts and feelings, and those of others. Parental reflective function has been found significant for children's social and emotional development. However, research has mostly been restricted to mothers and to early stages of development, and there is a paucity of observations on the effects of parental reflective function in later stages. The aim of the present study is to explore the significance of mothers' and fathers' reflective function for the adjustment of their children during early adulthood. It is an extension of a previous study that examined the significance of parental reflective function for adolescent adjustment. During home visits, 105 adolescents aged 14-18 years reported on indices of parental behavior (involvement, warmth, and control), and their fathers and mothers were interviewed in order to assess their reflective function. Three to five years later, the participants, now aged 18-22 years, reported on level of symptoms, selfperception, self-descriptions and romantic relations. The findings indicated that parental reflective function, but not parental behaviors that express warmth and control, predicted adjustment during early adulthood. Similar to our previous finding, parental reflective function was associated with both desirable outcomes and possible costs among young adults: higher levels of self-descriptions and romantic relations, on the one hand, and more internalizing problems and less positive self-perception, on the other. It is concluded that parental reflective function affects their children's adjustment also during early adulthood. However, the benefits of reflective function are inextricably linked to its costs.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

The Significance of Parental Reflective Function in the Adjustment of Young Adults

Benbassat

Shulman

2016

J Child Fam Stud

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Rostad and Whitaker (2016) found that parental interest and curiosity in mental states as assessed by PRFQ were associated with the degree of satisfaction with parenting, involvement, and communication. Rutherford et al (2013, 2015) found that parental reflective functioning evaluated by PRFQ was related to the mother’s tolerance of infant distress.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Mentalizing Makes Parenting Work: A Review about Parental Reflective Functioning and Clinical Interventions to Improve It

Camoirano¹

2017

Front. Psychol.

246

213

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the last decade several studies have investigated the role of parental reflective functioning (RF), defined as the parental ability to understand his/her child’s mental states, on the child’s development. Herein, a narrative review on parental RF is presented aimed at (1) presenting an overview of the existing empirical studies, (2) pinpointing unrequited questions, and (3) identifying future research directions. Specifically, the current review focused on (a) the impact of parental RF on the quality of caregiving and the child’s attachment security, (b) the effect of parental RF on the child’s emotion regulation and the child’s RF, (c) maternal RF in women with a history of neglect and abuse, (d) the efficacy of mentalization-based clinical interventions, and (e) the recently developed Parental Reflective Questionnaire. The following terms “maternal RF,” “paternal RF,” “parental RF,” “parental mentalization,” “maternal mentalization,” and “paternal mentalization” were searched in titles, abstracts, and main texts using Medline, Web of Science, and Scopus databases. Next, a search in Mendeley was also conducted. Inclusion criteria comprised original articles if they refer to the RF Scale (Fonagy et al., 1998) and were published in an English language, peer-reviewed journal before July, 2016. According to exclusion criteria, dissertations, qualitative or theoretical papers, and chapters in books were not taken into account. The review includes 47 studies that, taken together, supported the notion that higher parental RF was associated with adequate caregiving and the child’s attachment security, whereas low maternal RF was found in mothers whose children suffered from anxiety disorders, impairment in emotion regulation, and externalizing behaviors. In addition, higher parental RF was associated with better mentalizing abilities in children. However, unexpected findings have emerged from the most recent randomized controlled trials that tested the efficacy of mentalization-based interventions in high risk samples of mothers, raising questions about the suitability of the verbal measures in capturing the mentalizing processes at the root of the parental capacity to be adequately responsive to the child’s emotional needs.

show abstract

“…Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses have provided evidence for the stability of these three dimensions of mentalizing across mothers and fathers. These PRFQ subscales also have been shown to have good internal consistency and to be related in theoretically predicted ways with parental attachment, emotional availability, parenting stress, child attachment status (Fonagy et al., ; Luyten et al., ), mother's tolerance of infant distress (Rutherford, Booth, Luyten, Bridgett, & Mayes, ; Rutherford et al., ), and parental involvement (Rostad & Whitaker, ). A prenatal PRF scale has been developed that is based closely on the PRFQ (Pajulo et al., ) and correlates strongly with PRF as scored on the Pregnancy Interview (Slade, Grunebaum, Huganir, & Reeves, ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paternal and Maternal Reflective Functioning in the Western Australian Peel Child Health Study

Cooke

Priddis

Luyten

et al. 2017

Infant Mental Health Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While past research on the care of infants has been mostly with mothers, in recent times there has been a renewed attention to the father-infant relationship. This study examined differences between mother and father parental reflective functioning (PRF) or parental mentalizing; that is, the parental capacity to reason about their own and their children's behaviors by taking into consideration intentional mental states. Data were collected from 120 couples with a 1-year-old child who were participants in the West Australian Peel Child Health Study. Parental mentalizing was assessed using the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ; Luyten, Mayes, Nijssens, & Fonagy, ). Results showed that mother and father mentalizing with their children was independent and that mothers scored slightly higher levels of mentalizing than did fathers. Paternal mentalizing was weakly associated with family income and father education, and was more strongly associated with family functioning than with maternal mentalizing. Implications for theorizing on PRF and fatherhood more generally are discussed.

show abstract

The Association Between Reflective Functioning and Parent–Child Relationship Quality

Cited by 99 publications

References 27 publications

The Significance of Parental Reflective Function in the Adjustment of Young Adults

The Significance of Parental Reflective Function in the Adjustment of Young Adults

Mentalizing Makes Parenting Work: A Review about Parental Reflective Functioning and Clinical Interventions to Improve It

Paternal and Maternal Reflective Functioning in the Western Australian Peel Child Health Study

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About