The Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire in Mothers and Fathers of School-Aged Children

Abstract

Research on parental reflective functioning (PRF)-defined as parents' capacity to comprehend the developing mind of their child, reflect upon it, and hold in mind the inner life of the child-has mostly involved mothers of infants and young children, and rarely fathers and parents of school-aged children. The present study sought to extend research on PRF by examining aspects of the construct that are still scarcely explored, such as the role of gender and attachment; to investigate whether there were differences between mothers' and fathers' PRF and whether there were differences in PRF related to the gender and age of the child; and, finally, to assess the association between PRF and each parent's attachment style. The Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ) and the Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ) were administered to a community sample of mothers and fathers of 385 children aged 3-10 years. A multi-group factor analysis supported the hypothesized three-factor model among both fathers and mothers. Univariate and multivariate analyses of variance showed that mothers had higher levels of interest and curiosity in their children's mental states than fathers. Parents of daughters showed higher prementalizing modes than parents of sons. Parents of preschool children showed less nonmentalizing modes than parents of children aged 8-10. Correlations between PRFQ and ASQ showed that both mothers' and fathers' interest in thinking about their child's internal experience and in taking the child's perspective were correlated with higher levels of secure attachment style. Research implications are discussed.

The influence of attachment representations and co-parents’ scripted knowledge of attachment on fathers’ and mothers’ caregiving representations

“…Finally aside from some evidence of lower levels of reflective functioning in fathers, compared to mothers (e.g., Esbjørn et al, 2013;Pazzagli, Delvecchio, Raspa, Mazzeschi, & Luyten, 2017), research has not provided any clues regarding other potential differences, or similarities, in mothers' and fathers' quality of thought processes when recounting and reflecting on their caregiving experiences with their children. For instance, if fathers are more dismissive in their parenting, does that mean that their caregiving representations also contain a stronger tendency to idealize themselves as parent or the quality of their relationship to the child?…”

Versión Española del Cuestionario de Función Reflexiva Parental (CFRP-18)

“…En primer lugar, el hallazgo principal de este estudio es que los resultados del AFC confirman las tres dimensiones del CFRP-18 propuestas por los autores originales del instrumento (Prementalización -PM-, Certeza en Estados Mentales -CEM-e Interés y Curiosidad -IC-) (Luyten et al, 2017a). De esta forma, el instrumento ha confirmado la solidez de su estructura conceptual, pues como ya se encontró en otros estudios con muestras de madres y padres italianos y canadienses, nuestros resultados han vuelto a replicar la estructura tridimensional original del cuestionario (De Roo et al, 2019;Pazzagli et al, 2017).…”

“…En cuanto a las propiedades psicométricas de la versión española del CFRP-18, los datos son similares a lo encontrado en el estudio con padres/madres italianos en el que el coeficiente de Alpha de Cronbach (α) osciló entre .61 y .78 (Pazzagli et al, 2017). En cambio, la consistencia interna (α) de cada una de las dimensiones fue mayor en el estudio original que en el presente estudio (PM=.70; IC=.74; CEM=.…”

“…No obstante, estos datos son coherentes con los obtenidos por Luyten et al (2017a) en su estudio de validación del PRFQ, donde también encontraron que los ítems 7 y 18 obtuvieron cargas factoriales por debajo de .30 al analizar la invarianza estructural del instrumento en función del género de los progenitores (Luyten et al, 2017a). Asimismo, en los estudios desarrollados con muestra canadiense e italiana, los autores también indicaron que el ítem 18 no funcionaba adecuadamente (De Roo et al, 2019;Pazzagli et al, 2017). Según Deroo et al, (2018), esto puede ser explicado por la mezcla de una formulación tanto negativa como positiva en un mismo ítem ya que puede dar lugar a dificultades a la hora de entender y responder estos ítems.…”

“…Aunque el PRFQ ha sido traducido a varios idiomas, hasta la fecha, únicamente se han publicado los estudios de validación con una muestra de Italia (Pazzagli, Delvecchio, Raspa, Mazzeschi, & Luyten, 2017) y Canadá (De Roo, Wong, Rempel, & Fraser, 2019.…”