In a father’s mind: paternal reflective functioning, sensitive parenting, and protection against socioeconomic risk

ABSTRACT

This study utilized attachment theory as a framework for understanding how fathers’ reflective functioning (RF) and social emotional (SE) and autonomy (AU) supportive behaviors relate to children’s emotion regulation (ER) beyond effects of mothers’ RF. Moreover, the study explored how fathers’ RF may be a protective factor against risks associated with low income. Fathers (n = 77) and their toddlers participated. Fathers’ RF was coded from narrative accounts of parenting and mothers’ RF was assessed by questionnaire. Fathers’ SE and AU supportive behaviors were coded from observations of father-child interactions; toddlers’ ER was assessed as distress on a challenging task. Results show that, after accounting for mothers’ RF, fathers’ RF was directly associated with SE supportive behaviors; RF moderated the association between income and AU supportive behaviors. Fathers’ SE and AU supportive behaviors were associated with children’s distress. Fathers’ RF plays a central role in parenting and in children’s ER.

KEYWORDS:

• Fathers
• reflective functioning
• socioeconomic risk
• parenting sensitivity
• emotion regulation

Acknowledgments

Support for the research project was provided by the Claremont Graduate University Dissertation Fellowship Award (Buttitta), Pomona College Faculty Research Grants (Borelli and Smiley), David L. Hirsch III and Susan H. Hirsch Research Initiation Grant (Borelli), and American Psychoanalytic Association Grant (Borelli). We are very grateful to the fathers, mothers, and children who graciously participated in the study and to research assistants from Pomona College CARE and UCI THRIVE Laboratories for their contributions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Note that mentalization has also been operationalized in the attachment literature as mind-mindedness (Meins, 1997; Meins, Fernyhough, Fradley, & Tuckey, 2001), insight (Oppenheim, Koren-Karie, Dolev, & Yirmiya, 2012), and embodied mentalization (Shai & Belsky, 2017), and each of these constructs are positively associated with parent-infant relationship quality.

2. Children’s distress had a large kurtosis value because the majority of children (n = 50) showed no distress during the toy removal task. Sensitivity analyses for Hypotheses 2c-4 were tested using a logarithm transformation for baseline and follow up distress. Because findings did not change, non-transformed distress variables were used in subsequent analyses.

3. In analyses, multiple covariates were entered, including mothers’ RF scores; when covariates (child gender, father age and education, and family income) were systematically removed, results of analyses were unchanged.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the American Psychoanalytic Association [Parenting Por Placer].