Relationships between parental borderline symptom severity, empathy, parenting styles and child psychopathology

ABSTRACT

Objectives

Children of parents diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are at greater risk of psychopathology compared to children of healthy controls and parents diagnosed with another mental illness. Parental and child psychopathology are likely to be related via multiple pathways. The current study explored relationships between parental borderline symptom severity, parental empathy, parenting style, and child psychopathology.

Methods

Parents diagnosed with BPD were recruited to participate in an anonymous online survey. Sixty-four parents completed questionnaires assessing borderline symptom severity, parental empathy, and parenting style. Parental reports of child psychopathology were obtained for 64 children (aged 4–17) utilising the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients were calculated to investigate the relationships between variables. Two three-path serial mediation models were tested.

Results

Parental borderline symptom severity was negatively associated with parental empathy, and positively associated with maladaptive parenting styles. Parental borderline symptom severity was related to child psychopathology via two indirect pathways 1) authoritarian parenting style and 2) through parental empathy’s relationship with authoritarian parenting.

Conclusions

Future research is recommended to develop and evaluate parenting programme for parents experiencing borderline symptoms and their school-aged children.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

1. While many people with borderline symptoms are capable parents, difficulties in some domains of parenting have been identified.

2. The extant literature has a heavy focus on the perinatal period while studies of school-aged children of parents with borderline symptoms are limited.

3. Evidence regarding the effectiveness of interventions specific to this population of parents and children remains a gap in the literature.

What this topic adds:

1. Borderline symptom severity was related to child psychopathology via parental empathy’s association with authoritarian parenting.

2. Children of parents who experience severe borderline symptoms may benefit from screening for internalising and externalising symptoms to aid early intervention.

3. Interventions for this specific cohort of parents and children may consider parental psychopathology, parental empathy and maladaptive parenting styles as treatment targets.

KEYWORDS:

• Borderline personality disorder
• children of parents with a mental illness (COPMI)
• parental empathy
• authoritarian parenting style
• permissive parenting style
• child psychopathology

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Nancy Briggs, Lynne Giles and Stuart Howell from the School of Public Health, University of Adelaide for providing statistical assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/13284207.2022.2031947