Reflective functioning, maternal attachment, mind-mindedness, and emotional availability in adolescent and adult mothers at infant 3 months

ABSTRACT

The study evaluated reflective functioning (RF), maternal attachment, mind-mindedness, and emotional availability among 44 adolescent mother–infant dyads and 41 adult mother–infant dyads. At infant age 3 months, mother–infant interaction was coded with the mind-mindedness coding system and Emotional Availability Scales; mother attachment and RF were evaluated with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Adolescent mothers (vs. adult mothers) were more insecure and had lower RF; they were also less sensitive, more intrusive and hostile, and less structuring of their infant’s activity; they used fewer attuned mind-related comments and fewer mind-related comments appropriate to infant development. In adult mothers, the Mother Idealizing and Lack of Memory AAI scales were correlated to non-attuned mind-related comments and the Father Anger scale to negative mind-related comments. In adult mothers, RF was associated with sensitivity. This was not the case with adolescent mothers. In both groups of mothers, there were no associations between sensitivity and mind-mindedness.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescent and adult mother
• adult reflective functioning
• mind-mindedness
• emotional availability
• maternal attachment

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Professor Carlo Lenti, former Head of the Child Neuropsychiatric Unit of the San Paolo Hospital. We also would like to thank Professor Anna Maria Marconi, Head of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Unit of the San Paolo Hospital, and her colleague Dr. Cinzia Paolini for their participation to the project, and those people, other than the authors of this paper, who took part in it: Margherita Moioli, Simona Gazzotti, Laura Boati, Lorena Caiati, Elisabetta Costantino, Laura Morè, and Angela Silvano. We would like also to thank all the mothers who participated to our study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Hereunder, we shall use adult RF to designate reflective functioning (RF) assessed with AAI and parental RF to designate RF assessed with interviews on parenthood such as PDI and WMCI.

Additional information

Funding

This study was partly financed by the University of Milano-Bicocca (FAR 2008 Grant), the University of Milano-Bicocca, San Paolo Hospital of Milan, Fondazione Ambrosiana per la Vita and Fondazione Cariplo (2011-2013 Grant).