The Role of Parental Reflective Functioning in the Relation between Parents’ Self-Critical Perfectionism and Psychologically Controlling Parenting Towards Adolescents

SYNOPSIS

Objective. Parental self-critical perfectionism has been identified as an important source of parents’ psychologically controlling parenting. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how this well-established association can be explained. This study aims to advance insight in the association between parental self-critical perfectionism and psychological control by addressing the role of parental reflective functioning among parents of adolescents. Design. This cross-sectional study included 268 adolescents (M_age = 15.14 years, 50.7% female), mothers (M_age = 45.83 years), and fathers (M_age = 47.77 years). Parents completed questionnaires assessing self-critical perfectionism, parental reflective functioning, psychologically controlling parenting, and their child’s problem behaviors. In addition, adolescents rated their parents’ use of psychological control. Results. Self-critical perfectionism related both directly and indirectly, via parents’ pre-mentalization, to psychological control among mothers and fathers. Most associations remained significant when controlling for adolescent problem behaviors. Conclusions. This incapacity to reflect on the adolescent’s mental world, and the tendency to make maladaptive attributions about the adolescent’s internal states, make parents with high levels of self-critical perfectionism vulnerable to rely on psychologically controlling parenting.

ADDRESSES AND AFFILIATIONS

Lisa M. Dieleman, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Gent, Belgium. [email protected]. Bart Soenens and Sarah S. W. De Pauw are at Ghent University, Peter Prinzie is at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Maarten Vansteenkiste is at Ghent University, and Patrick Luyten is at the University of Leuven, the Yale Child Study Center, and University College London.

ARTICLE INFORMATION

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Each author signed a form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. No authors reported any financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the work described.

Ethical Principles: The authors affirm having followed professional ethical guidelines in preparing this work. These guidelines include obtaining informed consent from human participants, maintaining ethical treatment and respect for the rights of human or animal participants, and ensuring the privacy of participants and their data, such as ensuring that individual participants cannot be identified in reported results or from publicly available original or archival data.

Funding: This work was supported by Grant 11X6516N and 12B4614N from the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek.

Role of the Funders/Sponsors: None of the funders or sponsors of this research had any role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Acknowledgments: The authors wish to thank all the participating families and all students who helped collecting the data. In addition, the authors wish to thank Dr. Liesbet Boone for conducting the data collection. The ideas and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors alone, and endorsement by Ghent university, Erasmus University Rotterdam, University of Leuven, and University College London is not intended and should not be inferred.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Grant 11X6516N and 12B4614N from the Research Foundation Flanders.

Notes on contributors

Lisa M. Dieleman

Lisa M. Dieleman, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Gent, Belgium. [email protected]. Bart Soenens and Sarah S. W. De Pauw are at Ghent University, Peter Prinzie is at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Maarten Vansteenkiste is at Ghent University, and Patrick Luyten is at the University of Leuven, the Yale Child Study Center, and University College London.