Reflective functioning in fathers with young children born preterm and at term.

Nina Ruiz, Andrea Witting, Lieselotte Ahnert, Bernhard Piskernik

Publications: Contribution to journalArticlePeer Reviewed

Abstract

The present study assessed 322 parents of 173 children aged between 12 and 20 months (74 children born preterm) with the Parent Development Interview (PDI) to capture parents' Reflective Functioning (RF). RF scores were obtained, and topics were disclosed, for which modeling with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was applied. The study addressed (a) whether RF scores differed between fathers of children born preterm and at term, and diverged from the mothers' RF and, (b) whether topics on fathers' minds differed regarding parenting preterm or at-term children, and diverged from topics on parenting raised by mothers. Results indicated that parents of at-term children revealed similar RF scores, though fathers of children born preterm scored lower than mothers of children born preterm. Whereas fathers' RF scores were associated with topics about the paternal role, interests and activities, mothers' RF was related to concerns about how to meet the child's needs.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)32-45
Number of pages14
JournalAttachment and Human Development
Volume22
Issue number1
Early online date21 Mar 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

  • 501005 Developmental psychology

Keywords

  • ATTACHMENT
  • BEHAVIOR
  • BIRTH
  • INFANT INTERACTION
  • MOTHER
  • PARENTING STRESS
  • Parenting
  • child's needs
  • father role
  • mentalization
  • topics about parenting
  • child’s needs

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