EARLY ADOLESCENTS’ EXTERNALIZING BEHAVIOR: PRELIMINARY DATA ON THE ROLE OF MATERNAL ATTACHMENT AND PARENTAL REFLECTIVE FUNCTIONING

Mother’s understanding of the internal reality of her son, together with her attachment model, are assumed to result in a more efficient regulation of her emotions in dealing with the son’s oppositional, aggressive, and hyperactive behavior. Thus, maternal attachment and reflective functioning (PRF) capability can be critical factors shaping a son's externalising behaviour. Yet, there is a lack of research examining how maternal mentalization is explicitly related to son externalizing behavior during early adolescence. Moreover, only few studies in this area have assessed PRF as a multidimensional capacity. Aims of this preliminary study are to investigate: (1) the associations between mothers’ PRF, attachment dimensions and early adolescents’ externalizing behavior; (2) whether mothers’ PRF mediates the relation between their attachment dimensions and early adolescents’ externalizing behavior. We hypothesized that maternal insecure attachment dimensions would be related to higher levels of sons’ externalizing behavior. Furthermore, we expected that PRF dimensions would mediates the relationships between attachment dimensions and sons’ externalizing behavior. Parental reflective functioning (PRFQ-A), maternal attachment dimensions (ASQ) and early adolescents’ externalizing behaviors (CBCL) were assessed in a community sample of 53 mothers (M [SD] = 45.79 (4.69) yrs old) of early adolescents (M [SD] = 13.03 (0.91) yrs old). Pearson’s correlation analyses showed from moderate to high relationships between insecure maternal attachment, mothers’ pre mentalization modes (PM) and sons’ externalizing behaviors. The mediation model showed that PM totally mediated the relationship between both anxious attachment and sons’ externalizing behaviors (b = .134; SE = .066; 95%CI = .028 - .285) and maternal avoidance and sons’ externalizing behaviors (b = .108; SE = .039; 95%CI = .035 .183). This study provides new evidence of the importance of the mothers’ mentalizing stance for the development of externalizing difficulties in early adolescents. Improving parental mentalization may be particularly important for helping mothers understand their son’s subjective experience and see beyond the early adolescent’s externalizing difficulties.