MATERNAL PREMENTALIZING MODES MEDIATE BETWEEN MOTHERS’ INSECURE ATTACHMENT AND EARLY ADOLESCENTS’ EXTERNALIZING BEHAVIORS

Compared with childhood, early adolescence demonstrates a sharp increase in externalizing behaviors. Therefore, it’s particularly important to identify their predictors. Mother’s parental reflective functioning (PRF) is considered to be an important predictor of children’s externalizing behaviors, as well as maternal attachment is considered to be a key factor in fostering the development of son’s emotional and behavioral capacities. Yet, there is a lack of research examining how maternal attachment and PRF are related to sons’ externalizing behaviors during early adolescence. Moreover, only few studies in this area have assessed PRF as a multidimensional capacity Aims of the study are to investigate: (1) the associations between early adolescents’ externalizing behaviors, mother’s PRF and her attachment dimensions (i.e., levels of attachment avoidance and anxiety); (2) whether maternal PRF mediates the relation between maternal attachment dimensions early adolescents’ externalizing behaviors. We hypothesized that insecure attachment dimensions would be negatively related to indices of sons’ externalizing behaviors. Furthermore, we expected that PRF dimensions would mediates the relationships between attachment dimensions and sons’ externalizing behaviors. Parental reflective functioning (PRFQ), 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) and their sons (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 parent’s mentalizing stance for the development of externalizing difficulties in early adolescents