An initial examination of the association of reflective functioning to parenting of fathers

Parental reflective functioning (RF) is a parent's capacity to understand and take into account the mental states of their children. Research on RF is somewhat scarce and has focused primarily on mothers. Mothers high in RF have improved parent-child relationships in terms of attachment, sensitivity, and more balanced mental representations of their children, in addition to displaying more caregiving behaviors than do those low in this characteristic. Moreover, better maternal RF appears to be a key to the parenting success of substance-abusing mothers and predicts changes in the caregiving behaviors of these mothers following attachment-based interventions. Research on RF in fathers, on the other hand, has been limited to a few studies. This research has suggested that about half of new fathers have deficits in RF, but did not assess predictors of RF or measure RF in relation to parenting. The present study sought to present an initial exploration of the association of RF to the parenting of fathers in a sample of 79 fathers, approximately half with substance-abuse and violence problems and half without. Fathers were administered the Parent Developmental Interview-Revised (A. Slade, J.L. Aber, I. Bresgi, B. Berger, & M. Kaplan, ) and self-report measures of parenting. Results suggested that less education and increased drug use are associated with lower RF. RF was not predictive of self-reported parenting behaviors in this sample. Although RF may vary with substance-abuse level and socioeconomic status among men and women, these results indicate that RF may be less associated with parenting behaviors of fathers. However, further research in this area is needed.