Unraveling Prospective Reciprocal Effects between Parental Invalidation and Pre-Adolescents’ Borderline Traits: Between- and Within-Family Associations and Differences with Common Psychopathology-Parenting Transactions

The etiology of borderline personality pathology has consistently been framed as an interactional process between child vulnerability (i.e. emotional sensitivity and reactivity; Linehan, 1993 ) and invalidating parenting strategies, which evolves into increased emotion dysregulation and disinhibited...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of abnormal child psychology 2021-10, Vol.49 (10), p.1387-1401
Main Authors: Franssens, Raissa, Abrahams, Loes, Brenning, Katrijn, Van Leeuwen, Karla, De Clercq, Barbara
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent girls
Adolescents
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Bidirectionality
Child and School Psychology
Child development
Child discipline
Child Rearing
Childhood
Developmental Stages
Disinhibition
Emotional regulation
Etiology
Family (Sociological Unit)
High risk
Internalization
Neurosciences
Parents
Parents & parenting
Pathology
Personality
Personality traits
Preadolescents
Psychology
Psychopathology
Public Health
Reactivity
Teenagers
Transactions
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Summary:The etiology of borderline personality pathology has consistently been framed as an interactional process between child vulnerability (i.e. emotional sensitivity and reactivity; Linehan, 1993 ) and invalidating parenting strategies, which evolves into increased emotion dysregulation and disinhibited behavior of the child and in turn activates more parental invalidation. Despite the strong theoretical base in support of these high-risk parent–child transactions, invalidating parenting behaviors have mostly been explored as a cause of child dysregulation and disinhibition, rather than as a result of child-driven effects. Also, most transactional research in this regard focused at differences between families, thereby not addressing potential changes within families across time. The current study therefore examines bidirectional between- and within-family effects of childhood borderline-related traits and maternal invalidation in the sensitive developmental phase of pre-adolescence ( n  = 574; 54.4% girls) along three assessment points. Cross-Lagged Panel Models and Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models indicated detrimental parenting effects of invalidation on subsequent development in borderline-related traits of the child both between and within families, and additional child-driven effects for subsequent invalidating parenting strategies within families. Beyond these transactions between borderline-related traits and parenting, the current study also indicates significant differences in the direction of effects when exploring transactions between more common dimensions of child internalizing/externalizing symptomatology and parental invalidation, suggesting a more substantial parenting etiology in the developmental process of borderline traits throughout pre-adolescence. Future longitudinal research may explore to what extent the transactional nature of borderline personality traits during important developmental stages indeed holds unique aspects compared to more common manifestations of symptomatology at young age.
ISSN:2730-7166
2730-7174
DOI:10.1007/s10802-021-00825-w