Abstract
Background: Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) may experience additional challenges in their parenting role, including increased stress and lower self-efficacy and satisfaction. These difficulties have been shown to impact their children, and may be implicated in the potential intergenerational transmission of personal vulnerabilities.Methods: Parental stress and competence variables was explored in 284 parents (94.72% female, M=37.37, SD=8.04 years), of which 69 (24.30%) met caseness for BPD criteria. We completed a multivariate analysis of variance to compare parents with ‘high BPD features’ (meeting caseness for BPD) to those with ‘low BPD features’ on a range of parenting and mental health variables. Multivariate linear regression modelling was then utilised to investigate how these parenting variables were influenced by personality and psychological wellbeing, recalled trauma history, orientation to attachment relationships and reflective capacity.Results: Individuals high in BPD features experienced more stress and lower competence in their parenting role than those low in BPD features. These parents also reported more personality vulnerabilities, poorer psychological wellbeing, recalled more traumatic experiences in their childhood, were more likely to endorse insecure attachment styles and had poorer reflective capacity. Parenting stress and competence was also influenced by personality traits, general psychological wellbeing, recalled trauma history, attachment style and reflective capacity variables. Parental reflective capacity had the strongest influence on parenting stress, satisfaction, efficacy and the perception of having a difficult child and a difficult parent-child relationship. Whilst a parent’s psychological wellbeing had the greatest influence on their parenting distress. Conclusions: Parents who were able to imaginatively enter the subjective world of the child and hold the child’s mind in mind with less certainty, reported reduced parenting stress and greater parenting satisfaction and efficacy. Helping to improve personality and mental health functioning, increasing parental reflective capacity and strengthening parent-child attachment relationships, may reduce parenting stress and increase parenting competence in individuals with BPD.
Parenting stress and competence in borderline personality disorder: The influence of mental health, trauma history, attachment and reflective capacity.
