Interpersonal Factors in Parenting: Implications for Parental Well-Being and Parent-Child Synchrony

The parent-child relationship is a primary influence on child development and health. Interpersonal parent-child interactions are also important for parents’ psychological well-being. This dissertation was comprised of three studies which aimed to investigate two interpersonal factors in the parent-child context: mindful parenting and biobehavioral synchrony. Study 1a is the first to investigate the psychometric properties of the Interpersonal Mindfulness in Parenting (IM-P) scale in a sample that included mothers and fathers. An exploratory analysis suggested that a five-factor structure, comprised of 27-items of the IM-P, was internally reliable and showed concurrent and convergent validity. Some of the mindful parenting domains varied by gender and current meditation practice, which may inform future intervention work. Using this same sample of parents, Study 1b found that higher scores on mindful parenting subscales relating to emotional awareness and compassion/self-regulation were associated with greater use of approach-focused coping. Non-judgmental acceptance in the parenting context was associated with greater odds of having low avoidant-focused coping behaviors. Avoidant-focused coping and non-judgmental acceptance were associated with depressive and anxiety symptoms, but in opposite directions. Specifically, parents with low avoidant-focused coping or who had higher non-judgmental acceptance had greater odds of not having high depressive and anxiety symptoms. These results indicate the potential protective qualities of using less avoidant-focused-coping and more non-judgmental acceptance in the parent-child context. In Study 2, over the course of a laboratory visit, two distinct trajectories of salivary cortisol, representing “high” and “low” groups, emerged for mothers and their five-year old children. Maternal and child cortisol trajectories were dependent on each other, and cortisol concentrations were correlated at each sampling time indicating there was some level of physiological synchrony across dyads. Contrary to the hypotheses, behavioral synchrony, depressive symptoms, and parenting stress did not moderate maternal-child cortisol trajectory associations. The meaningfulness of these findings and the implications for child outcomes are discussed. This body of work provides several jumping off points for future investigation and underscores how the inclusion of fathers will meaningfully advance the field.