Abstract
This study investigated the effectiveness of a newly integrated version of an intervention targeting adoptive mothers’ positive parenting for promoting children’s emotional availability, by testing the moderating role of both two maternal genetic polymorphisms (i.e., 5HTTLPR and DRD4-VNTR) and emotional availability-EA on intervention outcomes. Mothers with their children (N = 80; Mage = 42.73 years, SD = 3.79; Mage = 33.18 months, SD = 16.83 months) participated in a RCT testing the Video-Feedback Intervention to Promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline-VIPP-FC/A effectiveness. Mixed effects regression models showed a significant improvement in mother–child EA for the VIPP-intervention vs. the dummy intervention condition, with a moderating role of maternal EA on children’s outcomes. No significant moderating effect was found for the two genetic polymorphisms inquired. Children’s and mother’s outcomes obtained are discussed.
Highlights
Attachment theory provides one of the most comprehensive frameworks for understanding social and emotional development. Bowlby (1969, 1973) stated that the quality of parent–child relationship, mainly determined by maternal sensitivity, is grounded in the biological basis of becoming attached to primary caregivers, with both biological and environmental determinants contributing to a healthy adaptation
A one-factor model fitted the data well [X2(1) = 3.589, p = 0.166, CFI = 0.994, TLI = 0.983, RMSEA = 0.02], allowing the mean of the four scales to be used as a summary Emotional Availability-emotional availability (EA) score for positive parenting
No statistically significant difference was reported pertaining to the mean level of positive parenting of mothers belonging to the control condition group (M = 5.39, SD = 0.86), vs. the experimental condition group [M = 5.46, SD = 0.88; t(76.69) = −0.379, p = 0.705], whereas children belonging to the control group tended to score higher than children belonging to the VIPP intervention condition [i.e., M = 4.93 vs. 4.36, t(73.98) = 2.07, p = 0.04]
Summary
Attachment theory provides one of the most comprehensive frameworks for understanding social and emotional development. Bowlby (1969, 1973) stated that the quality of parent–child relationship, mainly determined by maternal sensitivity, is grounded in the biological basis of becoming attached to primary caregivers, with both biological and environmental determinants contributing to a healthy adaptation. Testing an Attachment-Based Parenting Intervention programs and it has been tested in various populations of at-risk parents and vulnerable children, mostly up to 3– 4 years old (Juffer et al, 2017a,b) It is based on attachment theory and consists of a short (up to seven home-visits) and narrowly-focused program designed to improve the parent– child relationship by enhancing parental sensitivity and positive parent–child interactions. This program could be more properly described as a group of interventions as it exists in several versions with different focuses: mother’s sensitivity (VIPP), mother’s attachment representations (VIPP-R) and mother’s sensitivity and sensitive discipline (VIPP-SD). More recent adapted versions are under investigation: the version for fathers (Iles et al, 2017), for day-care centers (Werner et al, 2016), for twin families (Euser et al, 2016) and for families with late-adopted children up to 6 years old (Barone et al, 2017a)
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