The role of parental reflective functioning, stress reactivity and psychological control in the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology in early adolescence: A longitudinal experimental psychopathology approach

Research has amply shown that the prevalence of mental disorders increases substantially in adolescence. Hence, it is crucially important to investigate vulnerability factors implicated in the development of psychopathology in this developmental phase. Although research findings have clearly shown that that adolescence is a particularly stressful period for both parents and adolescents, stress reactivity and its role in the development of psychopathology in early adolescence has typically been studied separately in parents and children. Moreover, there is also a dearth of studies that have followed-up children and their parents through childhood to adolescence.
The project proposed here therefore aims to fill important gaps in our knowledge in this area. It will investigate the role of parental reflective functioning, i.e. the capacity of the parent to continue to reflect on changes related to his/her developing child, parental stress reactivity and the use of parental controlling behaviour, i.e. behaviour that negatively interferes with the development of the child. It will investigate these associations in the context of the Leuven Adoption Study (LAS), a 10-year longitudinal study of internationally adopted children and their parents, and in an experimental study and a diary method study in adopted children as compared to biological children and their parents.