LE3 .A278 2013

2013

Symons, Doug

Acadia University

Master of Science

Masters

Clinical Psychology

Psychology

The present study addressed the relations between an adult’s history of childhood trauma, their personality functioning, and the quality of relationships they have with their own children. Participants were eleven mothers and their 2-to 7-year old children, who were seen during a laboratory visit and then again during a home visit. Measures consisted of observations of maternal sensitivity and child-parent attachment security and self-report measures of affective lability, borderline symptomology, and history of childhood maltreatment. In addition, adults were engaged in a story-telling task, and transcripts were coded for indicators of borderline symptoms. This research found a positive correlation between maternal sensitivity and attachment security, negative relations of these relationship indices with affective lability and particularly anger, but no relations between relationship indices and neither borderline symptoms nor history of childhood maltreatment. The narrative task, however, contained many indicators of borderline symptoms and abuse for those participants who scored high on these respective self-report measures. These findings suggest that there are a number of challenges for high psychosocial risk mothers in terms of their own trauma history, personality functioning, and relationship harmony with their own children.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:294