Parent-Child Interactions in Families with Mothers who had Experienced Early Relational Traumas

Early maternal relational traumas can have an impact on mothers’ psychopathological risk and mother-infant interactions. Research has suggested the importance of fathers’ role as protection or risk factors for child’s development. Few studies had considered fathers in the assessment of the quality of parent-infants interactions during daily routines (e.g. feeding) and there is a lack of research on non-referred samples. This paper aims to assess the quality of parent-infant interactions during feeding in families with mothers who have experienced early relational traumas, such as emotional abuse and neglect or sexual/physical abuse, considering parental psychopathological risks. N= 98 families were recruited and divided into three groups: families with mothers who lived through early sexual/physical abuse (Group A); families with mothers who lived through early emotional abuse or neglect (Group B); healthy controls (Group C). Families were assessed at 6 months of the children with a protocol that included an observation of parent-infant interactions during feeding and a self-report assessing psychopathological risk. Group B showed more maladaptive mother-infants and father-infant interactions with their children. Results show that the interaction of maternal depression and early traumatic experiences of neglect and emotional abuse predicted more maladaptive scores on the affective state of the dyad subscale. Furthermore, paternal anxiety predicted higher scores of child’s food refusal subscales. These results are very important for the planning of prevention and / or treatment , which take into account of the whole family. © 2016 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.uk