MATERNAL ANXIOUS AND AVOIDANCE DIMENSIONS OF ATTACHMENT STYLE AND CHILD’S WEIGHT: THE INDIRECT MEDIATION OF MOTHER’S MENTALIZATION

Given the importance of affective processes in eating behaviour, the issue of parents’ dysregulated emotional response has recently received increasing support in studies on parents of children with obesity. Adopting an attachment theory framework, the absence of an accurate emotional feedback to the full range of children emotions in non secure attached parents impacts on the children capacities to learn to self-regulate and to develop strategies for managing increasing levels of arousal, negative affects and stress responses. The few previous studies on the quality of parental attachment and risk of childhood obesity did not still address the question of which mechanism might explain the findings that insecure parents’ attachment is associated with higher weight in children through emotion regulation. As Parental Reflective Functioning (PRF) is considered to promote the development of self and affect regulation in children, aim of the present study was to explore the effects of insecure maternal insecure dimensions of attachment style on children weight (Body Mass Index, BMI), mediated by PRF. The Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ) and the Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ) were administered to a sample of 126 Italian mothers (Mage=43.11, SD=4.11) of children (Mage=10.06, SD=2.52) with BMI z-score ranging from -2.16 to 3.55 (M=1.04, SD=1.17). To test direct and indirect effects of mothers’ anxious and avoidant dimensions of attachment on BMI mediated by PRF, "process" macro developed by Preacher & Hayes (2008) and the bootstrapping technique were performed. Data showed direct effect of PRF on BMI, but not of the insecure dimensions of attachment style. However, the anxious dimension of attachment had a significant indirect effect on children’s BMI as mediated by PRFQ. These results have important implications in both clinical and research field.