Parent Dispositional Mindfulness and its Links to Adolescent Disclosure, Mother-Adolescent Conflict, and Adolescent Hostile Attribution Bias

Mindfulness, defined as the nonjudgmental awareness of and attention towards present experience, has become a popular subject of research in recent years. Higher mindfulness levels have been linked to a number of positive correlates, including lower stress and effective coping skills (e.g. Weinstein, Brown, Ryan, 2009). Despite increasing attention on the link between mindfulness and its impact on parenting, there is a shortage of literature focusing on the indirect pathways by which this link is facilitated. The goal of this thesis was to examine the indirect link between parents’ mindfulness and their adolescent children’s disclosure, mother-adolescent conflict, and adolescents’ hostile attribution bias. Mediating parent factors considered were parental stress, adolescent perceptions of parents’ perspective taking, and parental perceptions of balanced control over caregiving failure. Adolescents between the ages of 9.5 and 12 and their mothers and fathers participated in this study (N = 127). First, path analysis was used to test the links between mothers’ mindfulness and both adolescent children’s disclosure and mother-adolescent conflict, through mothers’ stress and perspective taking. Results indicated that mindful mothers experienced lower levels of stress, which was related to greater perspective taking as seen by their adolescent children. In turn, greater adolescent-perceived maternal perspective taking was related to both adolescents’ greater disclosure to mothers and lower mother-adolescent conflict intensity. Second, using mediation, mothers’ and fathers’ mindfulness were tested for their links to their adolescent children’s hostile attribution bias through their perceptions of balanced control over caregiving failure. Results indicated that neither mothers’ nor fathers’ perceived balance of control over caregiving failure mediated between their mindfulness and their adolescent children’s hostile attribution bias. My thesis results suggest that mothers’ mindfulness may be related to their stress level, which is associated with mother-adolescent relationship quality. However, the present results are limited, and further investigation of father characteristics and longitudinal methods are required.Ph.D