Fathers’ and Mothers’ Early Mind-Mindedness Predicts Social Competence and Behavior Problems in Childhood

Parental mind-mindedness, the parent’s propensity to treat the child as an intentional agent, has repeatedly shown to promote children’s development of social understanding and secure attachment. Less is known about whether the impact of maternal and paternal mind-mindedness extends to children’s social and behavior problems. We investigated the combined effect of mothers’ and fathers’ (N = 104) mind-mindedness at 4, 12, and 30 months on children’s social competence and externalizing and internalizing behavior problems at 4.5 years. Besides, we examined the stability, continuity, parental concordance, and inter-parental differences in the use of mind-related comments. Appropriate mind-mindedness (i.e., correct interpretations of the child’s mental states) and nonattuned mind-mindedness (i.e., misinterpretations of the child’s mental states) were observed during parent-child free-play interactions. Social competence, internalizing and externalizing behavior problems were assessed using both parents’ reports. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that, at 30 months, infrequent use of appropriate mind-related comments of both parents predicted children’s externalizing problems, while their frequent use of nonattuned comments predicted children’s low social competence. Furthermore, mothers’ frequent use of nonattuned comments at 12 and 30 months and fathers’ nonattuned comments at 30 months predicted children’s externalizing behavior. The findings suggest that both parents’ low use of mind-related comments, and frequent misinterpretations of their child’s mind, may act as risk factors for later social and behavior problems of their child.