Maternal narratives contribute to foundations of the child’s inner world. Commentary on: Maternal Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) collected during pregnancy predicts reflective functioning in AAIs from their first-born children 17 years later

Abstract

[Extract] Steele, Perez, Segal, and Steele (2016) contributed with an informative study, showing that adolescents’ reflective functioning (RF) is predicted by maternal attachment representation, which was assessed even before the youth were born using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985). Such a result is in line with previous findings from the London Parent-Child Project (Steele & Steele, 2005) and with years of attachment research, positing the vital role of maternal state of mind in shaping the child’s inner world...