Institute of Education and Child Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2022 Jun;226:103581. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103581. Epub 2022 Mar 31.
Narrative coherence reflects parents' ability to provide a believable, clear, relevant, and internally consistent story about their child. Parents demonstrating more narrative coherence have been theorized to show higher parental sensitivity, but this has not been examined in a normative sample, nor across the transition to parenthood, and only once in fathers. The aim of this study was to examine stability and change in narrative coherence across the transition to parenthood in mothers and fathers, as well as the relation between pre- and postnatal narrative coherence and postnatal parental sensitivity. The sample consisted of 105 primiparous expecting parents. Narrative coherence was measured at 36-weeks pregnancy and when the child was 4 months old, using the Five Minute Speech Sample procedure. Parental sensitivity was observed in three episodes. Results demonstrated that narrative coherence was moderately stable (correlations) across the transition to parenthood in fathers only. Both mothers' and fathers' narrative coherence improved over time. Furthermore, mothers and fathers were overall equally coherent, and maternal and paternal narrative coherence were positively interrelated during pregnancy only. Lastly, our findings showed weak evidence for the theorized link between narrative coherence and parental sensitivity: only postnatal narrative coherence predicted paternal sensitivity, only during free play. Our findings give new insight in the development of narrative coherence across the transition to parenthood, and how it relates to actual parenting. More research is needed to confirm our findings and further explore this topic.
叙述连贯性反映了父母提供关于孩子可信、清晰、相关且内部一致的故事的能力。理论上，表现出更高叙述连贯性的父母表现出更高的父母敏感性，但这尚未在规范样本中进行检验，也未在向父母身份的过渡中进行检验，仅在父亲中进行过一次检验。本研究的目的是检验母亲和父亲在向父母身份过渡过程中叙述连贯性的稳定性和变化，以及产前和产后叙述连贯性与产后父母敏感性之间的关系。样本由 105 名初产妇期待父母组成。使用五分钟演讲样本程序，在怀孕 36 周和孩子 4 个月大时测量叙述连贯性。在三个情节中观察到父母敏感性。结果表明，只有父亲的叙述连贯性在向父母身份过渡期间具有中等稳定性（相关性）。母亲和父亲的叙述连贯性都随着时间的推移而提高。此外，母亲和父亲总体上同样连贯，并且仅在怀孕期间，母亲和父亲的叙述连贯性是相互关联的。最后，我们的研究结果为叙述连贯性与父母敏感性之间的理论联系提供了微弱的证据：仅产后叙述连贯性预测了父亲的敏感性，仅在自由玩耍期间。我们的研究结果为向父母身份过渡期间叙述连贯性的发展以及它与实际育儿的关系提供了新的见解。需要进一步的研究来证实我们的发现并进一步探讨这个话题。
