Étude des liens entre l’orientation mentale paternelle et le développement des manifestations morales à l’âge préscolaire

One important foundation of child functioning is moral development (Killen & Smetana, 2014). The first precursors of morality begin to appear in early childhood and can be manifested in different ways, including behavioral indices (e.g., inhibitory control, rule-compatible conduct). When children are approximately 2 years of age, many parents gradually shift their focus from primary care to educational components, for instance teaching their children rules of behavior (i.e., proper conduct); children thus begin to distinguish right from wrong and begin to regulate their behavior in line with this understanding (Lamb & Lewis, 2004). It is, then, expected that the quality of parent-child interactions in infancy and toddlerhood influences children’s moral conduct (Dunn, 2014). There is, however, surprisingly little empirical support for this (Malti, Eisenberg, Kim, & Buchmann, 2013), and even less concerning the role of fathers (Grusec, Chaparro, Johnston, & Sherman, 2014).  One aspect of parental behavior that appears likely to support moral development is mind-mindedness (MM), defined as parents’ proclivity to consider and treat their child as a separate individual with an active and autonomous mental life of thoughts, intentions, and desires (Meins, 1997). Parental MM is often proposed to offer children an opportunity to reflect on their own ideas and those of others (Laranjo, Bernier, Meins, & Carlson, 2014), which in turn is one of the foundations of moral reasoning (Gibbs, 2010; Sharp & Fonagy, 2008). Accordingly, this study examines the role of paternal mind-mindedness (MM) in young children’s early self-regulated conduct, namely inhibitory control and rule-compatible conduct (i.e., compliance with rules). 92 families participated in this study. Paternal MM was assessed with a 10-minute father-child free-play session when children were aged 18 months. These videotaped interactions were later rated for paternal MM using Meins, Fernyhough, Fradley, and Tuckey’s (2001) coding system. To assess rule-compatible conduct, mothers were asked to complete the 20 items constituting the subscale "Internalized Conduct" of the questionnaire "My Child" (Kochanska, DeVet, Goldman, Murray, & Putnam, 1994), when their children reached 3 years of age. Finally, inhibitory control was measured with a "Snack Delay" task (Kochanska, Murray, Jacques, Koenig, & Vandegeest, 1996), also administered when children reached 3 years.  The results suggest that after accounting for the contribution of child temperament, paternal MM was positively related to children’s inhibitory control at 3 years of age and explained a unique 7% of the variance. In contrast, the relation between paternal MM and mother-reported rule-compatible conduct was not significant. These results show that when fathers demonstrate mind-mindedness, this may help children understand the differences between what they think and what others think, which in turn, may support children’s growing capacity to behave properly (i.e., inhibit an inappropriate behavior).

Keyphrases: Paternal mind-mindedness, Inhibitory control, Rule-compatible conduct, Moral development, Clinical psychology