| The goal of this study was to test the validity of a proposed construct of mindful parenting, as measured by the Int er-personal Mindfulness in Parenting (IEM-P) scale. This conceptualization of mindful parenting encompasses affective, cognitive, and attitudinal aspects of parent-adolescent relations and draws from the literature on intra-personal mindfulness (i.e., an ability to intentionally maintain present-centered awareness and attention with a non-judgmental stance). Mindful parenting extends the internal process of mindfulness to the interpersonal interactions taking place during parenting. Through investigation with a sample of 801 rural families of early adolescents, mindful parenting was shown to have properties of reliability and convergent, discriminant, and concurrent validity. First, the IEM-P measurement model was examined in a randomly selected subsample of 375 mothers. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis supported a measurement model comprised of a higher-order factor of mindful parenting, as expected, and four first-order factors (present-centered attention, present-centered emotional awareness, non-judgmental acceptance, and non-reactivity), one more than anticipated. This model had adequate reliability, was replicated in an independent sample of 378 mothers, and was then shown to have measurement invariance across mothers and fathers.;A series of structural equation models conducted with the full sample of 753 mother/adolescent pairs provided evidence of the validity of the mindful parenting construct. First, mindful parenting was shown to be positively associated with, yet clearly distinct from mothers' intra-personal mindfulness. Next, psychological functioning was shown to account for a much larger proportion of the variance in mothers' intra-personal mindfulness than of their mindful parenting, as hypothesized. Third, mothers' mindful parenting accounted for a substantial proportion of the variance in the constructs of parent-child affective quality and general child management (use of inductive reasoning, monitoring, and consistency in discipline), yet appeared independent from them. Finally, mothers' self-reported mindful parenting was shown to be moderately predictive of concurrent, adolescent-reported goal setting and inversely of girls' externalizing behavior. These findings offer preliminary validation of the extension of mindfulness to the interpersonal domain of parent-adolescent relations and can serve to inform the development and evaluation of preventive interventions targeting mindful parenting in families of early adolescents. |
