Perspectives of Maternal Mindful Parenting: Development and Initial Validation of the Mindful Parenting Inventories for Parents (MPIP) and Children (MPIC)

Abstract

Abstract Objectives Mindful parenting and its association with children’s socio-emotional development has garnered increasing research interest in recent years, but child perspectives are little understood. Here, we introduce the development and initial validation of parallel parent- and child-reported inventories—the Mindful Parenting Inventories for Parents (MPIP) and Children (MPIC)—that aim to measure parent and child perspectives of mindful parenting, respectively. Method The inventories consist of 18 items comprising 4 mindful parenting subscales (Self-Regulation in Parenting, Acceptance and Compassion towards Child, Being in the Moment with Child, Awareness of Child). Following initial feasibility work, 135 mothers (Mage = 44.50 years, SDage = 5.49 years) and 90 typically developing children (Mage = 13.09 years, SDage = 1.66 years) formed a validation sample in the UK. Partial measurement invariance was supported across reporters. Results There were medium-to-large correlations between MPIP and MPIC total scores and subscales, and both demonstrated excellent convergent validity (associations with mothers’ dispositional mindfulness and “traditional” parenting constructs) and concurrent validity (associations with children’s internalising, externalising and prosocial behaviours and mothers’ psychological distress). Furthermore, incremental validity—predictions from MPIP/MPIC to children’s behaviours over and above maternal dispositional mindfulness and traditional parenting—was apparent. Conclusions The parallel MPIP and MPIC show promise for assessing mindful parenting from both parent and child perspectives. Preregistration This study was not preregistered.