The Implications of Parent Mental Health and Wellbeing for Parent-Child Relationships, with a Special Population Focus on Military Families

The first relationship a child develops is with their parent. This relationship is arguably the most influential relationship experienced by an individual across their lifetime and forms the foundation for later socio-emotional development and health and wellbeing. This thesis, comprising of four studies, explores associations of parent mental health and wellbeing with the early parent-child relationship, within an attachment framework. In the first study, a systematic review of the current literature explored the impact of parent mental health and wellbeing on the intergenerational transmission of attachment. Findings from 11 studies indicated that parent mental health and wellbeing likely impacts the intergenerational transmission of attachment. However, the limited scope of parent mental health and wellbeing constructs (e.g., mindfulness) examined in the literature, the sparse use of robust contemporary statistical analyses, and the limited number of empirical studies made it difficult to draw conclusions on how and why parent mental health and wellbeing impacts attachment transmission.