New parents often wonder how their unique personalities and past experiences will shape their parenting.
But less obvious is the influence partners have on one another in the early stages of caregiving.
A recent study suggests that the way mothers and fathers understand emotions and relationships – what psychologists call “mentalizing” – can have ripple effects across the entire family system, even influencing each other’s parenting sensitivity.
A new study by Selina Ismair and colleagues, published in Frontiers in Psychology, explores how mothers’ and fathers’ attachment styles and mentalizing abilities impact not only their own parenting behaviors but also those of their partners.
The researchers found that a father’s ability to respond sensitively to his infant was linked to both his own attachment style and reflective functioning—his capacity to understand mental states.
Importantly, this pathway was influenced by the mother’s mentalizing capacity during pregnancy, which appeared to support the development of these skills in fathers over time.
Parental sensitivity – the ability to recognize and respond appropriately to a child’s emotional signals—is widely recognized as a foundation for healthy child development.
Research has shown that secure attachment representations and mentalizing ability enhance this sensitivity. While much of this work has focused on mothers, recent efforts are beginning to explore how these factors operate in fathers, and whether traits in one parent affect the other.
This longitudinal study followed 40 first-time heterosexual couples in Austria and Switzerland. Parents completed interviews during pregnancy to assess attachment style and general reflective functioning.
Six months after birth, they participated in further assessments of parenting-specific mentalizing and were videotaped interacting with their infants.
Trained researchers evaluated these interactions to measure parenting sensitivity using standardized observational tools.
The study revealed several key patterns.
For fathers, those with secure attachment styles and stronger general mentalizing skills during pregnancy showed greater sensitivity with their infants at six months.
This relationship was explained in part by their later development of parenting-specific reflective functioning, suggesting a stepwise link between attachment, mentalizing, and behavior. Interestingly, these associations were not found in mothers.
Moreover, mentalizing scores between mothers and fathers were correlated both during pregnancy and after the child’s birth.
Each parent’s ability to reflect on emotions and intentions seemed to influence the other’s development of these skills over time.
Specifically, mothers’ reflective functioning during pregnancy predicted greater reflective functioning—and ultimately, higher sensitivity—in fathers. However, the reverse was not observed: fathers’ mentalizing did not appear to shape mothers’ caregiving in the same way.
These findings highlight how parenting is not just an individual effort but a shared, interdependent process.
In particular, they underscore the role mothers may play in shaping fathers’ development as caregivers during the transition to parenthood.
This dynamic may reflect broader social patterns in which women are more often socialized to assume caregiving roles, while men may look to their partners for cues and support.
The researchers suggest that these dynamics have practical implications.
Screening for attachment styles and mentalizing abilities during pregnancy could help identify families who may benefit from early interventions.
Programs that support both parents—not just mothers—in developing reflective skills may lead to stronger co-parenting relationships and more sensitive caregiving overall.
However, the study also comes with important caveats. The sample was relatively small and homogenous, with most participants identifying as white, well-educated, and economically secure.
These factors may limit the generalizability of the results to more diverse family structures. Moreover, because mentalizing and sensitivity were assessed at the same time postnatally, the study cannot firmly establish cause and effect.
Despite these limitations, the findings contribute to a growing body of research emphasizing the value of examining family dynamics through a systemic lens.
Rather than treating each parent in isolation, this approach recognizes how traits and behaviors in one caregiver can influence the other, ultimately shaping the caregiving environment in which children grow up.
By pointing to the influence of maternal mentalizing on paternal sensitivity, this study opens new avenues for understanding how emotional insight within couples can support healthy parenting.
It also underscores the importance of including fathers in research and intervention efforts—especially during the critical window of early parenthood.
Citation
Ismair, S., Dinzinger, A., Markova, G., Schropp, J., Brisch, K. H., Sperl, W., & Priewasser, B. (2025). One and one makes three—Mothers’ and fathers’ attachment, mentalizing and parenting sensitivity. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1582698. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1582698
