Borderline personality disorder is characterized by a constant tendency to instability in relationships, self-image, moods, behavior and hypersensitivity to the idea of rejection and abandonment. In general, personality disorders, considered as mental illnesses, cause a relational deficit, difficulties in concentration and a large variability in the use of one’s abilities, while intellectual functions are preserved. In this way, and according to the evaluation of the consequences of personality disorder on the daily life, that these disorders are recognized as a psychological handicap. The repercussions of this handicap concern various domains : social, professional, judicial, affective but also in parenthood.
Every lasting illness, somatic or mental, as well as any situation of disability affecting a parent has consequences on the exercise, the practice and the experience of parenthood and may impact the relationship between child and parent. All sorts of consequences follow on the child’s emotional, social, psychomotor and cognitive development. Mental illness will have repercussions on parental sensitivity, which is known to be so important in the construction of a secure attachment relationship. The parent’s ability to assess and respond appropriately and quickly to the child’s needs is disturbed by mental illnesses such as BPD, hindering the child’s emotional security and exposing the child to a high risk of being a victim of deprivation, neglect and abuse. Among the personality disorders, BPD is one of the most common and potentially damaging to the parent-child relationship.
Having experienced abuses and traumas with their own attachment figures, BPD parents are at risk to experiencing parenthood as a traumatic experience. In fact, traumatic events from the past (incest, sexual abuse, domestic violence, unresolved losses,…) can suddenly resurface with the child’s birth and complicate access to parenthood. Through the repetition of inconsistent, frightening and even confusing interactions, they can traumatize their children, in their turn. These parents may have difficulties in promoting the physical and psychological safety of their children but also in recognizing their individuality (feelings of autonomy are unbearable for them). The pregnancy of BPD woman generally does not lead to the psychic rearrangements, necessary for the symbolic permutation and thus to the transition to parenthood. This pregnancy can be experienced as idyllic with feelings of fullness and fusion with the fetus, which does not prepare for the acceptance of the “real child” to be born. Pregnancy can also be experienced as a trying, strange experience, where the movements of the fetus and the body modifications are difficult to accept (feeling of persecution / fear of bursting).
The unstable, distrustful and impulsive interactions of the BPD parent with his child are incompatible with the regularity, the empathy, the consistency and the involvement in the care, which is essential for the baby’s safety. The baby’s dependence may be experienced by the BPD mother as persecutory, and the baby’s needs may be guided by the mother’s needs, subjecting the child to inappropriate caregiving rhythms and preparing the way for the onset of sleep and feeding disorders in childhood. BPD mothers do not seem to find the right distance with their children, oscillating between intrusive hyperstimulation and withdrawal with resignation from the parental role. In this type of relationship, the child cannot properly organize his affective and cognitive experiences, nor anticipate his actions and their consequences. Thus, they cannot integrate a coherent representation of situations and of their attachment figures, making the world around them incoherent and insecure.
The educational practices of BPD parents are characterized by a significant fluctuation between laxity, non-intervention and overflow, notably involving abrupt words and gestures. In this way, children of BPD mothers has high risk to develop disorganized-disoriented attachment, which may show alternating approaching, retreating, or freezing behavior, a sign of an attachment figure that is both fearful and comforting. Studies show a much more dysfunctional parent-child relationship when the parent has BPD. Thus, studies show that children of parents with BPD have a high risk to develop a BPD in turn (11.5%, Nigg & Goldsmith, 1994). Moreover, children and adolescents of BPD parents receive significantly more psychiatric diagnoses, particularly behavioral disorders, ADHD, anxiety and depressive disorders, low self-esteem, and suicidal behavior or thoughts. So there is an increased risk of transgenerational repetition. People who have themselves suffered from their own parent’s dysparentality repeat this dysparentality with their children. Psychopathological disorders, neglect, abuse and severe family dysfunction seem to be repeated across generations, underlining the pregnancy of the developmental aspect in this disorder. In order to avoid the setting up of this intergenerational psychopathological loop, an early perinatal care seems to be essential.