Perceptions of childhood caretakers and borderline personality symptomatology

Previous studies indicate that individuals with borderline personality disorder come from families marked by high levels of psychopathology as well as dysfunctional parenting styles—themes that tend to engender negative attitudes toward parents. However, we are not aware of any studies that have examined perceptions of parenting quality and borderline personality symptoms in a clinical but non-psychiatric population—the purpose of the present study. Using a cross-sectional self-report survey methodology in a sample of internal medicine outpatients, we examined participants’ perceptions of the quality of parental caretaking using a one-item assessment, and examined borderline personality symptomatology using two measures. Ratings of the quality of parental care were statistically significantly inversely correlated with scores on both measures of borderline personality symptomatology. After controlling for the number of caretakers during childhood, the observed statistical relationships remained statistically significant. In this primary care sample, participants with borderline personality symptomatology perceived parents more negatively than those without such symptomatology.