Parental Invalidation and Its Associations With Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms: A Multivariate Meta-Analysis

Childhood invalidation has been postulated to be implicated in the development of borderline personality disorder (BPD), according to the biosocial model. Despite its significance, most systematic reviews and meta-analyses have focused on examining the associations between extreme forms of invalidation, such as sexual abuse, and BPD. Nonetheless, individuals could experience mild-to-severe levels of parental invalidation, with or without abuse. This study examined the relationship between parental invalidation as an overall construct and BPD symptoms, synthesized across 21 studies (total N = 7,198). As most reviewed studies utilized retrospective self-report measures, the effect sizes derived pertained largely to the association between reported childhood parental invalidation and BPD symptoms. We conducted a multivariate meta-analysis to account for the dependence of multiple effect sizes obtained from a single study and to maintain precision in obtained effect sizes. Maternal, paternal, and overall parental invalidation were positively associated with BPD symptoms, with small-to-moderate effect sizes of .26, .23, and .25, respectively. The mean effect size of maternal invalidation was greater than that of paternal invalidation. We also investigated if the parental invalidation-BPD associations were moderated by child gender, age, and culture (degree of individualism). Only overall parental invalidation and BPD symptoms association was moderated by child's gender, with larger effect sizes found for samples with a greater proportion of males. Age and culture did not moderate the parental invalidation-BPD association. Risk of publication bias was low. Our findings provide support for the invalidating childhood environment component of the biosocial model.