Mothers’ negative expressivity and children’s emotion dysregulation: Mediating effect of discipline

Abstract

BackgroundPrevious studies have revealed that maternal negative emotion expressions are associated with the types of discipline that mothers utilize and that the combination of maternal negative emotions and discipline practices is related to children’s deficits in emotion regulation. Few studies explore the underlying mechanisms of discipline in the impact of maternal negativity on children's emotional dysregulation. ObjectiveThe current study investigated the mediating effects of three types of discipline (corporal punishment, psychological aggression, nonviolent discipline) on the association between mothers’ negative expressivity and toddlers’ emotion dysregulation. Participants and SettingOne thousand six mother–child dyads (children’s mean age = 2.63 years) were recruited from preschools to participate in this research. MethodThe study used mother self-reported data. ResultsThe findings indicated that corporal punishment and psychological aggression partly mediated the relationship between maternal negative expressivity and children’s emotion dysregulation, yet there was no mediating effect of nonviolent discipline on this relationship. ConclusionThe results of the study shed new light on the implications of maternal negative expressivity and discipline on children's emotion dysregulation, and suggest a direction for developmental work by showing the importance of positive discipline in families raising toddlers.