Relationships Between Parent and Child Emotion Regulation Strategy Use: A Brief Report

Abstract

We examined the direct relationships between parent and child emotion regulation (ER) strategy use during the transitionary and understudied developmental periods of middle childhood through to adolescence. Three hundred and seventy-nine participants aged between 9 and 19 years, completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents. In addition, 358 of their mothers and 207 of their fathers completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Providing partial support for the hypothesis, maternal use of the ER Expressive Suppression strategy was significantly predictive of their child’s use of Suppression. However, paternal ER strategy use was unrelated to their child’s ER strategy use. Child age did not moderate the relationships investigated. These findings suggest that children’s ER during middle childhood and adolescence is more closely related to the ER of their mother than their father. It is proposed that this may be accounted for by emotion socialization processes.