Parental Emotion Research Articles

How mothers with severe emotion dysregulation use DBT skills in parenting contexts: observational coding of skills use in a DBT skills training group

BackgroundDialectical Behavior Therapy’s (DBT) well established effectiveness in reducing emotion dysregulation, and the growing recognition that parental emotion regulation is critical to effective parenting has led to increasing interest in the applicability of DBT skills to parenting. Efforts to integrate DBT and parenting interventions would benefit from an empirical examination of which DBT skills are most useful to parents with emotion dysregulation.MethodsThis study used clinician-rated observational coding of skill use examples that were provided by mothers with severe emotion dysregulation (n = 16) who participated in a standard 48-week DBT Skills Training (DBT-ST) program in the context of a larger randomized controlled trial (NCT03060902). Mothers described their use of DBT skills during the homework review portion of DBT-ST sessions and video-recordings were then examined and coded to identify which DBT skills mothers most frequently described using in parenting situations (vs. non-parenting situations) and which skills were used to either increase positive parenting behaviors or to decrease negative parenting behaviors.ResultsA total of 220 skill use examples were coded and approximately one-quarter described skill use in parenting situations. Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, and Emotion Regulation skills were the most frequently described skills used in parenting situations, while Interpersonal Effectiveness skills were rarely coded. Mindfulness and Emotion Regulation skills were most often coded when mothers’ parenting goal was to increase positive parenting, while Distress Tolerance skills were most often coded when mothers’ parenting goal was to decrease negative parenting behaviors.ConclusionsResults provide an empirical basis which clinicians and treatment developers can use when selecting DBT skills to apply towards parenting challenges.

Exploring the Multifaceted Burdens and Experiences of Parents With a Child Diagnosed With Anorexia Nervosa: A Psychological Network Analysis.

Parents of children diagnosed with anorexia nervosa (AN) are facing multiple burdens when caring for their child. This study uses a psychological network approach to identify central factors among parental caregiving burdens and experiences which then can constitute promising targets for caregiver interventions. A total of 348 parents (247 mothers, 101 fathers) of children diagnosed with AN (96% female, 90% restrictive type) provided data including parental psychopathology, eating-disorder related burden, high-expressed emotion and perceived caregiver skills at baseline and after having participated in a parental skills training, multi-family therapy or systemic family therapy. Regularized partial correlation networks including 14 variables were estimated for baseline and follow-up data were estimated. High-expressed emotion, particularly parental emotional overinvolvement emerged as the most central variable in the network showing substantial correlations with depression and low self-care behavior. Emotional overinvolvement also functioned as a bridge variable between parental psychopathology, perceived caregiver skills, and eating disorder-related burden. Moreover, parental criticism was strongly associated with burden due to the child's confrontational behavior and low levels of parental frustration tolerance. Network comparison tests neither revealed statistically significant differences in network structure and global network strength between baseline and follow-up, nor between mothers and fathers. This study highlights the importance of parental high-expressed emotion as a promising treatment target. Adding or intensifying intervention components promoting parental emotion regulation strategies as well as intensified training in Motivational Interviewing may be useful therapeutic approaches to decrease overall parental burden.

Why regulate? Understanding the role of perceived parental emotion regulation in offspring emotional development

ABSTRACTObjectiveThe current study aimed to examine the role of perceived parental emotion regulation in adult–offspring internalizing symptoms, investigating emotional intelligence (EI) as a mediator and gender as a moderator.BackgroundEI is well researched and associated with numerous benefits including academic achievement, physical and mental health, and success throughout life. While some research suggests EI can be taught, the relationship between perceived parent emotionality and offspring EI has yet to be empirically tested.MethodsTo increase participant diversity, two samples were collected and combined: one from a southwestern university and a second through Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Participants (N = 866) reported their EI and internalizing symptoms along with their perception of parents' emotion regulation during childhood.ResultsResults showed a significant relationship between perceived parental emotion regulation and internalizing symptoms that was mediated by EI, with gender serving as a significant moderator.ConclusionBoth maternal and paternal regulation play important roles in offspring EI and internalizing symptoms but perceived maternal emotion regulation may be particularly beneficial for women.ImplicationsFuture research is needed to investigate the intricacies of specific emotions, gender, and culture, as well as the impact of discrepancies in emotionality between parents and frequency of regulation versus dysregulation.

A Pilot Study to Examine the Effects of an Emotion Coaching Parenting Program for Chinese Parents of Preschoolers.

Parental emotion socialization is crucial to children's development, yet emotion-focused parenting programs are scarce in non-Western contexts. In this study, we developed a four-week emotion-focused parenting program based on the principles of emotion coaching for Chinese families with preschool-aged children. This program integrated parent group sessions with home-based parent-child shared reading. A total of 73 parents of preschoolers were recruited and randomly assigned to experimental and waitlist control groups. Three waves of data on parents' emotion-related parenting beliefs and practices and parenting stress were collected at pre-intervention, post-intervention, and three-month follow-up. Significant reductions in parents' punitive reactions, minimization reactions, and parent-child dysfunctional interactions were found in both the experimental and the waitlist control groups immediately after completion of the program. When combining data from both groups, a significant improvement in parents' expressive encouragement was observed at post-intervention and follow-up. Additionally, delayed effects of the program were found on parents' emotion-dismissing beliefs, problem-focused reactions, and overall parenting stress. This study was one of the first in China to develop an emotion-focused parenting program and rigorously examine its feasibility and effects, offering insights into the development of similar parenting programs in China.

Raising siblings is stressful: Measuring parental emotion regulation in the sibling context

Parents’ ability to manage intense emotions in the face of conflictual sibling interactions is a significant challenge that has been linked with various child and parent outcomes. With existing instruments focused on raising a single child, we lack validated instruments to assess dimensions of parental emotion regulation in the context of rearing siblings. We tested the factor structure, reliability, divergent and concurrent criterion validity of a new instrument designed to measure parental emotion regulation ( Parental Emotional Regulation in the Sibling Context Questionnaire) while raising two or more children. Participants, 359 mothers from 35 countries, with two children aged 4- to 8-years, completed the new instrument along with established measures of parental emotion regulation, sibling relationship quality, and children’s emotion regulation. A confirmatory factor analysis supported the utility of the instrument in reliably assessing dimensions of parent emotional regulation (Reactivity and Dysregulation). Evidence for divergent validity stemmed from associations with an established measure of general emotion regulation strategies and evidence for concurrent criterion validity stemmed from associations with children’s sibling relationship quality. Findings have implications for the reliable identification of mothers who are facing emotion regulation difficulties, the design of customized intervention strategies, and the evaluation of prevention and intervention programs.

The Influence of Parental Social-Emotional Competencies on Intergenerational Child Maltreatment: A Scoping Review.

Child maltreatment is a major public and global health issue with well-documented intergenerational patterns. Social-emotional development, which is detrimentally impacted by child maltreatment, has been associated with parenting behaviors and implicated as a mechanism of intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment. This scoping review sought to synthesize information on the social-emotional skills that contribute to or protect against intergenerational maltreatment. Following the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis systematic scoping review methodology, 23 studies were identified as having met all inclusion criteria. Eligible studies were empirical, primary, peer-reviewed and published work written in English. Included studies contained a parental history of maltreatment, maltreatment or risk thereof to the child, and at least one independent parental social-emotional factor. Studies were organized, and findings were conceptually mapped according to Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) social-emotional competency domains. Key findings included determining self-management as the most well-studied CASEL competency area, whereas there was a paucity of research on relationship skills and responsible decision-making. Studies focused almost exclusively on assessing risk. The most well-documented risk factors for intergenerational maltreatment included parental emotion dysregulation, low self-control, aggression, and dissociation. Measurement and consideration of the developmental timing of maltreatment was identified as a critical oversight in the literature. Future work should explore developmentally specific models and elucidate more comprehensive profiles of social-emotional risk and resilience as a means of developing more effective prevention strategies.

Relations Between Parental Emotion Talk and Preschoolers' Emotion Expressions in Low-Income Chinese American and Mexican American Families.

Background/Objectives: Preschool children learn to express emotions in accordance with sociocultural norms. Parental emotion talk (ET) has been theorized to shape these processes. Limited research has examined preschoolers' observed emotion expressions and emotion-related behaviors in culturally diverse samples. We sought to explore the following: (1) cultural group differences and similarities in observed emotion expressions (anger, sadness, and positive emotions) and emotion-related behaviors between Chinese American and Mexican American preschoolers, and (2) the concurrent links between parental ET and children's emotion expressions. Methods: In a sample of 86 children (age range = 38 to 70 months, 62% girls) from low-income immigrant families (Mexican Americans/MA = 43 and Chinese Americans/CA = 43), the observed children's emotion expressions and emotion-related behaviors were coded based on a frustration-eliciting task. Parental ET quality and quantity were coded from transcripts of a parent-child shared reading task. Results: MA children expressed more anger and sadness, but the two groups did not differ on positive emotions or emotion-related behaviors. Multiple regressions showed that children whose parents engaged in more ET expressed higher levels of anger and sadness and used more non-feeling state languages than children whose parents engaged in less ET. Conclusions: The results revealed cultural variations in preschool-age children's emotion expressions and provided support for associations between parental ET and children's emotion expressions.

Qualitative study exploring the views and perceptions of parents/carers of young children with CF regarding the introduction of CFTR modulator therapy (The REVEAL study; PaRents pErspectiVEs of KAftrio in chiLdren aged 2–5)

BackgroundCystic fibrosis (CF) is associated with a historically high treatment burden which causes anxiety and exhaustion for parents of children with CF, especially in the early years of a child’s...

Indirect Pathways from Sociodemographic Risk to Mothers’ Supportive Emotion Socialization via Psychological Distress and Social Cognition

Sociodemographic disadvantage is a stressor related with unsupportive parenting practices, but little is known about the process by which it may undermine early parental emotion socialization. In the current study, we examined (1) the direct association between sociodemographic risk and supportive emotion socialization and (2) possible indirect effects via psychological distress and mother-oriented cry processing (i.e., negative cognitions about crying) in a short-term 3-wave longitudinal study that followed a stratified sample of 259 first-time mothers from pregnancy through 14-months postpartum. Sociodemographic risk included mothers’ age, education, and income reported by the expectant mothers prenatally. Psychological distress was assessed prior to the 6-month laboratory visit using mothers’ reports on depressive symptoms, difficulty regulating emotions, and trait positive and negative emotions. During the 6-month laboratory visit, mother-oriented cry processing was assessed using a video-recall procedure. Supportive emotion socialization at 14 months was assessed based on observer-rated maternal sensitivity during two distress eliciting tasks and maternal reports. Consistent with prediction, the first indirect pathway from higher sociodemographic disadvantage to lower supportive emotional socialization through higher mother-oriented cry processing was statistically significant, however the second indirect pathway from higher sociodemographic disadvantage to higher psychological distress to higher mother-oriented cry processing to lower supportive emotion socialization was not. Over and above these indirect effects, higher sociodemographic disadvantage was directly associated with lower supportive emotion socialization. Psychological distress was not significantly directly associated with emotion socialization. These findings highlight the importance of policies and interventions that provide financial assistance to the mothers experiencing sociodemographic disadvantage and target their psychological wellbeing.

Mothers' Reactions to Children's Negative Emotions: Impact of Children's Gender

Parental emotion socialization is critical in shaping children’s emotional regulation and social competence. This study examines gender differences in mothers' reactions to their children's negative emotions within the cultural context of Kerala, India, where limited research has explored this phenomenon. The study utilized the Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES) to assess six types of maternal reactions among 200 mothers (100 each with boys and girls aged 6-8 years). Independent samples t-tests revealed significant gender differences in punitive, distress, and minimization reactions, with boys receiving more punitive and minimizing responses compared to girls. Mothers also exhibited greater expressive encouragement towards boys. However, no gender differences were observed in problem-focused or emotion-focused reactions, suggesting consistency in these strategies across genders. These findings underscore the influence of cultural and societal expectations on maternal emotional socialization practices, potentially reinforcing traditional gender roles. The study highlights the need for gender-sensitive parenting interventions to promote supportive and equitable responses to children's emotions. Implications for parenting education, culturally sensitive interventions, and future research are discussed, emphasizing the importance of addressing gender biases to foster healthy emotional development in children.

The Indirect Effects of Fathers' Parenting Style and Parent Emotion Regulation on the Relationship Between Father Self-Efficacy and Children's Mental Health Difficulties.

Improving parental self-efficacy has been linked with reductions in child mental health difficulties; however, underlying mechanisms remain unclear, especially for fathers. This study investigated whether father self-efficacy influences child mental health difficulties indirectly through parenting style and parent-facilitated regulation of children's negative emotions. A community sample of American fathers (N = 350, M = 39.45 years old) completed self-reports on father self-efficacy, parenting styles, parent-facilitated emotion regulation, and their children's mental health difficulties (aged 4-12). Path analysis was used to test a cross-sectional, parallel-sequential indirect effect model. Father self-efficacy had a significant indirect effect on child mental health difficulties via three significant pathways of permissive parenting, authoritative parenting-acceptance of child's negative emotions, and authoritarian parenting-avoidance of child's negative emotions. Our model explained a moderate amount of variance in child mental health difficulties. The findings support promoting father self-efficacy through parenting interventions and highlight parenting beliefs as important for clinicians providing child mental health care.

Parental Burnout in Israeli Parents of Children with ASD During Wartime: The Role of Child Behavior, Parental Emotion Regulation, Stress, and Social Support.

During emergencies like wartime, parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) face heightened challenges, potentially leading to Parental Burnout (PB). Wartime conditions can exacerbate children's behavioral difficulties, contributing to PB. Protective factors such as successful Emotional Regulation (ER) and perceived social support may mitigate PB. This study aims to compare child behavioral problems, parental ER difficulties, perceived social support, stress, and PB between parents of children with ASD and Typical Development (TD) during wartime. It also investigates how ER difficulties, perceived social support, and stress moderate the relationship between child behavioral problems and PB. The study included 213 Israeli parents: 101 parents of children diagnosed with ASD and 112 parents of TD children. Participants were recruited during the "Swords of Iron" War using purposive sampling via online platforms. Findings indicate that children with ASD exhibited higher levels of behavioral problems, and their parents experienced increased difficulties in ER, stress, and PB, alongside decreased perceived social support compared to parents of TD children. Moderation analysis revealed that ER difficulties, perceived social support, and stress moderated the direct association between child behavioral problems and PB specifically among parents of TD children. This study underscores the heightened vulnerability of parents with ASD-diagnosed children during wartime, emphasizing the importance of understanding how these circumstances impact parental well-being and available resources. Effective interventions should target enhancing ER, social support, and addressing parental stress, PB, and child behavioral issues, underscoring the need for prioritized services despite wartime challenges.

Ambivalent surveillance: teaching in the times of anti-woke

ABSTRACT This article addresses the current racialized surveillance regime censoring Blackness and targeting educators in public education, known as “anti-woke.” Building on critical surveillance scholarship, I develop “ambivalent surveillance” to describe the technologies of social control that implicate subjects in both their complicity and resistance to disciplinary power. Examining media narratives about educators implicated and layering on a discussion of racialization and affect, I argue anti-woke legislation produces educators as ambivalent subjects who negotiate their critical values and job security while managing the white emotions of students, parents, and administrators. To conclude, I consider pedagogical possibilities for combatting anti-woke legislation.

Adolescents' neural responses to their parents' emotions: associations with emotion regulation, internalizing symptoms, and substance use.

Parental emotion expression has been linked to adolescent emotional and psychopathology development. However, neural responses to parental emotion are not well characterized. The present study examined associations between adolescents' neural responses to parent emotion and adolescents' emotion regulation (ER) difficulties, depressive and anxiety symptoms, and substance use (SU). One hundred seventy-five 12- to 14-year-olds and their parent(s) participated in the study. In a lab session, families completed a parent-adolescent interaction task. In an MRI session, adolescents viewed videos of their own parents and unfamiliar parents expressing positive, negative, and neutral emotions from the interaction task. Higher salience region responses to own parent negative emotion (versus neutral) in ventral anterior cingulate cortex (vACC), anterior insula (AI), and nucleus accumbens (NAc) were associated with adolescent ER difficulties and depressive and anxiety symptoms. Higher vACC and AI responses to parent positive emotion (versus neutral) were associated with anxiety symptoms only. Higher salience region responses to own parent negative emotion (versus other parent negative) were associated with ER difficulties. Responses to own parent positive emotion (versus other parent positive) were associated with ER and anxiety symptoms for boys. Findings suggest that adolescents' salience system sensitivity to parental emotion may be important in the development of ER and internalizing symptoms.

PERAN ORANG TUA DALAM PENGEMBANGAN SOSIAL EMOSIONAL ANAK DI ERA SOCIETY 5.0

The Society 5.0 era is a concept of a human-centered and technology-based Society , where early childhood is also very close to technology, especially gadgets. This has more or less affected the social emotional development of early childhood. This study aims to determine the role of parents in the development of children's social emotional aspects in the Society 5.0 era and to determine the social emotional aspects of children in the Society 5.0 era using a qualitative descriptive approach to parents who have children aged 4-5 years. Data collection techniques with interviews and observations. The role of parents in the Society 5.0 era has a very influential role in children, differences in children's behavior were found when using technology and their social emotions in parents who play a direct role in children and parents who work and the social emotional aspects of children are currently influenced by the Society 5.0 era which makes children dependent on gadgets so that children are more comfortable alone with gadgets which has an impact on minimal interaction and socializing children with others. The role of parents is very influential in the social emotional development of early childhood, therefore the need for care and guidance for children.

Strengthening children's sibling relationships using an online preventive intervention program for parents

AbstractObjectiveThe purpose was to test a new evidence‐based online preventive intervention designed to help parents improve the sibling relationships of their 4‐ to 8‐year‐old children.BackgroundFew evidence‐based resources exist to address parents' concerns about fostering positive sibling relationships. To address this need, the emotion‐focused online program placed parents in the role of educator, preparing them to teach their children social and emotional competencies shown in previous research to promote prosocial sibling interaction.MethodEighty‐six mothers provided assessments of children's sibling relationship quality, child and parent emotion regulation abilities, and coparenting quality prior to and following completion of four online lessons. A randomly assigned wait‐list control group of mothers (n = 49) provided comparable assessments.ResultsRepeated measures multivariate analyses of covariance revealed that, following program completion, participants perceived their children to demonstrate greater sibling warmth and less agonism and rivalry. Effects were sustained at 3 months. Mothers also reported increased abilities to regulate their own emotions as well as greater collaboration and support in their coparenting relationship.ConclusionResults support the effectiveness of the online More Fun with Sisters and Brothers Program for Parents for enabling mothers from diverse international communities to support positive sibling relationships.ImplicationsIncreasing access to evidence‐based tools for strengthening sibling relationships can enable parents to support these vital lifelong bonds.

A Thematic Analysis of Low-Income African American Fathers’ Meta-Emotion Interview Responses

This study explored African American fathers’ beliefs about and experiences with their own and their children’s negative emotions. Participants included 58 African American fathers in the Midwestern region of the United States between the ages of 29 and 40 ( M age = 30.94). Participants completed the Meta-Emotion Interview, a semi-structured interview of parents’ and their children’s negative emotion. A theoretical thematic analysis of participants’ responses to a subset of Meta-Emotion Interview questions about sadness and anger was conducted. Five themes of African American fathers’ beliefs about and experiences with their own and their children’s negative emotions were interpreted: (1) responsibility for children’s emotions, (2) complex relationship with anger, (3) reckoning negative emotions, (4) children at the center, and (5) actively working through emotions. Taken together, these five themes demonstrate that African American fathers recognize the inherent value of negative emotions while navigating the potential harm these emotions may bring to self and others. Furthermore, the findings provide insight into the role of African American fathers in parental emotion socialization processes.

Parent self-compassion: direct effects on parent emotion socialization and indirect effects on adolescent emotion dysregulation

Parent self-compassion: direct effects on parent emotion socialization and indirect effects on adolescent emotion dysregulation

Adult Parental Attachment and Adolescent Psychological Problems: Mediating Role of Adult Emotional Processes in the Family

The study explores the mediation roles of parent emotion regulation and emotional reactivity in the relationship between adult parental attachment and adolescent psychological problems. The study group consisted of 324 parents. The findings reveal that secure adult attachment to both parents correlates with fewer adolescent psychological issues. Notably, adult emotional reactivity and parent emotion regulation partially mediate this relationship, highlighting distinct mediation pathways for emotional reactivity and parent emotion regulation in attachment to both mothers and fathers. This contributes new insights into parent-child relationships and adolescent psychological health.

A Systematic Review of Parent Socialization of Negative Affect in Clinical Child Samples: Relations to Youth Emotion Regulation Abilities.

Emotion-focused parenting practices, known as parent emotion socialization, play a crucial role in shaping youth's emotion regulation (ER) abilities. The impact of parent emotion socialization behaviors (ESB) on youth ER has been studied extensively in community samples. However, research on these relations in clinical samples is more limited, albeit growing. The current systematic review sought to evaluate the existing literature examining parent ESB of negative affect in various clinical child and adolescent samples. A literature search was conducted in April 2023, resulting in 1153 abstracts being reviewed. Two reviewers independently screened the titles and abstracts to identify relevant papers, with 152 articles being independently reviewed in full, of which 26 articles met inclusion criteria and are included in the current review. Studies (16 cross-sectional, 6 longitudinal, 4 intervention) utilized multi-methods of assessing youth ER, including questionnaires, physiological, and observational measures in a range of clinical samples, including youth diagnosed with internalizing, externalizing, and neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as youth at-risk for clinical diagnoses such as physically abused children. Overall, results support significant, negative associations between parent ESB practices and youth emotion dysregulation (rs = .22-.35) and negativity/lability (rs = .19-.60), and positive associations with youth ER abilities (rs = .18-.76). Some studies highlighted varying impacts of parental ESB on children with versus without clinical disorders/symptomology, with effects being more pronounced within clinical populations. Implications for these findings and future research directions are discussed, including the significance of focusing on parent ESB in intervention work with clinical child populations.