Parental Emotion Research Articles

The role of parent and peer emotion socialization and emotion regulation in the development of internalizing problems in adolescents

Adolescence is a dynamic period for the development of emotion regulation skills. Difficulties in emotion regulation are an important predictor of risk for internalizing problems. Parents and peers play an important role in both emotion regulation (ER) skills and the development of internalizing problems, however, few studies have examined their influence concurrently using longitudinal data. This study investigated the impact of parent and peer emotion socialization and adolescent ER on adolescent (N = 213; aged 13 to 14 years old) internalizing problems 11 months later, as reported by adolescents. Results indicated peer but not parent emotion socialization predicted adolescent internalizing problems. Moreover, adolescent difficulties in ER at baseline moderated the impact of peer emotion socialization on adolescent internalizing problems. The findings highlight peer emotion dismissing responses impact internalizing problems, especially if adolescents also report difficulties in ER, underscoring the importance of prevention during earlier developmental periods.

Medical clowning influences the emotions of parents of children undergoing cancer treatment: A quasi-experimental study

BackgroundMedical clowning for children has been found to be effective at enhancing parents' psychological well-being during preoperative preparation, but has not been found during cancer treatment. This study aimed to examine whether and how medical clowning influenced the emotions of parents of children undergoing cancer treatment. MethodsIn this quasi-experimental study, 96 parents of children receiving inpatient cancer treatment were recruited, from June 2018 through April 2020. A demographic questionnaire measuring characteristics of parent and dyadic child, Brief Symptom Rating Scale measuring psychological distress of the parent, and Mood Assessment Scale measuring emotional status of parent and child were administered 1 day before a clowning service. The day after the clowning service, the Mood Assessment Scale again collected emotional status for parent and child. Descriptive analysis, bivariate analysis, and structural equation modeling to fit the actor-partner, cross-lagged model were used. FindingsParents experienced a low degree of psychological distress that called for emotional management. The indirect effect of medical clowning on parents' emotions through children's emotions was significant, as were the direct effect and total effect of medical clowning on parents' emotions. DiscussionParents experienced psychological distress during their child's inpatient cancer treatment. Medical clowning can directly improve children's emotions and through this pathway indirectly improve their parents' emotions. Application to practiceThere is need to monitor psychological distress and provide interventions for parents of children undergoing cancer treatment. Medical clowns should continue to serve parent-child dyads in pediatric oncology practice and become members of multidisciplinary health care teams.

The impact of COVID-19 on children and adolescents attending Child and Youth Mental Health Services in Queensland, Australia.

This explorative study aims to provide insight into impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions, on mental health of children and adolescents treated at Child and Youth Mental Health Services, and their parents. The COVID-19 Mental Health Survey was disseminated to parents of children and adolescents under treatment at community Child and Youth Mental Health Services (Brisbane, Australia) between July-November 2020 throughout different stages of COVID-19 related restrictions. Parents of 110 children participated. Most reported child's symptoms were sadness (46%), anxiety (60%), lack of focus (61%), lack of joy in their usual activities (38%) and reduction in sleep (42%). Parental emotions were significantly correlated with their child's emotions. Parent's lack of enjoyment of usual activities had the overall strongest average correlation (0.27) but this was no longer significant once other variables were controlled for. Children who attended school remotely for some of the days had a significantly (p < .05) higher risk of having more reported symptoms. Interestingly, in later stages of the lockdown with further easing of restrictions, symptoms also tended to be more severe. Cross-sectional data on children and adolescents in Queensland, Australia with pre-existing mental health issues suggests mental health continued to deteriorate through the pandemic even as restrictions eased. Changes in schooling seem to be an especially important risk factor.

Parents' and healthcare professionals' perspectives on manual therapy in infants: A mixed-methods study.

Manual therapy in infants is embedded in Dutch healthcare despite inconsistent evidence and ongoing debate about its safety and merits. This study examines decision-making in manual therapy in infants and explores parents' and healthcare professionals' perspectives on this treatment approach. This mixed-methods study consisted of an online survey among manual physiotherapists and paediatric physiotherapists exploring decision-making on manual therapy in infants and interprofessional collaboration. These data prompted further exploration and were combined with data collected with semi-structured interviews exploring parents' and healthcare professionals' perspectives. Interviews were analysed using an inductive content analysis approach. 607 manual physiotherapists and 388 paediatric physiotherapists completed the online survey; 45% and 95% indicated they treat infants, respectively. Collaboration was reported by 46% of manual physiotherapists and 64% of paediatric physiotherapists for postural asymmetry, positional preference, upper cervical dysfunction, excessive crying, anxiety or restlessness. Reasons to not treat or collaborate were: limited professional competence, practice policy, not perceiving added value, lack of evidence and fear of complications. Analysis of interviews with 7 parents, 9 manual physiotherapists, 7 paediatric physiotherapists, 5 paediatricians and 2 maternity nurses revealed that knowledge and beliefs, professional norms, interpersonal relation, treatment experiences and emotions of parents influenced attitudes and decision-making towards choosing for manual therapy in infants. Parents' and healthcare professionals' attitudes towards manual therapy in infants can be divided as 'in favour' or 'against'. Those who experienced a good interpersonal relation with a manual physiotherapist and positive treatment outcomes reported positive attitudes. Lack of evidence, treatment experience and related knowledge, safety issues due to publications on adverse events and professional norms led to negative attitudes. Despite lacking evidence, positive treatment experiences, good interpersonal relation and parents feeling frustrated and despaired can overrule negative attitudes and directly influence the decision-making process and choosing for manual therapy treatment.

Profiles of parent emotion socialization: Longitudinal associations with child emotional outcomes

BackgroundFew studies within the field of emotion socialization have used a person-centered approach to investigate how supportive or unsupportive parent subpopulations influence child development over time. Furthermore, the role of parents’ emotion socialization processes at different child developmental stages remains understudied. ObjectivesThe current study tests whether parent profiles of emotion socialization are associated with concurrent and long-term child mental health problems and emotion competence, and whether associations differ for parents of children in early (4-6 years) versus middle childhood (7-10 years). MethodThree waves of annual data were drawn from the Child and Parent Emotion Study, a longitudinal study of multinational families (n = 869). We drew on previously derived profiles from a latent profile analysis describing ‘emotion coaching’, ‘emotion dismissing’, and ‘emotion disengaged’ profiles of parent emotion socialization. Linear regression models tested associations between parent profiles (assessed in 2019) and child internalizing and externalizing problems, negative affect, and child emotion regulation, assessed 0, 1, and 2 years later (2019-21). ResultsEmotion dismissing (versus emotion coaching) was associated with higher concurrent child internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and negative affect; and longitudinally with higher internalizing problems and negative affect, and lower emotion regulation. Emotion disengaged (versus emotion coaching) was associated with higher concurrent and longitudinal child negative affect, and lower longitudinal emotion regulation. Split by child age, we found stronger associations in early compared to middle childhood for emotion dismissing and child externalizing problems. The reverse was evident for emotion disengaged, where associations were stronger/more evident in middle compared to early childhood for child negative affect and emotion regulation. Other associations were no longer evident or were consistent across child ages. ConclusionChildren of parents who have a pattern of emotion dismissing or emotion disengaged emotion socialization are at greater risk for mental health problems and lower emotion competence.

The risk factors for negative emotions in parents of children with bacterian vulvovaginitis and its impact on prognosis: a retrospective cohort study.

Vulvovaginitis is one of the most common pediatric gynecological diseases and easily causes the negative emotions for the parents. However, there are few studies on the influence of parental anxiety and depression on children's disease and prognosis. This study aimed to analyze the risk factors of negative parental emotions and their effects on the prognosis of children, in order to improve life quality of children. We retrospectively analyzed 303 pediatric patients who developed bacterian vulvovaginitis from April 2017 to April 2022 based on our inclusion and exclusion criteria. The Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) and Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) were used to assess the negative emotions and binary logistic regression was used to analyze the independent risk factors for negative emotions among the parents of children with vulvovaginitis. The relationship between the prognosis of children and parents' negative emotions was analyzed by independent sample t-test, and the relationship between the recovery rate of children within 2 weeks, clearance rate of urine, and parents' negative emotions was analyzed by chi-square test. In our study, 44.6% of the parents showed anxiety and 35.0% showed depression. The binary logistics regression of the clinical characteristics of the children showed that vulvar pruritus [odds ratio (OR) =1.664, P=0.048], increased vaginal secretions (OR =2.289, P=0.001), vulvar ulcerations (OR =1.831, P=0.024), and so on were independent influences on the anxiety of the parents, whereas vulvar pruritus (OR =2.722, P=0.000), increased vaginal secretions (OR =1.758, P=0.041), dysuria, frequent urination (OR =1.761, P=0.040), and so on were independent influences on depression among the parents. Besides, it was found that parental negative emotions significantly prolonged the improvement of the child's prognosis. Parents of children with vulvovaginitis are highly susceptible to have negative emotions due to the various clinical features of the child. The negative emotions of the parents significantly prolong the recovery time of the child. In clinical practice, adequate communication should be established with the parents of patients, and detailed education should be carried out to reduce the psychological burden of patients' parents, so as to improve the prognosis of children.

Maternal socialization of emotion and the development of emotion regulation in early adolescent girls.

Regulation of negative emotions is a core competency of child development. Parental emotion socialization profoundly influences later capacity to regulate negative affect in childhood and adolescence. The present study examined the effects of maternal emotion socialization on the development of emotion regulation in the context of a longitudinal study of 210 mother-daughter dyads. Dyads completed a conflict resolution task when the child was age 11 years during which maternal warmth and hostility were coded. At ages 11 to 13 years, mothers completed self-report measures of supportive and nonsupportive responses to child negative emotion, and children completed self-reports of inhibition and adaptive regulation of sadness and anger. We used latent growth curve modeling to estimate changes in inhibition and adaptive regulation of sadness and anger over time; observed maternal warmth and hostility were included as time-invariant covariates and maternal self-report of supportive and nonsupportive responses were included as time-varying covariates. Observed maternal warmth was positively associated with girls' adaptive regulation of anger and sadness at age 11 years. Maternal self-reported supportive responses to girls' negative affect were positively associated with girls' adaptive regulation of anger, and nonsupportive responses were negatively associated with adaptive regulation of anger and sadness. These findings support the role of maternal emotion socialization and indicate specific effects of maternal warmth and supportive responses in the development of girls' capacity to modulate negative emotions during early adolescence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Parental stress as a mediator between parents’ emotion regulation and youth’s psychological symptoms during the COVID-19 lockdown: a cross-sectional study

Mental health in families has been affected by COVID-19 stressors. Parental stress and emotion regulation can moderate the emotional effects on their children. This study analyzes the role of parental stress as a mediating variable between parents’ emotion regulation and children’s symptoms. Participants were 214 parents of youth aged 3-17 years, who completed an online survey providing information about parental variables and symptoms in their children. The results show that parental stress mediates the relationship between parental emotion regulation and children’s psychological symptoms. Thus, parents who used cognitive reappraisal strategy less frequently reported more psychological symptoms in their children and higher parental stress. Parents who used expressive suppression more frequently also reported more psychological symptoms in their children and higher parental stress. The present study provides novel information by relating parental psychological variables with psychological variables in youth during a period characterized by the most significant psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Adolescents’ coping and internalizing symptoms: Role of maternal socialization of coping and depression symptoms

Parental emotion socialization, including processes of the socialization of coping and emotion regulation, is a key factor in shaping children's adjustment in response to acute and chronic stress. Given well-established links between parental depression and youth psychopathology, levels of parental depression symptoms are an important factor for understanding emotion socialization and regulation processes. The present study examined associations among maternal coping and depression symptoms with their adolescents’ coping and internalizing problems. A sample of 120 adolescents (45% female, M = 12.27, SD = 1.90) and their mothers participated in a cross-sectional, multi-informant study. Mothers’ depression symptoms and adolescents’ coping were significantly related to adolescents’ internalizing problems. Adolescents’ coping moderated the association between maternal depression symptoms and adolescents’ internalizing problems, where at low and moderate levels of primary control coping, maternal depression predicted greater internalizing symptoms in adolescents. Further, this study expanded on prior work, demonstrating that the relationship between adolescents’ coping and internalizing symptoms was associated with the degree to which mothers model coping. Taken together, results suggest that maternal coping and adolescent coping serve as salient risk and protective factors in the context of family stress. Findings emphasize a need for researchers to further clarify the role of emotion socialization processes in adolescents’ development of coping in the context of family stress.

Mothers’ beliefs about emotions and authoritarian parenting as predictors of young children's behavioral problems

The current study extends key models of parent emotion socialization and child outcomes by testing the interaction between maternal emotion beliefs, authoritarian parenting style, and child gender as a predictor of child behavioral difficulties. In this research, we focus on three maternal emotion beliefs (children can control their emotions, children should be given autonomy to deal with their emotions, and children's anger is valuable) and their associations with preschoolers’ conduct and peer problems, as well as potential moderation of these linkages by mothers’ authoritarian parenting and child gender. Participants included a community sample of mothers and their preschool children (N = 103). Mothers reported their emotion beliefs and authoritarian parenting, and teachers reported on children's conduct and peer problems. Child negative emotionality was assessed through an observational task and was included as a covariate in all analyses. Maternal emotion control beliefs held as the only significant main effect of parenting on child outcomes that was not dependent upon child gender. Mothers’ beliefs about the value of anger related to girls’ peer problems when mothers also reported moderate and low levels of authoritarian parenting. Clinical implications suggest a particular focus on emotion beliefs and parenting style as uniquely important for preschool girls.

Parental Involvement in Child Protection Services and Parenting Experience as Alcohol and Other Drug Use: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Abstract This article explores the emotional experiences of drug- and/or alcohol-using parents who have child protective Social Services involvement. Research suggests that protective processes can reduce children’s experience of poor outcomes whilst parents undergo treatment for substance misuse. Semi-structured interviews combined with photovoice and journal writing were used to generate data. Eight UK-based parents participated. Each was accessing drug or alcohol treatment and had a child who was the subject of a child protection intervention. The resulting data from the seventeen interviews were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Key findings are presented within four themes. The first two outline parents’ perceptions of themselves and how they felt they were viewed by others. Themes 3 and 4 focus on specific emotions: anger and frustration; fear and guilt. The research identifies the complex nature of parental emotions surrounding drug/alcohol misuse when social care services are involved. Parents conceptualised their experience as psychological trauma. They discussed the emotional roller-coaster of the effects of having combined interventions. The research provides insights into how drug/alcohol use can influence parenting. It also highlights issues for professional practice, including developing successful treatment models for substance-using parents.

Alexithymia in adolescents treated for psychiatric disorders: A study of the relationship with Alexithymia in parents and with the parental link

IntroductionAlexithymia is defined as a disorder involving difficulties in identifying, describing feelings and an outward-oriented way of thinking with restricted imaginary processes. Our objectives were to study the link between parents’ alexithymia and that of adolescents treated for psychiatric disorders on the one hand, and to study the relationship between alexithymia in adolescents and the parental link perceived by them, on the other hand.ObjectivesTo study the relationship between the alexithymia of parents and that of adolescents followed for psychiatric disorders on the one hand, and to study the relationship between alexithymia in adolescents and the parental bond perceived by them on the other go.MethodsA descriptive and analytical cross-sectional study was carried out at the pediatric psychiatry consultation at the Hédi Chaker University Hospital in Sfax during a period of one year from January 2019 to December 2019. We recruited 116 people: 53 adolescents, 44 mothers and 19 fathers. . We used an information sheet, the TAS-20 score (Toronto Alexithymia Scale) and the PBI (Parental Bonding Instrument)ResultsTwo-thirds of the patients were alexithymic. A climate of domestic violence increased the adolescent’s emotional difficulties. Half of the mothers and one-third of the fathers were alexithymic. The total alexithymia score (TAS-20) in adolescents was positively correlated with the total alexithymia score (TAS-20) in the parents (p=0.03 for the mother and p = 0.02 for the father Adolescent difficulty in identifying emotions (DIE) was associated with difficulty describing emotions (DDE) in both parents (p=0.01 for mother and p&lt;10-3 for father). The teenager had difficulty describing his own emotions when his mother was having the same difficulty. Outward thinking in adolescents were associated with more alexithymic traits in the mother. Maternal care scores were significantly and negatively correlated with adolescent TAS-20, DIE, and DDE scores (p=0.01, p=0.01, and p=0.04). Maternal protection score was positively and significantly correlated with TAS-20, DIE, and DDE scores (p=0.01, p=0.01 and p=0.02). The father’s protection score was positively and significantly correlated with TAS-20, DIE and DDE scores (p&lt;10-3, p=0.04 and p=0.01). The overprotective attitude of parents perceived by the adolescent has therefore been associated with more alexithymia in adolescents.ConclusionsParticular attention must therefore be paid to the emotional difficulties of adolescents followed in child psychiatry, as well as those present with their parents. These difficulties can create interpersonal difficulties and affect the parental bond perceived by the child.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

Parental emotion socialization: Relations with adjustment, security, and maternal depression in early adolescence.

How parents approach and teach their children about emotions are key determinants of children's healthy adjustment (Denham, 2019). Parental emotion socialization has been mostly studied in parents of young children. Our study identified emotion socialization (ES) strategies used by parents of early adolescents (Study 1) and then examined the relations of ES strategies with early adolescent adjustment, parent-child attachment, and maternal depression (Study 2). Study 1 included 171 parents of 9- to 14-year-old children who completed an open-ended questionnaire about their reactions to their children's negative emotions, which was content coded for ES strategies. We found that parents do use the 6 traditional ES strategies (problem solving, emotion focused/comforting, encouragement, minimizing, punitive, and distress) with early adolescents, while also using 3 approaches not identified in studies of parents of younger children (self-regulation, parent seeking information, parent explaining). We also found that some ES strategies are context and gender specific. Study 2 included 218 mother and child dyads (children aged 9- to 14- years). Mothers completed the Revised Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale, adapted to include items assessing the 3 new strategies, and measures of child adjustment, attachment, and maternal depression. The ES strategies loaded on 3 factors: Collaborative Coping, Negative Reactions to Child's Distress, and Low Expectation for Child's Self-Regulation. Negative Reactions to Child's Distress showed associations with children's internalizing, externalizing, and prosocial behavior, and child attachment, while Collaborative Coping was related to prosocial behavior. Our results point to the importance of investigating additional ES strategies in early adolescence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

It’s gone, it’s back: A prospective study on the COVID-19 pandemic-related shortages and mental health of Australian families

ABSTRACT Our aim was to explore the association between COVID-19 pandemic-related product shortages and symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression in Australian families, concurrently and longitudinally, while controlling for demographic, health, and psychological characteristics. This prospective study used two waves of data (baseline, Time 0 = April 2020; Time 1 = May 2020) from a longitudinal cohort study of Australian parents of a child aged 0‐18 years. Parents were surveyed at baseline about whether they had experienced product shortages related to COVID-19. DASS21 was used to measure symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress at both waves. The sample included 2,110 participants (N = 1,701, 80.6% mothers). About 68.6% of the respondents reported being impacted by one or more shortages. Product shortages correlated significantly with higher combined and individual scores for anxiety, depression, and stress (r = 0.007 to 0.18, all p < 0.001) at baseline. At Time 1, parental emotion regulation explained 4.0% of the variance (p < .001). Our findings suggest a role for improving parental emotion regulation in coping with stressors, such as shortages and lockdowns.

The Challenge of Chinese Children’s Emotion Regulation: Child Number, Parental Emotion Regulation, and Its Relationship with Reactions to Children’s Negative Emotions

In the context of China’s three-child policy, more and more families have been changing from a one-child family to a two-child or three-child family. Both changes of family structure and the increase in child number may bring new challenges to children’s social development, emotion regulation, and parent–child relationship. This study aims to deal with the comparison of children’s emotion regulation for families with different child numbers and its relationship with parental emotion regulation and parental reactions to children’s negative emotions. We examined children’s emotion regulation, parental emotion regulation, and parental reactions to children’s negative emotions through a questionnaire survey. A total of 7807 parents from Guangdong Province in China participated in this study. The results show that: (1) A significant difference exists in children’s emotion regulation for families with different child numbers. Both one-child and two-child families present significantly higher children’s emotion regulation than three-child families; (2) There is a significant difference in parental emotion regulation, and supportive and non-supportive reactions in these families. The more children in each family, the worse the parental emotion regulation, the less supportive the reaction, and the more non-supportive the reaction; (3) Parental emotion regulation exerts a significant positive impact on children’s emotion regulation, and both supportive and non-supportive reactions play the partial mediating role. The findings emphasize more potential risks for children’s emotion regulation with the increase in family’s child number and suggest that special attention should be paid to children’s and parental emotion regulation in three-child families.

Factors influencing smart device addiction among preschool children: An extended protection-risk model perspective.

Today, users of smart devices are from increasingly younger generations, and their use is very common among preschoolers. The problem of smart device addiction in preschool children has attracted widespread attention, due to which this study explores the influencing factors in children aged 2-5 years. Based on the protection-risk model, 236 Chinese parents were surveyed, and the data was analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The findings show that parental emotion regulation significantly and negatively influences children's depression and social withdrawal symptoms, whereas it has a significant and positive influence on parental self-control as well as outdoor intention. Also, children's depression and social withdrawal symptoms have a significant and positive influence on their smart device addiction, whereas parental self-control and outdoor intentions have no significant influence on it. Moreover, children's social withdrawal and depression have a mediating effect between parental emotion regulation and children's smart device addiction, but parental self-control and outdoor intention have no mediating effect between the two. This study identifies the factors influencing children's smart device addiction from a new perspective, providing theoretical support to address this problem of addiction.

An Analysis of The Educational Policies Related to Chinese Migrant Children

This article mainly analyses a series of problems in the education of migrant children in the context of China's existing educational development, especially the shortcomings exposed by the government when making politic decisions. These include that local government policies do not well meet the educational needs of migrant children and hidden danger in implementation. In addition, the policies issued by the central government have not been learned and borrowed by local governments in various regions, thus exacerbating the education problem of migrant children. At the school level, infrastructure needs to be improved, and migrant children cannot equally enjoy the same teaching resources as other students in the school. Moreover, they will also be treated unequally by teachers. The impact of the family is also crucial, and the negative emotions of parents are likely to affect the educational environment of migrant children. All these problems will greatly test the physical and mental health development of migrant children. This paper puts forward corresponding solutions to these problems and hidden dangers, and puts forward countermeasures one by one from the four levels which are the government policy, family environment, school and teacher responsibilities, and migrant children themselves to ensure that the education problems of migrant children can be gradually solved in Chinese society.

Cultural differences in maternal emotion control values and children's expressive flexibility

AbstractExpressive flexibility is the ability to express or suppress one's emotions to meet the demands of the situation. Recent work suggests that expressive flexibility is associated with better adjustment. However, few studies have focused on expressive flexibility in children. In addition, there is a dearth of research on possible correlates, such as culture, parental emotion socialization, and socioeconomic status, that may be associated with expressive flexibility competencies in children. The purpose of this study was to investigate cultural differences in children's expressive flexibility, maternal emotion control values (ECVs), and their relations to family socioeconomic status (SES) during middle childhood in a sample of European American (N = 31, M age = 9.61 years; 54.8% males), Korean American (N = 38, M age = 9.16 years; 55.3% males) and South Korean children (N = 77, M age = 9.74 years; 51.9% males). Mothers reported on demographics and their emotion control values. Children's expressive flexibility ability was assessed using a lab‐based observational measure. Multivariate analyses of covariance controlling for SES, child age, and gender suggested significant cultural differences in expressive flexibility, with the U.S. children (both European and Korean Americans) scoring higher on expressive flexibility compared to their South Korean counterparts. Results also suggested significant cultural differences regarding maternal ECVs; Korean Americans were more similar to South Koreans, both scoring higher on ECVs than European Americans. Socioeconomic status, but not maternal ECVs, were associated with children's expressive flexibility, independent of child age, sex, and culture.

Adolescent emotion regulation trajectories: The influence of parent and friend emotion socialization.

With mounting evidence demonstrating the link between child emotion regulation (ER) and emotion socialization, we conducted a longitudinal study to understand (a) emotion-specific trajectories of adolescent ER and (b) how specific parent and friend emotion socialization strategies impact ER over 4 years. Participants were 209 adolescents (52.5% girls; Mage =12.66 years; 75.7% White) and their parents. Latent growth curve models identified unique trajectories for anger and sadness/worry regulation. Anger regulation increased across time, whereas sadness/worry regulation remained highly stable longitudinally, lacking variance for growth modeling. Friend emotion socialization emerged as a more salient predictor of anger regulation than parent emotion socialization. Friend reward, override, and punish responses predicted initial levels. Friend punish and parent magnify responses predicted the slope.

The role of strategy-use and parasympathetic functioning in maternal emotion regulation.

Research has recognized that parental emotion regulation influences whether parents respond sensitively to their children in challenging parenting situations. However, parental emotion regulation is usually assessed using questionnaires that are not about parenting, rather than through examining parents' reaction to specific parenting situations that might evoke negative emotions. This study investigates individual differences in mothers' emotion regulation during parenting, specifically examining the relation between their subjective negative emotions and observed parenting behaviors and whether this relation is moderated by cognitive (strategies to manage negative emotions) and physiological (resting baseline and reactivity of respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) processes. Data of 157 mothers' self-reported negative emotions and strategy-use, their RSA, observed maternal responsiveness, and their preschool-age children's (30-60 months, 49.7% female) challenging behaviors were collected during a Wait Task, in which mothers told children to wait before opening an appealing gift. Regression analysis indicated that, after controlling for how challenging children were, mothers' level of negative emotion was not associated with observed level of maternal responsiveness. In line with hypotheses, the association was moderated by mothers' resting RSA and the extent to which they suppressed negative emotions. However, contrary to hypotheses, the association was not moderated by use of reappraisal, distraction, or rumination, or RSA reactivity. The significant findings suggest that, although mothers' subjective experiences of negative emotions are not necessarily related to less responsive parenting behaviors, the link between maternal emotions and parenting behavior may indicate differences in how mothers engage cognitive strategies as well as their physiological regulation capacity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).