Intergenerational transmission of maternal emotion regulation to child emotion regulation: Moderated mediation of maternal positive and negative emotions.

Abstract

Research on maternal socialization of child emotion regulation often involves measures of general parenting, yet little research has considered how maternal emotion regulation and emotion expressivity relate to children's ability to regulate their emotions. Because emotion regulation can be viewed as intergenerational, mothers who display higher levels of positive emotions and lower levels of negative emotions may create a more optimal emotional climate for children to learn and practice emotion regulation, aiding in the intergenerational transmission of optimal emotion regulation. We tested a mediation model where maternal positive expressivity was hypothesized to mediate the relation of maternal emotion regulation to child emotion regulation. We also examined maternal negative expressivity as a moderator of the association of maternal positive expressivity to child emotion regulation. Maternal emotion regulation, measured as the use of reappraisal, and maternal expressivity were self-reported when children were 4 -5 years old (T1). Child emotion regulation, measured as effortful control, was observed at T1. When children were 8 -9 years old (T2), a summary score of child emotion regulation was computed from observed and teacher-reported effortful control. Higher levels of maternal reappraisal were related to more maternal positive expressivity, which in turn was associated with better child emotion regulation (T2), controlling for prior levels of child regulation (T1), only when maternal negative expressivity was low. This longitudinal moderated mediation pathway suggests that adaptive emotion regulation strategies used by mothers can be transmitted to children through maternal emotional expressions, specifically the interplay of positive and negative emotions.

Maternal expressive suppression moderates the relations between maternal and child hair cortisol

“…It is conceivable that as children develop cognitively and emotionally, maternal CR will be more important for adjustment and well-being, as mothers who use CR (rather than ES) may be more likely to engage with children's emotions and teach them to regulate effectively. Indeed, maternal use of CR is associated with better ER in older children (Tan & Smith, 2019).…”

“…It is conceivable that as children develop cognitively and emotionally, maternal CR will be more important for adjustment and well‐being, as mothers who use CR (rather than ES) may be more likely to engage with children's emotions and teach them to regulate effectively. Indeed, maternal use of CR is associated with better ER in older children (Tan & Smith, 2019). Moreover, the effects of ER strategies do depend on culture (Butler et al., 2007) and our sample is diverse; thus it would be important for future research to consider both culture and children's development in examining the role of maternal ER strategies.…”

“…In the context of parenting research, maternal CR predicts better child emotion regulation (Tan & Smith, 2019). Parental use of CR is also positively linked to parental warmth (Xiao, Spinrad, & Carter, 2018), while maternal deficits in CR are related to child anxiety disorders (Wald, Carthy, Sehnaar‐Golan, Tadmore‐Zisman, & Ziskind, 2018).…”

Bidirectional Longitudinal Relations Between Parent–Grandparent Co-parenting Relationships and Chinese Children’s Effortful Control During Early Childhood

“…This will increase the negative emotional expression in the family environment, eventually not only occupying the psychological resources children originally used for self-regulation and stimulating the children's self-protection mechanism such as escape (Halberstadt et al, 1999;Merwin et al, 2017) but also hindering them from learning good emotional and behavioral adjustment strategies from their parents. As a result, it may be difficult for children to develop a high level of effortful control (Burrowes and Halberstadt, 1987;Tan and Smith, 2018). In addition to the externalizing interparental conflicts and negative emotional expression in the family environment, dissimilarity of the parent-grandparent coparenting relationships between parents might also link to other interparental factors, which can influence the development of the children's effortful control.…”

The role of family expressiveness in American and Chinese adolescents' emotional experiences

“…For example, beyond examining the associations between positive family expressiveness and positive emotional experiences, the possible associations between positive family expressiveness and negative emotional experiences were examined. Given that the family emotional climate is often characterized by the expression of emotions of different valence, sometimes simultaneously (Tan & Smith, 2019; Thompson & Meyer, 2007), it is important that our analysis take into account cross‐valence effects.…”