Parental emotion and emotion regulation: A critical target of study for research and intervention to promote child emotion socialization.

Abstract

Parents’ behaviors—particularly their emotion socialization behaviors (ESBs)—drive children’s emotion socialization (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998). We propose that a major next step in the effort to promote healthy emotional development is to improve the field’s understanding of the most proximal contributor to parent ESBs: parents’ own experience and regulation of emotions in the context of caregiving. As an initial step, this paper integrates Eisenberg and colleagues’ model of emotion socialization with theoretical and empirical work on parental emotion. We review the literature on the emotionally evocative nature of parenting, which influences parental ESBs, including parents’ expressions of emotions and their responses to children’s emotions. However, whereas parental emotions influence behavior, they do not necessarily determine it; parents may regulate their emotions to engage in optimal ESBs. Thus, parental regulation contributes to emotion socialization not only by modeling emotion regulation strategies for children, but also by influencing the quality of parents’ ESBs. From a clinical perspective, parental emotion regulation is of utmost importance due to the degree of parental involvement in interventions for childhood emotional and behavioral disorders, which are often aimed at promoting child self-regulation. To illustrate practical applications of Eisenberg’s model, we discuss evidence-based practices that include enhancement of parent emotion regulation as a primary target, with the ultimate goal of promoting child emotional development. Ultimately, we aim to spur future theoretical, empirical, and translational work in this area.

How stress can influence brain adaptations to motherhood

“…New mothers exhibit enhanced neural activation in the emotion regulation and cognitive control circuit including the anterior cingulate cortex, and the medial and lateral PFC ( Barrett and Fleming, 2011 , Kim et al, 2011 , Rutherford et al, 2015 ). Effective emotion regulation especially in the context of distressful interactions with a child is important for sensitive parenting ( Hajal and Paley, 2020 , Morelen et al, 2016 , Shaffer and Obradović, 2017 ). PFC regions have strong functional connectivity to the amygdala, with the PFC acting to downregulate amygdala activation in the case of threats and negative stimuli ( Kalisch, 2009 ).…”

Mindful parents, mindful children? Exploring the mediating role of mindful parenting

“…It is possible that parents may model mindfulness for their children: mindful parenting involves attention to and emotional awareness of oneself and the child (i.e., attention and emotion regulation), as well as general self-regulation during parent-child interactions (Duncan et al, 2009). This assertion is supported by parent-child socialization theories and corresponding research on school-aged children demonstrating that children of parents who model self-regulation tend to show greater self-regulation themselves, while children of parents who are depressed (i.e., have difficulties in self-regulation) tend to show low self-regulation themselves (see Hajal & Paley, 2020;Meyer et al, 2014;Sektnan et al, 2010;Silk et al, 2006).…”

Emotion Differentiation During the Transition to Parenthood – Concurrent and Prospective Positive Effects

“…Most affect-related TTP research has focused on mothers' (for review see O'hara & McCabe, 2013) and fathers' (Paulson & Bazemore, 2010) postpartum depression and/or anxiety; depression in particular is quite prevalent in this period for both mothers (around 17%; Shorey et al, 2018) and fathers (around 10%; Rao et al, 2020), and is very consequential for their infants' development (e.g., Feldman et al, 2009; for review see Aktar & Bögels, 2017). Much less work, however, has addressed the role of non-pathological emotional processes in the TTP, though several calls have been made to study emotions and their regulation in parenthood (e.g., Hajal & Paley, 2020;Rutherford et al, 2015).…”