Emotion Regulation and Parenting 1009304372, 9781009304375

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Emotion Regulation and Parenting Emotion Regulation and Parenting provides a state-of-the-art account of research conducted on emotion regulation in parenting. After describing the conceptual foundations of parenthood and emotion regulation, the book reviews the influence of parents’ emotion regulation on parenting, how and to what extent emotion regulation influences child development, and cross-cultural perspectives on emotion regulation and highlights current and future directions. Drawing on contributions from renowned experts from all over the world, chapters cover the most important topics at the intersection of parenting and emotion regulation. Essentials are explored, as well as current, topical, and controversial issues, pointing both to what is known and what requires further research. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.   is a professor of developmental, parenting and gender psychology, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. She is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed books and book chapters on child behavior and emotions, parenting, and parental burnout and is associate editor of family and child psychology journals. She is co-leader of the International Investigation on Parental Burnout.  .  is the Ernest R. Hilgard Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, USA, where he directs the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory. His research focuses on emotion regulation, and he has over 600 publications, which have been cited over 200,000 times.   is a professor of emotion and medical psychology at Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. She is a leading figure in the field of parental burnout and the author of more than 150 scientific publications and of several acclaimed books. Her research is regularly featured in the media.

STUDIES IN EMOTION AND SOCIAL INTERACTION

Series Editors Brian Parkinson University of Oxford Maya Tamir The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Daniel Dukes University of Fribourg Titles published in the Second Series: The Psychology of Facial Expression, edited by James A. Russell and José Miguel Fernández-Dols Emotions, the Social Bond, and Human Reality: Part/Whole Analysis, by Thomas J. Scheff Intersubjective Communication and Emotion in Early Ontogeny, edited by Stein Bråten The Social Context of Nonverbal Behavior, edited by Pierre Philippot, Robert S. Feldman, and Erik J. Coats Communicating Emotion: Social, Moral, and Cultural Processes, by Sally Planalp Emotions across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals, by Anna Wierzbicka Feeling and Thinking: The Role of Affect in Social Cognition, edited by Joseph P. Forgas Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling, by Zoltán Kövecses Gender and Emotion: Social Psychological Perspectives, edited by Agneta H. Fischer Causes and Consequences of Feelings, by Leonard Berkowitz Emotions and Beliefs: How Feelings Influence Thoughts, edited by Nico H. Frijda, Antony S. R. Manstead, and Sacha Bem Identity and Emotion: Development through Self-Organization, edited by Harke A. Bosma and E. Saskia Kunnen (Continued after Index)

Emotion Regulation and Parenting Edited by Isabelle Roskam Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium

James J. Gross Stanford University

Moïra Mikolajczak Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8EA, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05-06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009304375 DOI: 10.1017/9781009304368 © Cambridge University Press & Assessment 2024 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2024 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. A Cataloging-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-009-30437-5 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Preface: The Important and Reciprocal Relationships between Emotion Regulation and Parenting Isabelle Roskam, James J. Gross, and Moïra Mikolajczak

page vii viii ix xi

PART I CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS 1 Parenting Science and Emotion Regulation: Principles, Effects, Determinants, and Supports Marc H. Bornstein 2 Emotion Regulation in Self and Others Kate Petrova and James J. Gross

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PART II INFLUENCE OF PARENTS’ EMOTION REGULATION ON PARENTING 3 The Role of Parents’ Emotion Regulation in Supporting Parenting Behaviors and Practices Nastassia J. Hajal and Galen D. McNeil

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4 Parental Emotion Regulation: The Role of Parents’ Own Childhood Maltreatment Anat Talmon

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5 The Role of Parental Emotion Regulation in Parental Neglect and Violence Sarah Miragoli, Luca Milani, and Elena Camisasca 6 Parental Emotion Regulation, Stress, and Burnout Moïra Mikolajczak, James J. Gross, and Isabelle Roskam

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Contents

PART III INFLUENCE OF PARENTING ON CHILD EMOTION REGULATION 7 Parental Coregulation of Child Emotions Manfred Holodynski and Joscha Kärtner

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8 Parental Assistance with Children’s Extrinsic Emotion Regulation across Development Emily M. Cohodes and Dylan G. Gee

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9 Parental Socialization of Children’s Emotion and Its Regulation Tracy L. Spinrad and Nancy Eisenberg

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PART IV CURRENT TRENDS 10 Culture and the Challenges of Being a Good Parent Sara Harkness, Charles M. Super, Marjolijn J. M. Blom, Ughetta Moscardino, Sabrina Bonichini, Moises Rios Bermudez, Jong-Hay Rha, Barbara Welles, and Olaf Zylicz

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11 Leveraging Parent–Youth Interactions to Measure and Analyze Emotion Regulation Sarah A. Thomas and Lauren Micalizzi

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12 Neurobiology of Parenting and Implications for Emotion Regulation Helena J. V. Rutherford

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13 Emotional Labor in Parenting Gao-Xian Lin and Dorota Szczygieł

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14 Enhancing Parental Emotion Regulation Skills Sophie Havighurst and Christiane Kehoe

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Conclusions and Perspectives Isabelle Roskam, James J. Gross, and Moïra Mikolajczak

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Index

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Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 4.1 5.1 6.1

6.2

7.1 8.1 9.1 11.1 13.1 13.2

Generic mediation model of parenting page 4 Parenting and emotions mediation 5 Moderated mediation in parenting and emotions 6 Modal model of emotions 36 First-level and second-level valuation systems 38 Other-focused emotion regulation 39 Process model of emotion regulation 42 Other-focused regulation accomplished via social means 43 Multiperson, multigoal, multimean interpersonal emotion regulation 48 Illustration of the different impact of CM on ER and parenting 93 Bidirectional relation between emotion regulation (ER) and child maltreatment 109 Hypothetical mediators of the relationship between parent’s self-focused (i.e. intrinsic) emotion regulation (ER) and parenting stress 118 Hypothetical pathways leading from parent’s child-focused (i.e. extrinsic) emotion regulation (ER) to parenting stress 121 The internalization model of reflective emotion regulation 139 Caregiver influences on corticolimbic circuitry underlying emotion regulation across development 152 A heuristic model of the socialization of emotion 167 Illustration of cross-sectional actor-partner interdependence models 219 Emotional labor framework in the job context 248 Emotional labor framework in the parenting context 251

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Examples of two categories of regulatory goals (self-focused and other-focused) accomplished via two categories of regulatory means (nonsocial and social) Illustrations of the 2  2 matrix of emotion regulation in parenting

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Contributors

Marjolijn J. M. Blom, Netherlands Initiative for Education Research, The Netherlands Sabrina Bonichini, University of Padua, Italy Marc H. Bornstein, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, USA Elena Camisasca, Ecampus University, Italy Emily M. Cohodes, Yale University, USA Nancy Eisenberg, Arizona State University, USA Dylan G. Gee, Yale University, USA James J. Gross, Stanford University, USA Nastassia J. Hajal, University of California, Los Angeles, USA Sara Harkness, University of Connecticut, USA Sophie Havighurst, University of Melbourne, Australia Manfred Holodynski, University of Münster, Germany Joscha Kärtner, University of Münster, Germany Christiane Kehoe, University of Melbourne, Australia Gao-Xian Lin, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium Galen D. McNeil, University of California, Los Angeles, USA Lauren Micalizzi, Brown University, USA Luca Milani, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Italy Sarah Miragoli, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Italy Moïra Mikolajczak, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium Ughetta Moscardino, University of Padua, Italy

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List of Contributors

Kate Petrova, Stanford University, USA Jong-Hay Rha, Hannam University, South Korea Moises Rios Bermudez, University of Seville, Spain Isabelle Roskam, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium Helena J. V. Rutherford, Yale School of Medicine, USA Tracy L. Spinrad, Arizona State University, USA Charles M. Super, University of Connecticut, USA Dorota Szczygieł, SWPS University, Poland Anat Talmon, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and Stanford University, USA Sarah A. Thomas, Brown University, USA Barbara Welles, Fairfield University, USA Olaf Zylicz, WSB University of Warsaw, Poland

Preface The Important and Reciprocal Relationships between Emotion Regulation and Parenting Isabelle Roskam, James J. Gross, and Moïra Mikolajczak

A great deal has been written about emotion regulation on the one hand and about parenting on the other. So why is a book at the intersection of these two fields needed? Parenting, even more than other types of social contexts, activates frequent, lasting, diverse, complex, and often intense emotions. These emotions are considered an essential ingredient of parenting and of the parent–child relationship, and parents must regularly adapt to the child’s constantly changing emotional complexity and emotional competencies. Parenting thus provides a unique context within which emotion regulation not only occurs but matters. One particularly intriguing feature of emotion regulation in the parent– child relationship is that it is not only bidirectional (i.e. emotion regulation by the parent and emotion regulation by the child influence each other, and both impact the behavior, development, and health of both parent and child) but also asymmetrical. The parent and the child do not have the same level of maturity. Consequently, the parent is supposed to be the emotional expert, at least until the end of adolescence. In order to gradually share their expertise with the child, the parent must ensure that the child learns something beneficial and must make great regulatory efforts to prioritize the desired emotional states for the child, even if this goes against the parent’s own desired emotional states or involves counter-hedonic regulation of the parent’s own emotions (such as downregulating their joy by forcing themselves not to laugh at the child’s naughty behavior). The desired emotional states for oneself as a parent and for the child are highly dependent on culturally specific norms that set the standards for “good” parenting and define which emotions parents are supposed to feel while parenting and which emotions parents are supposed to elicit/ inhibit in their children. These are highly culture dependent. For instance, American parents are invited to elicit pride in their children, whereas

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Chinese parents are invited to inhibit this same feeling in their children and elicit humility. Whatever one’s cultural context, the demands on parents can seem daunting. Since they are responsible for the development and well-being of their children, parents must demonstrate high emotion regulation skills. In particular, they must regulate their own and the child’s emotions, sometimes simultaneously, and at other times sequentially. And the success of self-focused emotion regulation is often dependent on the success of other-focused regulation. Moreover, self-focused regulation must not be overdone. The parent must remain in touch with their own emotions in order to avoid being emotionally distant from the child and to mirror the child’s inner world and empathize with what the child is experiencing. In short, the parent must express the right emotions at the right time, with the right intensity and frequency, in order to maximize the beneficial effects on the child’s development. The term “work” or “labor” used by some authors to designate emotion regulation in parenting illustrate the importance of these regulatory efforts but also the burden that they can sometimes entail. Because some parents feel insufficiently equipped or have difficulties in fulfilling this demanding work, experts in parenting and emotion regulation are developing supportive interventions to train parents (according to cultural standards), increase their resilience, and maximize the benefits for both parents and children. The chapters of this book take us on a journey through contemporary parenting culture and showcase the crucial role of emotion regulation for the health and development of children and their caregivers. Part I of the book lays out the foundations of emotion regulation on the one hand and parenting on the other. Part II documents what is known about how parents’ regulation of their own emotions is related to parenting. Part III provides an overview of the latest findings on the influence of parenting on the child’s emotional regulation. Part IV aims to pinpoint current trends in research within this promising field. The book concludes with a chapter that examines the scope of the field, the challenges that lie ahead, and some of the promising future directions that lie at the intersection of parenting and emotion regulation.

PART I

Conceptual Foundations

CHAPTER 1

Parenting Science and Emotion Regulation: Principles, Effects, Determinants, and Supports Marc H. Bornstein

1.1 Parenting Science Parenting is a vital status in the life course with consequences for parents themselves, but parenting is also a job whose primary object of attention and action is the child. Human children do not and cannot grow up as solitary individuals. Parenting exerts direct effects on offspring through genetic endowment as well as the experiences parents afford their offspring. Those experiences are instantiated in parents’ cognitions and practices. Parenting also exerts indirect influences on offspring through parents’ relationships with each other and their connections to community and culture. Parenting is fundamental to the survival and success of the human species. Everyone who has ever lived has had parents, and the vast majority of adults in the world become parents. Indeed, each day approximately three quarters of a million adults around the world experience the joys and rewards as well as the challenges and heartaches of becoming a new parent. Emotions constitute an essential constituent of parenting (Dix, 1991; Rutherford et al., 2015). A flourishing science of parenting is enjoying special popularity today in the academy and in popular culture. In consequence, a surprising amount of solid science (contra untethered opinion) is accumulating about parenting and associated emotions and emotion regulation. Emotions and emotion regulation are vital to parenting, and this chapter assesses central features of parenting through the lens of emotions and emotion regulation. In doing so, the chapter pursues the following course. Substantive topics include principles of parenting and emotion regulation, parenting effects in emotion regulation, determinants of emotion regulation in parents (and children), and supports for parent and child emotion regulation. First, however, the chapter deconstructs relations between emotions and emotion regulation in parenting. Reasons of

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space constrain a full accounting of parenting, and emotions and emotion regulation in parenting, and so the following exposition is illustrative rather than exhaustive (see Bornstein, 2015, 2016, 2019a, for more detailed and comprehensive treatments).

1.2 Emotions and Emotion Regulation in Parenting The intersection of parenting science and emotions encompasses parents’ emotionality, emotional expressiveness, emotion regulation, and emotion socialization that mold affective family patterns vital to children’s wholesome development. Emotions and emotion regulation in family life manifest in three ways: first in parents’ own emotions and emotion regulation as adults, second in parents’ emotions and emotion regulation in their parenting, and third in parents’ parenting children’s emotions and emotion regulation. These three topics guide the informational structure of this chapter. As to the first, for example, positive emotions buoy wellbeing and are associated with adjustment, serenity, meaningfulness, and satisfaction, whereas negative emotions undermine well-being and are associated with anxiety, stress, frustration, and anger (Leerkes et al., 2015; Schiffrin et al., 2010). As to the second, for example, people may become parents because of the expectation that parenting will be emotionally rewarding (Langdridge et al., 2005), and parental global emotion regulation is associated with adaptive parenting (Crandall et al., 2015; Shaffer & Obradović, 2017). As to the third, children reared by parents with good emotion regulation skills are better able to cope with their own emotions, develop more secure attachments, and fare better in many domains of development (Buckholdt et al., 2014; Han et al., 2015; Sarıta¸s et al., 2013). These three main issues – parenting, emotion regulation, and emotion regulation in children – are related to one another. The barebones version of a “standard model” of mediation in parenting science asserts that parenting cognitions generate, prompt, or direct parenting practices that ultimately affect child development (Figure 1.1; Bornstein et al., 2017). A modified standard model as applied to emotion regulation in parenting would contend that parenting emotion regulation generates parenting

Parenting Cognition

Parenting Practice

Figure 1.1 Generic mediation model of parenting

Child Development

Parenting Science and Emotion Regulation Parenting Emotions and Regulation

Parenting Cognition or Practice

5 Child Emotions and Regulation

Figure 1.2 Parenting and emotions mediation

cognitions/practices which in turn influence child emotional regulation (Figure 1.2; Bariola et al., 2011; Crandall et al., 2015; Peris & Miklowitz, 2015; Rueger et al., 2011). Pairwise components of this mediational model involving parenting, parenting emotion regulation, and emotion regulation in children have been submitted to cumulative meta-analyses. Zimmer-Gembeck et al. (2022) reviewed 53 studies published between 2000 and 2020 to quantify associations of parents’ emotion regulation skills (e.g. ability to regulate negative mood or rely on cognitive reappraisal to regulate emotions) with positive and negative parenting practices (e.g. warmth versus hostility) and children’s emotion regulation skills (e.g. difficulties with emotion regulation, internalizing symptoms, and externalizing behaviors). Several pertinent results emerged between parents’ emotion regulation skills and their parenting practices. First, parents with more emotion regulation skills express more positive parenting practices. Second, parents with more emotion regulation skills express fewer negative parenting practices. Third, parents with more emotion regulation difficulties express fewer positive parenting practices. Fourth, parents with more emotion regulation difficulties express more negative parenting practices. In brief, parents with better emotion regulation skills or fewer difficulties express more positive parenting practices. Likewise, several pertinent results emerged between parents’ emotion regulation skills and their children’s adjustment. First, parents with more emotion regulation skills have children with fewer internalizing symptoms. Second, parents with more emotion regulation skills have children with more emotion regulation skills. Third, parents with more emotion regulation difficulties have children with more internalizing symptoms. Fourth, parents with more emotion regulation difficulties have children with more externalizing behaviors. Fifth, parents with more emotion regulation difficulties have children with poorer emotion regulation skills. In brief, parents who report more emotion regulation skills have children with more emotion regulation skills, fewer conduct problems, more prosocial behaviors with peers, and fewer internalizing symptoms.

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Notably, this meta-analysis supports several significant associations among constituents of the mediation model, but many were small in effect size and not all possible associations were found (e.g. no significant associations emerged between parents’ emotion regulation skills with children’s externalizing behaviors). Furthermore, only cross-sectional correlations were meta-analyzed (i.e. parents’ influence on and socialization of their children is assumed when children could promote parents’ emotions and emotion regulation). In practice, a more realistic picture of mediation in parenting and emotions would be complexified by several factors: 1. Likely valid mediation is a multi-step process so that child emotions/ behavior ! parent physiology/cognition ! parent emotion ! parent emotion regulation ! parent cognition and/or practice ! child emotion regulation or adjustment. 2. Associations between parental beliefs and behaviors have generated a mixed literature (Cote & Bornstein, 2000; Okagaki & Bingham, 2005): less evidence exists for relations between very general beliefs and behaviors, and stronger associations have been documented between conceptually corresponding specific beliefs and specific behaviors (Huang et al., 2005). 3. Individual differences in parenting are pervasive. Variation in mothers’ subjective emotions across occasions (sampled throughout several days) predict motivation to engage or disengage with their infants as well as actual engagement or disengagement (Hajal et al., 2019). 4. Moderators may change the relation between elements in the mediation chain in so-called moderated mediation (Figure 1.3). Of a raft of potential moderators in Zimmer-Gembeck et al. (2022), measurement,

Moderator

Parenting Emotions and Regulation

Parenting Cognition or Practice

Child Emotions and Regulation

Figure 1.3 Moderated mediation in parenting and emotions

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child age, and participant risk status moderated effect sizes of associations of parents’ emotions with their positive or negative parenting and children’s emotions.

1.3 Principles of Parenting and Emotion Regulation Parenting is instantiated in a plethora of cognitions and practices. Despite this diversity, classical authorities, including psychoanalysts, personality theorists, ethologists, and attachment theorists, historically conceptualized caregiving as trait-like and unidimensional, often denoted as “good,” “sensitive,” or the like (Ainsworth et al., 1978; Brody & Axelrad, 1978; Mahler et al., 1975; Winnicott, 1948/1975). Alternatively, child-rearing (including emotions and emotion regulation) reflects multiple constituents and interactions of parent, child, and context, and parents naturally hold a range of diverse emotion regulation cognitions and engage in a range of diverse emotion regulation practices and so do not only or necessarily believe or behave in uniform trait-like ways. Rather than employing a uniform style, parents flexibly change in parenting cognitions and practices as children age and with children of different temperaments, vary their approaches to emotion regulation depending on children’s happy or sad or angry demeanor, and differ in their emotion regulation responses to varying situational constraints such as whether they are in public or in private. On this view, the contents of parent–child emotion regulation cognitions and practices are dynamic and varied (Bornstein, 2002, 2006). In essence, parenting generally, and emotions and emotion regulation in parenting particularly, are multidimensional, modular, and specific. This perspective has two significant implications: first, it supports identification and empirical focus on independent emotions and emotion regulation cognitions and practices, and second, it implies that specific emotion and emotion regulation parenting cognitions and practices link to the expression of specific domains of children’s emotion regulation (see Section 1.4).

1.3.1 Parenting Cognitions and Emotion Regulation Multidimensional, modular, and specific parenting cognitions may be classified by functions, types, and substantive topics. First, parenting cognitions serve many functions: They affect parents’ sense of self, help to organize parenting, and mediate the effectiveness of parenting. With respect to emotion regulation, cognitions contribute to how and how much time, effort, and energy parents expend in emotion regulation for themselves and their children and help to form the framework in which

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parents perceive, interpret, and guide their children’s emotion regulation. Next, parenting cognitions come in a wide variety of types, prominently goals, attitudes, expectations, perceptions, attributions, and actual knowledge of child-rearing and child development, all of which have instantiations in emotion regulation. For example, some parents’ goals for their own parenting and for their children may be universal; after all parents everywhere presumably want physical health, academic achievement, social adjustment, economic security, as well as mature and stable emotion regulation for their children (however those goals are instantiated in different cultures, discussed later). African American, Dominican immigrant, and Mexican immigrant mothers in the United States all deem a common set of emotion regulation qualities (e.g. proper demeanor) desirable in young children (Ng et al., 2012). Other goals may be unique to specific groups. For example, some societies stress the development of emotion regulation through independence, self-reliance, and individual achievement in children, whereas other societies emphasize deriving emotion regulation through interdependence, cooperation, and collaboration in the group or society (Chen, 2023). Last, substantive topics in parenting cognitions include cognitions about parenthood generally, about parents’ own parenting, about childhood generally, and about parents’ own child(ren). All can refer to emotions and emotion regulation.

1.3.2 Parenting Practices and Emotion Regulation Parents’ practices constitute the largest measure of children’s worldly experience. Like cognitions, parenting practices are multidimensional, modular, and specific, and parenting practices themselves may be classified into types, characteristics, and functions. First, a common core of types of parenting practices includes nurturant, physical, social, didactic, language, and material (Bornstein, 2015, 2019a; for other componential systems, see Bradley & Caldwell, 1995; Skinner et al., 2005). For example, language use in parenting is fundamental to child development and to the parent–child bond, and language is a principal mechanism used by parents to help regulate their children’s emotions (Morris et al., 2017); language also helps children regulate their own emotions (Cole et al., 2010; Day & Smith, 2013). Second, prominent characteristics of parenting practices include differentiating obligatory versus discretionary, active versus passive forms of interaction, and the prominence of different parenting practices. Last, there is initial asymmetry in parent and child contributions to emotion regulation practices in that responsibility for emotion regulation early in development appears to lie unambiguously with parents, but children play more anticipatory roles as they develop. Functions of parenting practices are elaborated in Section 1.4.

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1.3.3 Emotion Regulation Cognitions and Practices: Common Features Meaningful parenting cognitions and practices meet several psychometric criteria. One has to do with variation. Parents vary in terms of how they express cognitions, how often and long they engage in practices, and how they interpret and invest meaning in both (Calkins, 1994; Diaz & Eisenberg, 2015). For example, considerable individual variability characterizes developmental trajectories of emotion regulation in children across the ages of 4–7 years (Blandon et al., 2008). A second psychometric criterion has to do with developmental stability (consistency in individual parents over time) and a third with continuity (consistency in group mean level over time; Bornstein et al., 2017). For example, the development of emotion regulation is dynamic on three levels: rapid changes in spatial and temporal dynamics across multimodal systems underlying emotion regulation, slowly emerging changes in emotion regulation over periods of time and development, and changes in emotion regulation across contexts (Dennis-Tiwary, 2019). A fourth psychometric characteristic of parenting concerns covariation among parenting cognitions and among parenting practices. Particular cognitions and particular practices are free to vary with different children, at different times, in different situations, and so forth (Bornstein, 2015).

1.4 Parenting Effects in Emotion Regulation Parenting has twofold significance: parenting is a salient phase of adult life, and parenting is an instrumental activity with respect to offspring. In brief, parenting is for parents, and parenting is for children. In consequence, effects of parenting on children and child development constitute critical desiderata. Here the distinction between direct and indirect effects of parenting is meaningful as are several operational principles in parenting effects, notably specificity, timing, thematicity, moderation, meaning, transaction, and attunement. Each is addressed briefly with examples from emotions and emotion regulation.

1.4.1 Direct and Indirect Effects of Parenting and Emotion Regulation Direct influences of parent cognitions and practices reflect, for example, scaffolding, conditioning, reinforcement, and modeling; indirect effects include, for example, opportunity structures parents provide (Bornstein, 2013a) and relationships parents or family members have with one another that spill over to children (McHale & Sirotkin, 2019). The validity of parenting effects is supported with correlational and experimental evidence. Children reared by parents with good emotion regulation skills

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regulate their own emotions better (Leerkes et al., 2017), and parents’ positive emotional expressions toward their children relate to children’s later more positive peer relationships (Paley et al., 2000). Several pathways by which parenting-related emotions and their regulation likely shape child development have been hypothesized (Leerkes & Augustine, 2019). First, parenting-related emotions and regulation could relate to children’s emotions or emotion regulation through synchronization of mutual biological rhythms (Feldman, 2007; Moore, 2009). Second, as spelled out in the mediation model, parenting-related emotions and regulation could link to child outcomes through parenting cognitions or practices. Well-regulated or child-oriented parent emotions could engender more positive parenting, which in turn shapes adaptive emotions and emotion regulation in children. Third, as spelled out in the moderatedmediation model, different parenting-related emotion or regulation skills could alter how parenting practices relate to child emotions and emotion regulation (Darling & Steinberg, 1993; Grusec & Goodnow, 1994). Parenting practices embedded in positive, contra negative, parental emotions render children more open to parental socialization. Most studies of parent–child relationships have employed correlational designs: put simply, in such study designs parents who do more (or less) of something (emotion regulation) have children who do more (or less) of a related something (emotion regulation). For example, mother–child interactions involving positive emotions correlate with greater effortful control and compliance to parental requests (Kochanska & Aksan, 1995), greater social competence (Denham et al., 1997), and fewer behavior problems (McCoy & Raver, 2011) in children. However, the sizes and directions of zero-order correlations between parent cognitions or practices and child characteristics vary depending on which parent and child variables are measured (echoing the cognition-practice issue), the way the two are measured, the length of time between parent predictive and child outcome measurements, what kind of analyses are conducted, which types of children or families living in which circumstances are studied, and whether potential confounders are controlled (Bornstein, 2013b). It may be true that parents influence children, but correlation does not prove causation, the arrows of influence in a simple association may run in either or both directions (viz., that parents influence children and children influence parents), and associations between parents’ child-rearing practices and child characteristics could arise from shared third familial (parents and their children share genes) or extrafamilial factors (parents and their children share ethnic group or socioeconomic status membership). To obviate these critiques of parenting effects as mere epiphenomena, some more determinative correlational designs have included biological-adoptive comparisons (which separate the effects of environment and genetics, discussed later).

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Experimental designs attempt to confirm causal relations between parenting and child development. Experiments in which parents are assigned randomly to treatment versus control groups with resulting changes in the beliefs or behaviors (e.g. emotion regulation) of the parents (and their otherwise untreated children) in the treatment relative to the control group make stronger statements about parenting effects. This literature in emotion regulation boasts natural, designed, and intervention experiments. Studies of children whose genetics differ from those of their parents provide naturally occurring means of evaluating the impacts of parenting experiences vis-à-vis hereditary endowment on child development. In adoption experiments, one group of children might share genes and environment with biological parents, another genes but not environment with biological parents, and still another environment but not genes with adoptive parents (Asbury et al., 2003; Muller et al., 2013). Designed experiments that randomly assign human families to treatment versus control groups and intervene with the parents but do not simultaneously treat the children have shown that, when the treatment alters parental practices toward children in specified ways, children change correspondingly (Weisman et al., 2012). Finally, interventions with parents have two interpretations. Interventions are practical guides to improve parenting clinically and to inform more effective policy (see Section 1.6). However, intervention trials are also readily interpreted as experimental manipulations that test parenting effects (Bornstein et al., 2022a; Lunkenheimer et al., 2008).

1.4.2 Specificity, Timing, Thematicity, Moderation, Meaning, Transaction, and Attunement A common assumption in parenting study is that the overall level of parenting (involvement, stimulation, what have you) affects the child’s overall level of development. By contrast, increasing evidence suggests that more sophisticated and differentiated processes govern parenting effects. The specificity principle states that specific cognitions and practices on the part of specific parents at specific times exert specific effects in specific children in specific ways (Bornstein, 2002, 2015, 2019b). For example, mothers’ emotional happiness during interactions with their children predicts fewer behavior problems in children over time but only in children already low in behavior problems (Denham et al., 2000). Parents’ self-reported expressions of negative emotions are associated with their preschoolers’ use of more maladaptive emotion regulation behaviors, higher negative emotionality, and higher externalizing symptoms, but are unrelated to a physiological measure of children’s adaptive

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emotion regulation or observed measures of children’s emotion knowledge (Hu et al., 2017; Nelson et al., 2012; Wu et al., 2017), and metaanalysis of studies focused on parents’ negative emotional expressions found that sadness and crying, but not anger and hostility, are associated with deficits in emotion understanding particularly among adolescents and young adults (Halberstadt & Eaton, 2002). Of course, specificity also obtains in the first phases of mediation: parent-oriented anger may promote parent–child conflict, whereas parent-oriented sadness may promote parental withdrawal from the child (Dix et al., 2004). In brief, to detect regular relations between antecedents in parenting on the one hand and outcomes in child characteristics on the other calls for specificity in the combinations of independent and dependent variables. Related to specificity and a key consideration in parenting effects is timing. A contemporary effects model spotlights the part played by experiences that occur only at a specific time in the life cycle. For example, some early experiences are thought to persist despite later experiences, and some later experiences are thought to replace effects of earlier experiences. Still other developmental effects reflect consistency in experiences that recur. A cumulative effects model asserts that meaningful enduring effects are structured by experiences that repeat or aggregate. Related to such cumulative effects, the same parenting effect may be conveyed consistently in different contexts via different channels. Through such thematicity, seemingly diverse parenting messages work in concert. For example, mothers and fathers may model a given emotion, teach children about that emotion, and place children in contexts that elicit that same emotion (Coltrane, 2000; Schuette & Killen, 2009). In brief, a given experience (say an emotion) may exert an effect on development early or late in life or it may need to persist to be meaningful and lasting. Further related to specificity and as demonstrated in moderated mediation, parenting effects may be moderated by multiple factors. For example, mothers exhibit more supportive parenting behaviors in interactions with their children when they experience relatively higher levels of positive emotions and lower levels of negative emotions (Dix et al., 2004). Maternal emotional stability is strongly associated with overprotective parenting with shier children (Coplan et al., 2009). Higher levels of paternal emotional stability are associated with more positive parenting when adolescents are high in emotional stability (Prinzie et al., 2012). The same parenting cognition or practice can have the same or different meaning, just as different parenting cognitions or practices can have the same or different meanings (Bornstein, 1995, 2013b; Lau et al., 2006). For example, the same discrete emotion can mean different things depending on the nature of the underlying concern (Dix et al., 2004). In turn, meaning can moderate linkages between emotions and behaviors. In an

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example in Leerkes and Augustine (2019), a parent might be angry with a child for acting out and so provoke discipline, or a parent might be angry in the interests of a child and so evoke comforting. Likewise, a parent’s intensifying positive emotions to continue engaging positively with a child may be adaptive, whereas a parent’s intensifying positive emotions to eschew a developing problem with a child may be maladaptive (Martini & Busseri, 2012). It is easy to assume that parents are responsible for child development, and in many ways they are (Vygotsky, 1978); however, it is also the case that children elicit as well as interpret parenting (Bell, 1968). Children influence which experiences they are exposed to, and they appraise those experiences and so (in some degree) determine how their experiences affect them (Lansford et al., 2011). On elicitation, a parent’s displaying sensitivity in response to a child’s emotional signals provides external regulation and supports development of the child’s emotion regulation skills (Bernier et al., 2010; Ispa et al., 2017). On interpretation, a given child may feel frightened by a parent’s emotional outburst, which over time undermines the child’s confidence in that parent’s capacity to keep the child safe (Lyons-Ruth & Jacobvitz, 2016). Together, parent and child effects lead to transactions which acknowledge that characteristics of the individual shape their experiences, whereas, reciprocally, experiences shape characteristics of the individual through time (Bornstein, 2009; Lerner, 2018). Child effects on parent are in play and coexist with parent effects on child. Attunement expresses the dynamic mutual adaptation of partners in a dyad. Attunement is a multilevel phenomenon with correspondences in hormones, the autonomic and central nervous systems, as well as in affective, cognitive, and behavioral domains (Bornstein, 2013c). For example, positive emotional expressiveness in parents correlates robustly with positive emotional expressiveness in children (Halberstadt & Eaton, 2002), and correspondingly maternal negative affect co-occurs with child negative affect (attunement in which attachment insecurity is associated with toddlers’ elevated externalizing symptoms; Lindsey & Caldera, 2015; Martin et al., 2011). Notably, emotional attunement has consequences of its own. For example, shared emotions are linked with mothers’ and adolescents’ perceptions of better relationship quality (Lougheed & Hollenstein, 2016).

1.5 Determinants of Emotion Regulation in Parents (and Children) With parenting effects so demonstratively significant for child development generally, and emotion regulation in parents and children

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specifically, it is important to ask what factors contribute to emotions and emotion regulation in parenting. To fully understand and appreciate parenting and its effects it is desirable to evaluate the many determinants that shape it. Consistent with a relational developmental systems bioecological orientation (Lerner, 2018), the vast potential array of causes can be grouped in three domains: the parent, the child, and the context. Not all constituents of each domain can be discussed, of course, but a representative sampling will suffice to convey that the origins of individual variation in caregiving emotion cognitions or practices are complex and multiply determined.

1.5.1 Parent Parenting blends intuition and tuition, the biological and the psychological. Certain characteristics of parenting may be wired into our biological makeup (Broderick & Neiderhiser, 2019; Feldman, 2019; Stark et al., 2019). For example, positive emotionality is influenced by genetics (Avinun & Knafo, 2014; Broderick & Neiderhiser, 2019; Klahr & Burt, 2014), and more responsive/sensitive parents demonstrate distinct patterns of emotion-related hormonal and neural activation (Feldman, 2019; Rutherford et al., 2015; Stark et al., 2019). Additionally, human beings appear to possess some intuitive knowledge about parenting (Papoušek & Papoušek, 2002). Other sociodemographic characteristics of parents likewise shape emotion regulation. For example, the age of the parent is a factor: on the one hand, delayed parenthood is associated with emotional benefits, as parents who are relatively older report relatively greater well-being (Luhmann et al., 2012); feeling more competent and less stressed, depressed, and lonely (Cowan & Cowan, 1992; Frankel & Wise, 1982; Garrison et al., 1997; Mirowsky & Ross, 2002); and experience fewer negatives in parenting (particularly negative emotions, financial strain, and tense partner relationships). On the other hand, adolescent mothers are more likely to parent in poverty, parent solo, have lower educational attainment, and lack resources compared to adult mothers (Easterbrooks et al., 2019). These risk factors increase the likelihood of parenting difficulties that can lead to compromised developmental outcomes in children, including difficulties in emotional regulation (Hans & Thullen, 2009; Lengua et al., 2007; Schatz et al., 2008). Gender is another instrumental sociodemographic factor. Stereotypically, femininity is characterized by emotionality and nurturance, whereas masculinity is characterized by independence and aggressiveness (Eagly et al., 2000). Maternal emotional stability is linked to more positive, responsive, and sensitive parenting of infants relative to paternal emotional stability (Kochanska et al., 2004). Yet, emotionally stable mothers and fathers alike are more

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affectively positive and sensitive with their infants (Belsky et al., 1995). Parity is a third sociodemographic factor. Primiparous mothers demonstrate elevated general worry and cortisol response, reflecting stress reactivity, during interactions with their toddlers relative to multiparous mothers (Kalomiris & Kiel, 2016). Perceptual and cognitive processes also play central roles in the activation of parenting-related emotions. Mothers’ accurate cue detection and feelings of efficacy are associated with greater sensitivity in response to infant distress especially among mothers who also report high empathy (Leerkes et al., 2004). Parents who lack awareness of their emotions or struggle to regulate their emotions likely find it difficult to prioritize child-oriented goals in the moment and to engage in effortful behaviors that are well matched to their parenting goals. Poorly regulated emotions also may bias how parents appraise their child’s behaviors or their own parent–child interactions. In this connection, parents’ own developmental history, particularly the nature of parenting they experienced in childhood and so formulated their internal working model of relationships, relates to many forms of parenting-related emotions. For example, mothers’ secure attachment representations predict greater parenting-related joy and pleasure with toddlers (Slade et al., 1999) as well as empathy with infants and school-age children (Leerkes et al., 2015; Stern et al., 2015); insecure representations predict observed angry/intrusive parenting with toddlers (Adam et al., 2004), presumably reflecting parent-oriented negative affect; and parents high in attachment avoidance report lower levels of positive emotions during caregiving compared to their other daily activities (Nelson-Coffey et al., 2017). Generally, negative experiences in parents’ family of origin consistently predict parents’ negative parent-oriented affect and poorer emotion regulation during emotionally evocative parent–child interactions. Mothers with a history of family abuse or violence display greater hostility during interactions with their 4- to 6-year-olds (Bailey et al., 2012). Among all personological factors potentially associated with emotional regulation in parents and children, personality may enjoy the longest history and most robust relations. Theorizing in this domain derives from psychoanalytic scholars who originally focused on pathological aspects of parental character and the ways in which they might contribute to child psychopathology (Freud, 1955/1970; Spitz, 1965/1970; Winnicott, 1948/ 1975) on the hypothesis that, if parents’ emotional needs had not been met during their own childhoods, their unmet needs would be reflected in parents’ own problematic parenting (Cohler & Paul, 2019). Psychologically, emotion regulation is affected by several characteristics, personality and mental functions prominent among them. Emotion is central to personality, and specifically the Big Five personality factors

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(Caspi & Shiner, 2006), which traditionally include extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience, relate to emotion regulation in parents and have multiple implications for child development. On the positive emotional side, extraversion qua positive affectivity is associated with emotionally engaged, responsive, sensitive, and stimulating parenting. Israeli men scoring high on extraversion manifest more positive affect and are more involved in father-child play and teaching when interacting with their 9-month-olds than men scoring low on extraversion (Levy-Shiff & Israelashvilli, 1988). Agreeableness reflects an individual’s motives to maintain positive social relationships and is related to the regulation of emotions during social interactions (Tobin et al., 2000). More agreeable parents are less likely to attribute negative intentions to their young children when they misbehave (Bugental & Corpuz, 2019). On the negative emotional side, neuroticism, which is characterized by heightened negative affect and mood disorders, such as depression, predicts low parental sensitivity and warmth and high discipline and (even) child maltreatment (Dix & Moed, 2019; Prinzie et al., 2019). Parents high in neuroticism tend to be reactive to emotional stress and easily emotionally distressed, prone to experience irritability and hostility (Caspi et al., 2005; Goldberg, 1993), provide lower levels of support to their children, and lack organization, consistency, and predictability. For example, parents’ high neuroticism is associated with more negative emotional interactions and lower sensitivity to toddlers (Belsky et al., 1995). Depression consistently relates to less-positive emotional quality in parent–child interactions (Lovejoy et al., 2000). Emotional stability is a pervasive personality characteristic with a double-barreled meaning. Emotional stability is linked to positive maternal affect with children (Kochanska et al., 2003). More emotionally stable parents are less prone to frustration, distress, irritation, and anger, which often result in harsh discipline, and approach children in ways that are less likely to initiate or escalate conflictual interactions. More emotionally stable parents are more sensitive, provide more structure, and are more inclined to support their children’s striving toward autonomy than less emotionally stable parents (Ellenbogen & Hodgins, 2004; Mangelsdorf et al., 2000; McCabe, 2014). More emotionally stable mothers follow their baby’s signals in ways that facilitate the baby’s self-regulation (Fish & Stifter, 1993). Emotional instability, by contrast, is associated with unpredictable, inconsistent parenting. Emotionally unstable parents attribute negative intentions to their children when they misbehave, which can engender harsh parenting (Bornstein et al., 2011), and they distance themselves from their children, thereby failing to provide structure and guidance (Belsky & Jaffee, 2006; Clark et al., 2000). Negative emotionality tends to

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undermine parents’ ability to initiate and maintain positive affective, sensitive, and supportive interactions with their children and limits parents’ ability and willingness to respond adequately to their children’s signals. In a Dutch sample with 17-month-old boys paternal and maternal emotional instability was associated with lack of structure in parenting (Verhoeven et al., 2007). The barebones mediation analysis of parenting cognitions ! practices ! child outcomes was introduced previously and complicating conditions hinted at. One such complication is that emotions mediate the effect of personality on parenting. A longitudinal study revealed that mothers’ personality characteristics were associated with their positive emotional expressions, which in turn related to more maternal positive emotionality observed during interactions with toddlers (Smith et al., 2007). With respect to practices, warm parenting gives children the sense that they are respected and loved and strengthens their motivation to obey and cooperate with their parents (Grusec et al., 2000). Meta-analysis reveals a significant association between emotional stability and warmth (McCabe, 2014; Prinzie et al., 2009). Parents who manifest higher levels of emotional stability engage in more warm parenting; however, moderator analyses reveal that the personality-warmth relation varies by parent and child age. The younger the parent and child, the stronger the relation between emotional stability and warmth.

1.5.2 Child Actual or perceived characteristics of children also contribute to emotions in parents and parenting emotion regulation. Children’s characteristics as well as their behaviors regularly elicit positive emotions of pride, joy, and love but also negative emotions of embarrassment, anger, and sadness. For example, parents report positive child-oriented emotions if their children are well regulated and high in positive emotionality (Cole et al., 2013; Kochanska et al., 2004). However, children’s misbehavior or crying generates authoritarian parenting, anger, and in some cases mistreatment (Chen et al., 2011; Lorber et al., 2011). Children’s own emotion regulation varies with their development, and parents’ emotions and emotion regulation can vary with their child’s because certain stages of development, such as the “terrible twos” and parent–child conflicts that sometimes accompany adolescence, are emotionally challenging for parents. In infancy, children rely on caregivers for emotion regulation (Bernier et al., 2010; Cole et al., 2004), but toddlers seek increased autonomy and start to develop internal emotion-regulation skills to appropriately modulate the intensity and duration of emotion expressions to function effectively in an environment (Cole et al., 2004; Eisenberg et al.,

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2018; Hoffman et al., 2006). Other child characteristics likewise moderate parent and child emotion regulation and the parent–child relationship as, for example, temperament (especially difficulty), disability, and developmental disorders (Kiff et al., 2011). So-called difficult child behaviors (including crying and misbehavior) are linked with parents’ reports of negative, parent-oriented emotions and physiological arousal (Del Vecchio et al., 2016; Leerkes et al., 2016; Lorber & O’Leary, 2005).

1.5.3 Context Finally, both acute event-specific and chronic trait-like contextual characteristics moderate emotion regulation in parenting. Regarding the first, situational parenting-related emotions, such as those experienced while interacting with one’s child (e.g. irritation during a discipline encounter), when exposed to parenting-relevant stimuli (e.g. empathy when listening to audio recordings of infant crying), or in response to prior child behavior or parent–child interaction (e.g. embarrassment when reflecting on an earlier encounter) shape emotional arousal and regulation (e.g. Nelson et al., 2013; Nelson-Coffey et al., 2017). More generally, parents report more positive emotions throughout the day compared to nonparents (Nelson et al., 2013) and specifically when they spend time with their children compared to their other daily activities (Musick et al., 2016; Nelson et al., 2013; Nelson-Coffey et al., 2017). Relational assets like positive marital relationship experiences and social and material supports can boost parents’ positive emotions (putatively by reducing stress and strain; Leerkes & Crockenberg, 2006), in contrast to ecological and life stresses associated with economic, marital, social, and mental health domains, which tend to undermine parental emotional well-being (Newland, 2014). For example, low-socioeconomic status parents likely experience reduced emotional well-being in part due to financial hardship and associated elevated stress. Human beings acquire important knowledge of what it means to parent children through generational, social, and cultural images of parenting, children, and family life, knowledge that plays a significant role in helping people formulate their parenting cognitions and guide their parenting practices. On a larger contextual scale, ethnicities and cultures differ in their acceptability and expression of positive and negative emotions related to emotion socialization goals, and so vary in how and when parents display or encourage emotion regulation (Dunbar et al., 2017). Overall, the sizes of reported parenting effects reflect the fact that parenting is a complex multivariate system. Parenting effects are also conditional and not absolute (i.e. true for all parents and for all children under all conditions). In probabilistic relational developmental systems

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(like that between parent and child), it is unlikely that any single factor accounts for substantial amounts of variation in parenting effects. More complex conceptualizations that incorporate larger numbers of influential variables tend to explain parenting effects better than simpler ones with fewer variables. These considerations also play into the design, implementation, and scaling of parenting supports (Bornstein et al., 2022b).

1.6 Supports for Parent and Child Emotion Regulation Society at large is witnessing the emergence of striking permutations in parenthood and in constellations of family structures that have plunged the family generally, and parenthood specifically, into a flux of novel emotions (Ganong et al., 2015). Because many society-wide developments exert debilitative influences on parenthood, on parenting, and, consequently, on children and their development, many parents need assistance to identify and implement effective strategies to optimize emotion regulation in child-rearing. Parenting conjures many positive emotions, such as intimacy, nurturance, and rewards, to be embraced and enriched, but parenting is also encumbered with negative emotions, such as frustration, anger, and harshness, to be eschewed and overcome. Upregulation of positive emotions can be promoted through openness to new knowledge, skills, and relationships, and downregulation of negative emotions can be achieved through physiological processes, behavioral strategies, and cognitive reframing (Fredrickson, 2013). Parents are usually the most invested, consistent, and caring people in the lives of their children, so providing parents with knowledge, skills, and supports will help them parent in the emotion realm more positively generally and promote their own and their children’s emotion regulation specifically. It is a sad fact of everyday life that parenting children does not always go well or right. Many parents are overcome with negative emotions and resort to neglect or abuse (Bornstein et al., 2022b). Every year, childprotection agencies in the United States receive 3 million referrals for neglect and abuse involving about 6 million children younger than age 5. About 80% of perpetrators are parents. Meta-analyses confirm that parents’ poor emotion regulation contributes to their children’s internalizing and externalizing problems, physical injuries, and even death (Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2022). However, only a fraction of parents who need support services receive them. Thus, organizations at all levels of society are motivated to intercede in child-rearing and right social ills through preventions, supports, and interventions, known collectively as parenting programs (Bornstein et al., 2022a). Happily, advances in

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parenting science have revealed that the determinants and expressions of many parenting cognitions and practices are plastic and educable. Competencies are defined to include knowledge, skills, abilities, personal characteristics, and attitudes; moreover, competencies to adequately perform a task, duty, or role are (usually) learned (Roe, 2002). So, competent emotionally regulated parenting can be learned (even if, alas!, children do not come with an operating manual). Some core ingredients to the syllabus of emotionally regulated parenting include knowledge of how children develop; how to effectively observe children and how to interpret and use what is observed; how to manage children’s behaviors; understanding the impact parents have on children; how to take advantage of everyday settings, routines, and activities to create learning and problemsolving opportunities that enhance emotion regulation in parenting and children; and how to be patient, flexible, and goal oriented as well as extract pleasure from encounters with children. Programs designed for parents come in a variety of venues (psychotherapy, classes, media), settings (homes, schools, clinics, houses of worship), and formats (individual, family, group), and with a variety of goals (some universal, some specific). Some programs succeed, such as the mindfulness-enhanced Strengthening Families Program (Coatsworth et al., 2010), Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up (Bick & Dozier, 2013), the Circle of Security (Cassidy et al., 2010), the Video-Feedback Intervention to Promote Positive Parenting (Juffer et al., 2008), Minding the Baby (Slade et al., 2005), and Enhanced Triple P (Sanders et al., 2000) as well as many emotion coaching interventions (Havighurst et al., 2013). Unhappily, however, most programs fail and do so for a wide variety of reasons, often as failures of fidelity on the part of staff to adhere to program specifics and failures of adherence on the part of parents (Bornstein et al., 2022a; Pinquart & Teubert, 2010). By critically deconstructing reasons for failures, it is possible to learn ways that future programs might succeed. Furthermore, no single program fits all parents or problems (Barrera et al., 2011). However, solid and timely guidance on central aspects of designing, implementing, and scaling parenting programs is now available (Bornstein et al., 2022a). Responsibilities for determining children’s best interests, including their all-important emotion regulation, rest first and foremost with parents. Parents are children’s primary advocates and the corps available in the greatest numbers to lobby and labor for children. Few ethical or sentient parents want to abrogate their child-rearing responsibilities (Thompson & Baumrind, 2019). Insofar as parents can be enlisted and empowered to provide children with experiences and environments that promote positive emotions and emotional regulation, society can be spared the effort and expense of after-the-fact remediation.

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1.7 Conclusions Successful parenthood ultimately means, among other things, having facilitated a child’s mature emotional regulation. To date, however, parenting theory and research in general and in emotion regulation specifically have focused too narrowly on mother and child rather than multiple family system relationships; on selected topics such as attachment to the near exclusion of others such as spirituality; on normative nuclear families when the modern world is populated with a dizzying diversity of family compositions; and on parenting in the minority Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic developed world to the proportionate exclusion of the majority developing world. Parenting is a multilevel phenomenon and will be better understood eventually by integrating evolutionary, genetic, biological, comparative, behavioral, and cultural perspectives. As judged by psychoanalysis, ethology, psychology, and neuroscience, parents engage in a peculiar kind of life’s work: parenting is a nuanced blend of empathy, altruism, and prosociality as well as blind devotion and selflessness, and it is marked by constantly challenging demands, changing and ambiguous criteria, and all-too-frequent evaluations. Direct and indirect effects of parenting, combined with defining its principles, such specificity, timing, thematicity, moderation, meaning, transaction, and attunement render parenting less than straightforward. Parenting also entails both affective constituents (i.e. emotional commitment, empathy, and positive regard for children), and cognitive constituents (i.e. the how, what, and why of caring for children emotionally). Moreover, different child-rearing tasks are more or less salient at different points over the life course. Thus, the path to achieving satisfaction and successes in parenting is not linear, but meandering, and is not immediate and digital, but incremental and analog. Parenthood is a signal phase of mature adulthood engaged in (if not embraced) by perhaps 80% of people around the globe. Adults in the United States (Aguiar & Hurst, 2007) and elsewhere in the world (Gauthier et al., 2004) spend more time with their children today than parents did in the past. Still, nearly one half of a US national sample of parents regrets that they spend too little time with their children. Parenthood is central to childhood and child development as well as to society’s long-term investment in successive generations and society itself. So, we are motivated to know more about the structure and sources as well as the sense and significance of parenthood and parenting as much for all of these reasons as out of the desire to improve the lives of children and the welfare of society.

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Paley, B., Conger, R. D., & Harold, G. T. (2000). Parents’ affect, adolescent cognitive representations, and adolescent social development. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62(3), 761–776. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737 .2000.00761.x Papoušek, H., & Papoušek, M. (2002). Intuitive parenting. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting: Vol. 2. Biology and ecology of parenting (2nd ed., pp. 183–203). Lawrence Erlbaum. Peris, T. S., & Miklowitz, D. J. (2015). Parental expressed emotion and youth psychopathology: New directions for an old construct. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 46(6), 863–873. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-014-0526-7 Pinquart, M., & Teubert, D. (2010). Effects of parenting education with expectant and new parents: A meta-analysis. Journal of Family Psychology, 24(3), 316–327. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019691 Prinzie, P., de Haan, A., & Belsky, J. (2019). Personality and parenting. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting: Vol. 3. Being and becoming a parent (3rd ed., pp. 797–822). Routledge. Prinzie, P., Deković, M., van den Akker, A. L., de Haan, A. D., Stoltz, S. E. M. J., & Jolijn Hendriks, A. A. (2012). Fathers’ personality and its interaction with children’s personality as predictors of perceived parenting behavior six years later. Personality and Individual Differences, 52(2), 183–189. https://doi.org/10 .1016/j.paid.2011.10.012 Prinzie, P., Stams, G. J., Deković, M., Reijntjes, A. H. A., & Belsky, J. (2009). The relation between parent personality and parenting: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 351–362. Roe, R. A. (2002). What makes a competent psychologist? European Psychologist, 3, 192–202. https://doi.org/10.1027//1016-9040.7.3.192 Rueger, S. Y., Katz, R. L., Risser, H. J., & Lovejoy, M. C. (2011). Relations between parental affect and parenting behaviors: A meta-analytic review. Parenting: Science and Practice, 11(1), 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295192 .2011.539503 Rutherford, H. J. V., Wallace, N. S., Laurent, H. K., & Mayes, L. C. (2015). Emotion regulation in parenthood. Developmental Review, 36, 1–14. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2014.12.008 Sanders, M. R., Markie-Dadds, C., Tully, L. A., & Bor, W. (2000). The Triple PPositive Parenting Program: A comparison of enhanced, standard, and selfdirected behavioral family intervention for parents of children with early onset conduct problems. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 68(4), 624–640. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.68.4.624 Sarita¸s, D., Grusec, J. E., & Gençöz, T. (2013). Warm and harsh parenting as mediators of the relation between maternal and adolescent emotion regulation. Journal of Adolescence, 36(6), 1093–1101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j .adolescence.2013.08.015 Schatz, J. N., Smith, L. E., Borkowski, J. G., Whitman, T. L., & Keogh, D. A. (2008). Maltreatment risk, self-regulation, and maladjustment in at-risk children. Child Abuse & Neglect, 32(10), 972–982. https://doi.org/10.1016/j .chiabu.2008.09.001

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Schiffrin, H. H., Rezendes, D., & Nelson, S. K. (2010). Stressed and happy? Investigation of the relationship between happiness and perceived stress. Journal of Happiness Studies, 11, 33–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-0089104-7 Schuette, C., & Killen, M. (2009). Children’s evaluations of gender-stereotypic household activities in the family context. Early Education and Development, 20 (4), 693–712. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409280802206908 Shaffer, A., & Obradović, J. (2017). Unique contributions of emotion regulation and executivefunctions in predicting the quality of parent–child interaction behaviors. Journal of Family Psychology, 31(2), 150–159. https://doi.org/10 .1037/fam0000269 Skinner, E., Johnson, S., & Snyder, T. (2005). Six dimensions of parenting: A motivational model. Parenting: Science and Practice, 5(2), 175–235. https:// doi.org/10.1207/s15327922par0502_3 Slade, A., Belsky, J., Aber, J. L., & Phelps, J. L. (1999). Mothers’ representations of their relationships with their toddlers: Links to adult attachment and observed mothering. Developmental Psychology, 35(3), 611–619. https://doi .org/10.1037/0012-1649.35.3.611 Slade, A., Sadler, L., De Dios-kenn, C., Webb, D., Currier-Ezepchick, J., & Mayes, L. (2005). Minding the baby: A reflective parenting program. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 60, 74–100. Smith, C. L., Spinrad, T. L., Eisenberg, N., Gaertner, B. M., Popp, T. K., & Maxon, E. (2007). Maternal personality: Longitudinal associations to parenting behavior and maternal emotional expressiveness toward toddlers. Parenting: Science and Practice, 7, 305–329. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295190701498710 Spitz, R. (1970). The effect of personality disturbance in the mother on the wellbeing of her infant. In E. J. Anthony & T. Benedek (Eds.), Parenthood: Its psychology and psychopathology (pp. 503–524). Little, Brown, & Co. (Reprinted from The first year of life: A psychoanalytic study of normal and deviant development of object relations, 1965, International Universities). Stark, E. A., Stein, A., Young, K. S., Parsons, C. E., & Kringelbach, M. L. (2019). Neurobiology of human parenting. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting: Vol. 2. Biology and ecology of parenting (3rd ed., pp. 250–284). Routledge. Stern, J. A., Borelli, J. L., & Smiley, P. A. (2015). Assessing parental empathy: A role for empathy in child attachment. Attachment and Human Development, 17(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2014.969749 Thompson, R. A., & Baumrind, D. (2019). The ethics of parenting. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of parenting: Vol. 5. The practice of parenting (3rd ed., pp. 3–33). Routledge. Tobin, R. M., Graziano, W. G., Vanman, E. J., & Tassinary, L. G. (2000). Personality, emotional experience, and efforts to control emotions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(4), 656–669. https://doi.org/10.1037/ 0022-3514.79.4.656 Verhoeven, M., Junger, M., Van Aken, C., Deković, M., & Van Aken, M. A. G. (2007). Parenting during toddlerhood: Contributions of parental, contextual,

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and child characteristics. Journal of Family Issues, 28(12), 1663–1691. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0192513X07302098 Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Harvard University Press. Weisman, O., Zagoory-Sharon, O., & Feldman, R. (2012). Intranasal oxytocin administration is reflected in human saliva. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 37(9), 1582–1586. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2012.02.014 Winnicott, D. W. (1975). Reparation in respect of mother’s organized defence against depression. In Through paediatrics to psycho-analysis (pp. 91–96). Basic Books. (Original work published 1948) Wu, X., Wang, Y., & Liu, A. (2017). Maternal emotional expressiveness affects preschool children’s development of knowledge of display rules. Social Behavior and Personality, 45(1), 93–104. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.5783 Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J., Rudolph, J., Kerin, J., & Bohadana-Brown, G. (2022). Parent emotional regulation: A meta-analytic review of its association with parenting and child adjustment. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 46(1) 63–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/01650254211051086

CHAPTER 2

Emotion Regulation in Self and Others Kate Petrova and James J. Gross

Tens of thousands of new publications now appear each year on “emotion regulation.” However, despite the very high level of enthusiasm for this topic across psychology and related fields, there remains considerable confusion about what emotion regulation actually is (and is not). In this chapter, we provide an overview of this rapidly growing field, with particular attention to concepts and findings that may be of special relevance to scholars interested in the links between emotion regulation and parenting. Because any discussion of emotion regulation depends upon one’s assumptions about emotion, we begin by asking: What is an emotion?

2.1 Emotion and Related Constructs Emotions come in many different shapes and sizes (Suri & Gross, 2022). Sometimes emotions are pleasant; other times they are unpleasant. Sometimes they are very mild, so that we can scarcely tell we’re having an emotion. At other times, emotions are so intense that we’re scarcely aware of anything else. Sometimes it’s clear what label to apply to our emotions (e.g. anger, sadness, amusement). Other times, our emotions are hard to define. Given this remarkable diversity, affective scientists have struggled to define the core features of emotion.

2.1.1 Core Features of Emotion According to the “modal model” of emotion (Figure 2.1), emotions may be seen as arising through a cycle that consists of four elements: (1) a situation (either experienced or imagined); (2) attention that determines which aspects of the situation are perceived; (3) evaluation or appraisal of the situation in light of one’s currently active goals; and (4) a response to

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Figure 2.1 Modal model of emotions Note. Emotions commonly arise in the context of (1) a situation that is either experienced or imagined, (2) attention that influences which aspects of the situation are perceived, (3) an evaluation or appraisal of the situation, and (4) a response to the situation that alters the situation that gave rise to the emotion in the first place.

the situation, which may include changes in subjective experience, physiology, and facial or other behaviors (Gross, 2015). Consider an exhausted parent wheeling a shopping cart through a grocery store with a toddler in tow. The toddler can’t make up their mind as to whether they want to walk or sit in the shopping cart. So no sooner are they safely installed in the cart do they begin to ask to get down. This is the immediate situation that might lead some parents to pay particular attention to the toddler’s demands, which they evaluate as unreasonable, giving rise to feelings of anger, sweaty palms, and a stream of increasingly irritable comments to the toddler. But the story of the parent’s emotion does not end here, because one of the sometimes-wonderful and sometimes-awful things about being human is that we are capable of metacognition. This means that our overwhelmed parent is not only becoming angry with the toddler but may also notice the fact that they are getting angry and evaluate this growing anger negatively, leading to further feelings (perhaps of guilt) along with new facial and behavioral responses, such as trying to make amends by offering the child a treat from the candy aisle.

2.1.2 Related Constructs One point of confusion when considering emotions is how they relate to other emotion-like concepts. We find it helpful to view emotions as one cluster of instances of the broader category marked by the term affect, which refers to states that involve relatively quick good-for-me/bad-for-me

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discriminations. Affective states include (1) emotions such as happiness or anger, (2) stress responses in situations that exceed an individual’s ability to cope, (3) moods such as euphoria or depression, and (4) impulses to approach or withdraw. Although there is little consensus as to how these various flavors of affect differ from one another, several broad distinctions may be usefully drawn. Thus, although both stress and emotions typically involve whole-body responses to situations that the individual sees as being relevant to their goals, stress generally refers to stereotyped responses to negative situations, whereas emotion refers to more specific responses to negative as well as positive situations. With respect to the distinction between emotions and moods, moods can often be described as being more diffuse compared to emotions. They last longer than emotions and are less likely to have welldefined and easily identifiable triggers (Frijda, 1993; Schiller et al., 2022). Thus, it makes sense to talk about being in a horrible mood last week, when throughout the week you were gripped by a mood that seemed to permeate your mind and body and led you to take a particularly dim view of your life and everything in it. Finally, affective impulses are perhaps the least well defined of these terms, but they are generally thought to include impulses to eat (or expel) food or drink, to exercise (or to continue to sit on the couch), or to spend time with one’s child (or to hide in the bathroom). All four of these types of affective states can be experienced in solitary or in social contexts. In fact, it has been argued that the vast majority of our affective experiences occur in the presence of others (Boiger & Mesquita, 2012; Scherer et al., 1983). In this chapter, we largely focus on emotions that take place in interpersonal contexts. But many of the distinctions that are useful when thinking about emotions also apply to other types of affect (Uusberg et al., 2019).

2.2 Emotion Regulation and Related Constructs Often, our emotions (and other manifestations of affect) seem to come and go quite haphazardly. We may feel sad at one moment, and then, inexplicably, we are cheerful at another. However, affective scientists have generally come to the conclusion that, despite the impression that emotions operate outside our control, we do often have at least some degree of control over how our emotions (and other types of affect) play out over time.

2.2.1 Core Features of Emotion Regulation Different scholars have expressed quite different views as to how (and whether) emotion reactivity and emotion regulation should be

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Figure 2.2 First-level and second-level valuation systems Note. Emotion regulation involves the functional coupling of two valuation systems, in which a first-level valuation system that is instantiating emotion (Figure 2.1) becomes the object of a second-level valuation system that takes the emotion as its object (Gross, 2015). S = situation, A = attention, E = evaluation, R = response.

distinguished (Gross & Feldman Barrett, 2011). We propose that emotion regulation requires that (1) an emotion is evaluated as either good or bad and (2) this evaluation activates a goal to change the intensity, duration, type, or consequences of the emotion in question (Gross et al., 2011). With regard to the evaluation of an emotion as good or bad, emotion regulation can be conceptualized as a functional coupling of two valuation systems. In this formulation, a first-level valuation system takes the situation (e.g. a fussy toddler) as its object and gives rise to the emotion (e.g. irritation). This first-level system then becomes the object of a second-level valuation system, which leads to the metacognitive evaluation of the emotion itself as either good or bad (e.g. as when we feel bad about feeling irritated with our toddler) (Figure 2.2; Gross, 2015). In our view, it is this second-level valuation of a first-level emotion that creates the context in which emotion regulation may arise via the activation of an emotion regulation goal. The goals that drive emotion regulation can be broadly subdivided into self-focused and other-focused regulatory goals. One note on this distinction: one of us has previously referred to this distinction as between intrinsic and extrinsic emotion regulation (Gross, 2015). However, we now prefer the

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PERSON Y

Figure 2.3 Other-focused emotion regulation Note. One of the two valuation systems that define emotion regulation is active in one person (person X on the left, in whom the second-level valuation system is active) and the other valuation system is active in another person (person Y on the right, in whom the first-level valuation system is active). In this dyad, person X activates the goal to modify person Y’s emotion.

self-focused and other-focused terminology as it avoids any potential confusion with motivational meanings of the terms intrinsic and extrinsic. When a person’s second-level valuation system takes as its object a first-level valuation system that is active within that same person – in other words, when a person engages in regulation with the intention of changing their own emotions – such regulation is considered selffocused (Gross, 2015). Engaging in deep breathing when feeling irritated at one’s toddler, looking away from a scary movie scene, confiding in a friend after a disappointing career setback, and eating a bowl (or a tub) of ice cream to lift one’s spirits after a romantic breakup are all examples of self-focused regulation. In contrast, when the second-level valuation system takes as its object the first-level valuation system of another person – in other words, when a person engages in regulation with the intention of changing someone else’s emotions – such regulation is considered other-focused (see Figure 2.3; Nozaki & Mikolajczak, 2020). For example, a parent who intentionally diverts a child’s attention away from being stuck in an over-lit and crowded grocery store during nap time and a person who helps their friend reappraise a disappointing career setback are both engaging in other-focused regulation. It is estimated that most emotion regulation episodes take place in social contexts (Gross et al., 2006). As a result, both self-focused and other-focused regulatory goals can be attained through nonsocial as well

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Table 2.1. Examples of two categories of regulatory goals (self-focused and other-focused) accomplished via two categories of regulatory means (non-social and social) MEANS GOALS

NONSOCIAL

SOCIAL

SELF-FOCUSED

Parent reframing a frustrating situation at work on their own in order to make themselves feel less negatively about it

Child turning to their parent for help reframing a frustrating situation at school in order to feel less negative about it

OTHER-FOCUSED

Parent suppressing negative emotions about a frustrating situation at work in order not to keep their children from worrying

Parent helping their child reframe a frustrating situation they experienced at school in order to help them feel less negative about it

as social means. Regulation through nonsocial means refers to processes whereby an individual takes steps to change their own (self-focused nonsocial) or someone else’s (other-focused nonsocial) emotions without assistance from other people. In contrast, regulation through social means refers to processes whereby an individual takes steps to change their own (self-focused social) or someone else’s (other-focused social) emotions in a way that directly engages the cognitive, attentional, or behavioral resources of at least one other individual (Table 2.1).

2.2.2 Related Constructs Paralleling the distinctions between emotions and other types of affective responses, emotion regulation can be seen as a special case of the broader category of affect regulation. This category includes (1) emotion regulation, (2) coping, (3) mood regulation, and (4) impulse regulation (Gross & Thompson, 2007). Much of our goal-directed behavior can be construed as maximizing pleasure or minimizing pain, and thus falling under the umbrella of affect regulation in the broad sense. It can be useful to sharpen the focus by examining a few of these regulatory processes in greater detail. Coping can be distinguished from emotion regulation both by its principal focus on decreasing negative affect and by its emphasis on longer time periods (e.g. coping with the challenge of having a child who has special needs). As noted previously, moods are typically of

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longer duration than emotions and are less likely to involve responses to specific “objects.” In part due to their less well-defined behavioral response tendencies, compared to emotion regulation, mood regulation is typically more concerned with altering one’s feelings rather than behavior. Impulse regulation broadly refers to the regulation of appetitive and defensive impulses (e.g. to opt for a slice of cake instead of fruit salad or to back out of giving a presentation in front of a large audience). One form of impulse regulation that has attracted particular attention is selfcontrol (Duckworth et al., 2016). Although the distinctions we have drawn here can be helpful in orienting to relevant literature, there is growing evidence that affect regulation processes may share a number of features despite the differences in their regulatory targets (for an integrative affective regulation perspective, see Gross et al., 2019). Another important distinction can be drawn between emotion regulation and other processes that may lead to incidental changes in one’s emotional experience. Consider, for example, a high-schooler who received the sad news that he did not get into his dream college just moments before going to a friend’s birthday party. The mere presence of other people at the party might help ameliorate his sadness even if neither he nor his friends had a goal (explicit or implicit) to do so. This phenomenon has been referred to as social affect modulation (Coan et al., 2006; Zaki & Williams, 2013). What sets emotion regulation apart from these more incidental forms of modulation is that emotion regulation is necessarily goal directed.

2.3 The Process Model of Emotion Regulation One widely used framework for studying emotion regulation is the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998, 2015). This framework delineates four stages of emotion regulation: identification, selection, implementation, and monitoring (Figure 2.4). Each stage culminates in a decision (conscious or otherwise) that the regulator makes and that propels them toward their emotional goals (Braunstein et al., 2017; Gross et al., 2019; Koole et al., 2015). The four decisions that correspond to the four stages of regulation are (1) whether to regulate, (2) what strategies to use in order to regulate, (3) how to implement said strategies under the circumstances, and (4) whether to modify one’s ongoing emotion regulation efforts in any way (e.g. by selecting a different strategy or discontinuing regulation altogether). One advantage of the process model is that it can be used to describe both self-focused and other-focused emotion regulation attained via both nonsocial as well as social means (i.e. all cells in Table 2.1). In a two-

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Figure 2.4 Process model of emotion regulation Note. According to the process model of emotion regulation, four stages define emotion regulation. The first three of these correspond to the second-level valuation steps of attention, evaluation, and response. The fourth is the monitoring stage. Five families of emotion regulation strategies may be distinguished based on where they have their primary impact on emotion generation: situation selection, situation modification, attentional strategies, cognitive change, and response modulation.

person interaction, both partners can perceive their own emotional states. These perceptions provide input into the four stages of self-focused emotion regulation. In addition to perceiving their own emotions, both parties can also form dynamic mental representations of each other’s emotional states. These representations feed into the four stages of other-focused emotion regulation that mirror those of self-focused regulation. Whatever the partners’ emotional goals may be, their decisions at each stage can also lead them to pursue such goals via nonsocial or social means (Figure 2.5). In the following sections, we consider the four stages of emotion regulation and illustrate how the process model can be usefully applied to instances of social and nonsocial emotion regulation.

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PERSON Y

A

A

A

B

A

A

Figure 2.5 Other-focused regulation accomplished via social means Note. Panel A: person X directly regulating person Y’s emotion. Panel B: person X encouraging person Y to regulate Y’s emotion.

2.3.1 The Identification Stage At the identification stage, the regulator identifies a gap between the actual (or projected) and desired emotional state (i.e. the emotion goal) and decides whether to take action to shrink that gap. If the gap in question is between the regulator’s own experienced and desired emotional states, the decision to take action would set in motion self-focused regulation. If, on the other hand, the gap in question is between the regulator’s representation of another person’s emotional state and the emotional state that the regulator wants to see enacted in the other person instead, the result will be other-focused regulation. In the case of otherfocused regulation, the regulator may come to the decision to regulate independently (e.g. by noticing another person’s angry demeanor) or as a result of a direct request for regulatory assistance. Often, desired emotional states are the ones that maximize pleasure and minimize displeasure (e.g. happiness, contentment). But people can

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also value other aspects of emotional states (e.g. motivational), leading them to desire emotional states that are useful but not particularly pleasant (or even patently unpleasant; Ford & Gross, 2019; Tamir, 2016). For example, a parent might scold their child for hitting their sibling in order to upregulate the child’s feelings of guilt and deter them from committing similar transgressions in the future. In this case, the parent views guilt as a desired emotional state (because of its high motivational value) despite the fact that it can also be an extremely unpleasant emotion to experience. This is an example of what is called counterhedonic emotion regulation (Zaki, 2020). Note that, in the case of other-focused regulation, the desired state may be determined by the regulator’s beliefs about the target’s goals, the regulator’s goals that are independent from (and that might even go against) those of the target, or some combination of the two.

2.3.2 The Selection Stage A decision to change an emotional state triggers the selection stage, which is when the regulator decides where to intervene in the emotiongenerative process. Five families of emotion regulation strategies may be distinguished based on the stage of emotion generation at which they have their primary impact (Figure 2.4). Situational selection seeks to alter emotion by selecting which emotion-eliciting situations are encountered or avoided. Situation modification works by modifying how such situations unfold once encountered (situation modification). Attentional strategies seek to alter emotion by changing what aspects of the situation one pays attention to. Cognitive strategies seek to alter emotion by modifying the cognitive representations of the situations (i.e. interpretations) or one’s goals. Finally, response modulation strategies seek to alter emotions by directly modifying emotion-related experiential, behavioral, or physiological responses. Emotion regulation strategies are not inherently adaptive or maladaptive but rather can be relatively well suited or ill suited for particular situations at particular times (Bonanno & Burton, 2013; Sheppes, 2020). Thus, strategy selection can be thought of as the process of matching strategies to one’s emotional goals and situational demands on the basis of their costs and benefits. For example, where an upsetting situation can be improved, it may be best to change the situation rather than to use cognitive strategies. By contrast, in a context where little can be done to improve the situation, it may be best to use cognitive rather than situational strategies (Troy et al., 2013). In addition to deciding what strategies to use, the regulator at the selection stage must also weigh the costs and benefits of relying on nonsocial versus social regulatory resources. Thus, for example, in

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addition to deciding that the best course of action is to change the upsetting situation, the regulator must also decide if they wish to change the situation on their own or with some degree of assistance from their interaction partner or some other person.

2.3.3 The Implementation Stage Strategy selection triggers the implementation stage, during which the regulator decides which specific actions to take as part of their chosen strategy. This stage is needed because the broad strategies that aim to alter one or more of the steps in the emotion-generative process that were outlined previously can be enacted in different ways. These are referred to as regulation tactics. The implementation stage is where the regulation process impacts the emotion by translating the blueprint of a general regulation strategy (e.g. cognitive change) into specific mental or physical actions (e.g. thinking that someone who bumped into me wasn’t trying to hurt me, but instead had tripped). The implementation stage is also where the partners in a multiperson regulatory interaction decide how exactly to divide the regulatory labor. Thus, for example, a parent engaged in other-focused regulation of an upset child must decide whether to offer concrete suggestions for how the situation can be reinterpreted or to take on a more passive role by encouraging the child to come up with a reinterpretation on their own.

2.3.4 The Monitoring Stage The identification, selection, and implementation decisions form an iterative cycle. As the situation evolves over time, each of these decisions may need to be updated accordingly. This updating process can be viewed as a separate monitoring stage, involving a decision to maintain, switch, or stop the regulation attempt. As long as the regulation attempt continues to produce the desired results, the person can maintain regulation by relying on the existing identification, selection, and implementation decisions. However, if emotion doesn’t change, or changes in undesirable ways, the chosen selection and/or implementation decisions can be switched, or the regulation attempt can be stopped altogether. Switching or stopping may also be necessitated by a change in context, which provides a new set of affordances or barriers to regulation.

2.4 Interpersonal Emotion Regulation As we have made clear, the process model of emotion regulation provides a framework for considering both self- and other-focused emotion

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regulation that employs either social or non-social means (see Table 2.1). However, particularly in the context of a discussion of emotion regulation in parenting, the nature of the context in which regulation takes place deserves elaboration. The growing recognition that emotion regulation often takes place in social contexts has led to an explosion of interest in interpersonal emotional regulation (Nozaki & Mikolajczak, 2020; Williams et al., 2018; Zaki & Williams, 2013). Despite the growing enthusiasm, to date, there remains little consensus on where exactly non-interpersonal emotion regulation ends and interpersonal emotion regulation begins. The term interpersonal emotion regulation has been used to refer to a range of interconnected yet distinct processes, including, for example: (1) Claire asking for Jordan’s help to regulate her emotions, (2) Jordan regulating Claire’s emotions, and (3) Jordan regulating his own emotions with the goal of changing Claire’s emotions. Here, we propose a broad definition of interpersonal emotion regulation that includes all three of the aforementioned examples and encompasses all instances of emotion regulation that directly involve two or more individuals, as a result of activation of other-focused regulatory goals, reliance on social regulatory means, or both. There are several features of interpersonal emotion regulation that are not present in non-interpersonal regulation and that may be particularly important to consider in connection to parenting. First, self-focused and other-focused regulatory goals can be co-activated in interpersonal emotion regulation. That is, a person may be driven by the goal of changing their own and someone else’s emotions simultaneously in the course of a single regulatory interaction. Consider, for example, a parent who distracts their child from a scary movie scene. The parent’s use of an attentional strategy to change the child’s emotions may double as a situational strategy aimed at accomplishing the parent’s self-focused goal to avoid the frustration of having to disrupt a relaxing movie night to console a scared child. In this case, the parent’s other-focused regulatory goal (i.e. to help the child feel calmer) is subordinate to their self-focused regulatory goal (i.e. to enjoy a relaxing evening). The two types of goals can also be co-activated nonhierarchically. For instance, a father whose children are worried about their mother’s upcoming surgery may talk to them about the low risks associated with the procedure in order to quell the children’s as well as his own anxieties at the same time. Another important consideration has to do with the fact that the degree to which the partners in an interpersonal regulatory interaction are involved in the regulation process may also vary across and within situations. For example, in the case where a daughter seeks out her mother’s advice for dealing with a stressful situation at school, regulation

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of the daughter’s emotions can be accomplished by a joint recruitment of the daughter’s and the mother’s regulatory resources. But what specific resources are used and how the regulatory labor gets divided (i.e. how a general strategy is implemented through a series of concrete steps) can vary a great deal from one situation to another. For example, the mother could come up with a suggestion for how her daughter could reappraise the situation in a way that would make it appear less stressful. However, the success of any such reappraisal attempt would ultimately depend on the daughter’s willingness and ability to implement that reappraisal. Alternatively, the mother could take direct action to intervene in the situation, changing it in a way that would result in reduction of her daughter’s negative emotions with little or even no direct involvement from the daughter herself. This balance might also shift dynamically as both parties monitor their progression toward their respective regulatory goals and make the necessary adjustments. Gaining a better understanding of the interpersonal and temporal dynamics of this regulatory “dance” is a critical goal for future research in this area. The degree to which individuals rely on nonsocial versus social means to accomplish their regulatory goals varies not only across situations but also across development. One category of interactions in which regulation may be achieved entirely through social means includes caregivers’ regulation of infants’ affect (e.g. through physical touch). Infants must rely on their caregivers’ regulatory resources before they can develop the capacity for independent self-regulation (Cole et al., 1994). Thus, the development of emotion regulation across childhood can be thought of as the scaffolding process whereby parents’ child-focused regulation that relies exclusively on parental resources gradually turns into the child’s own self-focused regulation that draws on more and more of the child’s own resources as they grow older. Finally, it bears noting that all our examples up to this point have focused on unilateral interpersonal regulation in parent-child dyads. However, interpersonal co-regulation – in which both parties are regulating each other’s emotions (with or without regulating their own emotions at the same time) – as well as interactions that involve more than two partners are exceedingly common in familial contexts. Even a seemingly straightforward and lighthearted discussion of a child’s recent athletic accomplishment around the dinner table may involve complex interactions of multiple valuation systems and regulatory paths (Figure 2.6). The parents need to coordinate regulatory resource allocation as they take turns upregulating the child’s positive emotions and ensuring that their sibling does not feel jealous or left out, all the while trying to prevent their own negative emotions from a less-than-satisfying day at work from spilling over into the precious family time. The task of drawing an

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Figure 2.6 Multiperson, multigoal, multimean interpersonal emotion regulation Note. In this example, Parent X is regulating Child X’s, Parent Y’s, and their own emotions. Parent Y is regulating Parent X’s, Child X’s, and Child Y’s emotions. Child X is experiencing an emotion that Parent X and Parent Y are regulating. Child Y is regulating their own emotion with assistance from Parent Y.

accurate “map” of a regulatory interaction grows exponentially with increasing numbers of participants and co-active goals. Finding ways to represent and study the complexity that is inherent in interpersonal emotion regulation is a critical goal for basic and applied research in this area.

2.5 Parental Influences on Children’s Emotion Regulation Children learn to recognize, express, and regulate their emotions in part through interactions with primary caregivers and other important figures in their lives (Cole et al., 1994; Eisenberg et al., 1998). The tripartite model of familial influences on children’s emotion regulation (Morris et al., 2007) describes three interrelated yet conceptually distinct mechanisms through which parents influence children’s emotion regulation: (1) observation, which refers to children’s modeling of parents’ own emotion regulation; (2) emotion-related parenting practices, such as caregivers’ reactions to children’s emotional expressions and explicit coaching in emotion regulation; and (3) emotional climate of the family, which includes overall

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warmth, cohesion, and patterns of emotional expressions within the family. All three of these mechanisms may shape the development of children’s ability to identify the need to regulate, select, and implement appropriate regulatory strategies, and to flexibly adjust their regulatory efforts in the face of changing internal emotional needs and external situational demands.

2.5.1 Observation Observational learning is an important mechanism of skill acquisition early in life (Bandura, 1977), and skills related to emotion regulation are no exception. Children as young as 4 years of age mimic their mothers’ use of emotion regulation strategies (Bariola et al., 2012; Silk et al., 2006). Thus, observation might play a role in shaping the decisions that children make during the selection and implementation stages of the emotion regulation process. Strategies that are frequently used by a child’s parents are more likely to become a part of the child’s own regulatory repertoire. In addition, by observing how one’s parents respond to different emotion-eliciting situations children might also learn to pair specific strategies (and tactics) with circumstances in which they are commonly used by the parents. For example, a child who repeatedly observes their parents turn to each other for emotional support while dealing with challenges at work may be more likely to seek out others’ support when faced with problems at school.

2.5.2 Parenting Practices Caregivers are the main drivers of children’s emotional socialization, which is a process whereby children develop an understanding of their own and others’ emotions, their sources, and the norms surrounding their expression (Eisenberg et al., 1998). Parents’ reactions to children’s emotional expressions and discussion of emotion-related topics may play a particularly important role in shaping children’s ability to identify when their emotions need regulating. Consistent with this perspective, children whose parents validate their emotions and help them label those emotions tend to express less negative affect and show better emotion regulation ability (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Gottman et al., 1996; Morris et al., 2011). When it comes to what emotion regulation strategies parents teach to their children, there is evidence that it depends, in large part, on what strategies the parents themselves use to regulate their own emotions. For example, parents who engage in more suppression and rumination are also more likely to encourage their children to suppress and ruminate, whereas parents who use more problem-solving and reappraisal tend to facilitate the use of the same strategies in their children (Cohodes et al., 2022). Thus, direct parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation

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has the potential to further reinforce children’s learning of strategy selection that takes place through observation. Importantly, by observing how their parents talk to them about emotions and emotion-related topics, children also form their own beliefs about emotions (e.g. the extent to which emotions are helpful or harmful and how much – if at all – one’s emotions can be changed). There is a growing consensus in the field that people’s beliefs about emotions play an important role in shaping their decisions at all four stages of the emotion regulation process (Ford & Gross, 2019). Understanding how such beliefs develop in the context of child–caregiver interactions is a critical goal for future research in this area.

2.5.3 Emotional Climate The importance of warm and nurturing early family environments for later-life emotion regulation is well established in the literature (Petrova et al., 2021; Repetti et al., 2002; Waldinger & Schulz, 2016). Warm and responsive parenting styles that promote secure patterns of attachment have been linked to more adaptive emotion regulation across a number of studies (Brumariu, 2015). In contrast, adverse early environments characterized by frequent experiences and expressions of negative emotions are consistently linked with less adaptive regulation (Miu et al., 2022). In more severe cases, child maltreatment and the ensuing difficulties in emotion regulation may even put individuals at higher risk of developing psychiatric disorders later in life (Bertele et al., 2022), perpetuating cycles of maladaptive emotion regulation well into adulthood. Negative emotional climate and early adversity have been linked to long-term deficits in emotional awareness and understanding (Dunn & Brown, 1994; Hébert et al., 2018; Petrova et al., 2021). Such deficits might exert especially detrimental effects on the development of children’s ability to monitor their affective, behavioral, and physiological responses and fine-tune their regulatory efforts to adapt to changing situational and internal demands. Consistent with this possibility, recent work demonstrates a robust association between alexithymia – a trait that involves difficulties identifying and describing emotions – and difficulties with emotion regulation (Preece et al., 2022). In line with these findings, evidence from longitudinal research points to alexithymia as a possible mechanism connecting early maltreatment to later-life emotional distress (Hébert et al., 2018). Negative emotional climate may also indirectly shape the development of children’s emotion regulation via pathways related to both observation and parenting practices, since parents in less emotionally nurturing households may be more likely to use maladaptive emotion regulation strategies themselves.

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Taken together, these findings underscore the need for further research that would deepen our understanding of the interplay among observational learning, parenting practices, and emotional climate and their joint roles in shaping the development of emotional awareness and emotion regulation from infancy and childhood through adulthood and into older age.

2.6 Concluding Comment From the exhilaration that comes with stepping into the caregiver role for the first time to the everyday reality of getting up six times a night to calm down a fussy infant, opportunities for emotion regulation are never in short supply when it comes to parenting. Our aim in this chapter was to provide a broad overview of emotion regulation as it unfolds in both noninterpersonal and interpersonal contexts, with particular attention to topics related to parenting. To this end, we put forth a conceptual framework that distinguishes between self-focused and other-focused regulatory goals as well as nonsocial and social regulatory means. We have argued that emotion regulation can be fruitfully understood as a fourstage process during which individuals make a series of decisions about whether and how to change their emotions and dynamically adjust their regulatory efforts to changing situational demands. This framework can serve as a useful tool for integrating the literatures on parenting and emotion regulation. We hope that this chapter will be useful to scholars in parenting psychology and related domains, and that it will inspire future research on emotion regulation in self and others.

References Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Prentice-Hall. Bariola, E., Hughes, E. K., & Gullone, E. (2012). Relationships between parent and child emotion regulation strategy use: A brief report. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21(3), 443–448. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-011-9497-5 Bertele, N., Talmon, A., Gross, J. J., Schmahl, C., Schmitz, M., & Niedtfeld, I. (2022). Childhood maltreatment and borderline personality disorder: The mediating role of difficulties with emotion regulation. Journal of Personality Disorders, 36(3), 264–276. https://doi.org/10.1521/pedi.2022.36.3.264 Boiger, M., & Mesquita, B. (2012). The construction of emotion in interactions, relationships, and cultures. Emotion Review, 4(3), 221–229. https://doi.org/10 .1177/1754073912439765 Bonanno, G. A., & Burton, C. L. (2013). Regulatory flexibility: An individual differences perspective on coping and emotion regulation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(6), 591–612. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691613504116

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Braunstein, L. M., Gross, J. J., & Ochsner, K. N. (2017). Explicit and implicit emotion regulation: A multi-level framework. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(10), 1545–1557. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx096 Brumariu, L. E. (2015). Parent–child attachment and emotion regulation: Parent–child attachment and emotion regulation. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2015(148), 31–45. https://doi.org/10.1002/cad .20098 Coan, J. A., Schaefer, H. S., & Davidson, R. J. (2006). Lending a hand: Social regulation of the neural response to threat. Psychological Science, 17(12), 1032–1039. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01832.x Cohodes, E. M., Preece, D. A., McCauley, S., Rogers, M. K., Gross, J. J., & Gee, D. G. (2022). Development and validation of the Parental Assistance with Child Emotion Regulation (PACER) questionnaire. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, 50(2), 133–148. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-020-00759-9 Cole, P. M., Michel, M. K., & Teti, L. O. (1994). The development of emotion regulation and dysregulation: A clinical perspective. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(2/3), 73–100. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 1166139 Duckworth, A. L., Gendler, T. S., & Gross, J. J. (2016). Situational strategies for self-control. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(1), 35–55. https://doi .org/10.1177/1745691615623247 Dunn, J., & Brown, J. (1994). Affect expression in the family, children’s understanding of emotions, and their interactions with others. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 40(1), 120–137. Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., & Spinrad, T. L. (1998). Parental socialization of emotion. Psychological Inquiry, 9(4), 241–273. https://doi.org/10.1207/ s15327965pli0904_1 Ford, B. Q., & Gross, J. J. (2019). Why beliefs about emotion matter: An emotionregulation perspective. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28(1), 74–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721418806697 Frijda, N. H. (1993). Moods, emotion episodes, and emotions. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (pp. 381–403). Guilford Press. Gottman, J. M., Katz, L. F., & Hooven, C. (1996). Parental meta-emotion philosophy and the emotional life of families: Theoretical models and preliminary data. Journal of Family Psychology, 10(3), 243–268. https://doi.org/10.1037/ 0893-3200.10.3.243 Gross, J. J. (1998). Antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation: Divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(1), 224–237. https://doi.org/10.1037/ 0022-3514.74.1.224 Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2014 .940781 Gross, J. J., & Feldman Barrett, L. (2011). Emotion generation and emotion regulation: One or two depends on your point of view. Emotion Review, 3(1), 8–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073910380974

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Gross, J. J., Richards, J. M., & John, O. P. (2006). Emotion regulation in everyday life. In D. K. Snyder, J. Simpson, & J. N. Hughes (Eds.), Emotion regulation in couples and families: Pathways to dysfunction and health. (pp. 13–35). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/11468-001 Gross, J. J., Sheppes, G., & Urry, H. L. (2011). Cognition and Emotion Lecture at the 2010 SPSP Emotion Preconference: Emotion generation and emotion regulation: A distinction we should make (carefully). Cognition & Emotion, 25(5), 765–781. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2011.555753 Gross, J. J., & Thompson, R. A. (2007). Emotion regulation: conceptual foundations. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (pp. 3–24). Guilford Press. Gross, J. J., Uusberg, H., & Uusberg, A. (2019). Mental illness and well-being: An affect regulation perspective. World Psychiatry, 18(2), 130–139. https://doi .org/10.1002/wps.20618 Hébert, M., Boisjoli, C., Blais, M., & Oussaïd, E. (2018). Alexithymia as a mediator of the relationship between child sexual abuse and psychological distress in adolescence: A short-term longitudinal study. Psychiatry Research, 260, 468–472. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2017.12.022 Koole, S. L., Webb, T. L., & Sheeran, P. L. (2015). Implicit emotion regulation: Feeling better without knowing why. Current Opinion in Psychology, 3, 6–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2014.12.027 Miu, A. C., Szentágotai-Tătar, A., Balázsi, R., Nechita, D., Bunea, I., & Pollak, S. D. (2022). Emotion regulation as mediator between childhood adversity and psychopathology: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 93, 102141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2022.102141 Morris, A. S., Silk, J. S., Morris, M. D. S., Steinberg, L., Aucoin, K. J., & Keyes, A. W. (2011). The influence of mother–child emotion regulation strategies on children’s expression of anger and sadness. Developmental Psychology, 47(1), 213–225. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021021 Morris, A. S., Silk, J. S., Steinberg, L., Myers, S. S., & Robinson, L. R. (2007). The role of the family context in the development of emotion regulation. Social Development, 16(2), 361–388. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2007 .00389.x Nozaki, Y., & Mikolajczak, M. (2020). Extrinsic emotion regulation. Emotion, 20 (1), 10–15. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000636 Petrova, K., Nevarez, M. D., Rice, J., Waldinger, R. J., Preacher, K. J., & Schulz, M. S. (2021). Coherence between feelings and heart rate: Links to early adversity and responses to stress. Affective Science, 2(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10 .1007/s42761-020-00027-5 Preece, D. A., Mehta, A., Becerra, R., Chen, W., Allan, A., Robinson, K., Boyes, M., Hasking, P., & Gross, J. J. (2022). Why is alexithymia a risk factor for affective disorder symptoms? The role of emotion regulation. Journal of Affective Disorders, 296, 337–341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.09.085 Repetti, R. L., Taylor, S. E., & Seeman, T. E. (2002). Risky families: family social environments and the mental and physical health of offspring. Psychological Bulletin, 128(2), 330–366. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.128.2.330

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Scherer, K. R., Summerfield, A. B., & Wallbott, H. G. (1983). Cross-national research on antecedents and components of emotion: A progress report. Social Science Information, 22(3), 355–385. https://doi.org/10.1177/053901883022003002 Schiller, D., Yu, A. N. C., Alia-Klein, N., Becker, S., Cromwell, H. C., Dolcos, F., Eslinger, P. J., Frewen, P., Kemp, A. H., Pace-Schott, E., Raber, J., Silton, R. L., Stefanova, E., Williams, J. H. G., Abe, N., Aghajani, M., Albrecht, F., Alexander, R., Anders, S., . . . Lowe, L. (2022). The Human Affectome [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/9nu32 Sheppes, G. (2020). Transcending the “good & bad” and “here & now” in emotion regulation: Costs and benefits of strategies across regulatory stages. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 61, 185–236. https://doi.org/10 .1016/bs.aesp.2019.09.003 Silk, J. S., Shaw, D. S., Skuban, E. M., Oland, A. A., & Kovacs, M. (2006). Emotion regulation strategies in offspring of childhood-onset depressed mothers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47(1), 69–78. https://doi .org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2005.01440.x Suri, G., & Gross, J. J. (2022). What is an emotion? A connectionist perspective. Emotion Review, 14(2), 99–110. https://doi.org/10.1177/17540739221082203 Tamir, M. (2016). Why do people regulate their emotions? A taxonomy of motives in emotion regulation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 20 (3), 199–222. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868315586325 Troy, A. S., Shallcross, A. J., & Mauss, I. B. (2013). A person-by-situation approach to emotion regulation: Cognitive reappraisal can either help or hurt, depending on the context. Psychological Science, 24(12), 2505–2514. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613496434 Uusberg, A., Suri, G., Dweck, C., & Gross, J. J. (2019). Motivation: A valuation systems perspective. In M. Neta & I. J. Haas (Eds.), Emotion in the mind and body: Vol. 66 (pp. 161–192). Springer International Publishing. https://doi .org/10.1007/978-3-030-27473-3_6 Waldinger, R. J., & Schulz, M. S. (2016). The long reach of nurturing family environments: Links with midlife emotion-regulatory styles and late-life security in intimate relationships. Psychological Science, 27(11), 1443–1450. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616661556 Williams, W. C., Morelli, S. A., Ong, D. C., & Zaki, J. (2018). Interpersonal emotion regulation: Implications for affiliation, perceived support, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(2), 224–254. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000132 Zaki, J. (2020). Integrating empathy and interpersonal emotion regulation. Annual Review of Psychology, 71(1), 517–540. https://doi.org/10.1146/ annurev-psych-010419-050830 Zaki, J., & Williams, W. C. (2013). Interpersonal emotion regulation. Emotion, 13 (5), 803–810. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033839

PART II

Influence of Parents’ Emotion Regulation on Parenting

CHAPTER 3

The Role of Parents’ Emotion Regulation in Supporting Parenting Behaviors and Practices Nastassia J. Hajal and Galen D. McNeil

Introduction A parent and young child are in the cereal aisle of the grocery store. The little girl is wailing while pulling on her mother’s jacket, begging for Lucky Charms. Remembering the recent book that she read about positive behavior management, the mother pretends to be busy rereading the shopping list in an attempt to actively ignore the tantrum. The little girl’s emotions – intense anger at being reminded that she is allowed to choose only one treat and she already chose cookies – are on full display for everyone in the store. Less obvious, though, are the intense emotions coursing through the mother. The mother appears calm and neutral, not because that is how she feels, but because she is downregulating waves of negative emotions: anger at her daughter’s noncompliance (which leads to the urge to yell); frustration at herself for bringing her daughter to the store when she knew she did not have a good nap (which leads to negative self-talk), embarrassment about what other shoppers might be thinking about her, and anxiety because now that this is taking so long, they are going to hit rush hour traffic on the way home (both of which almost make her give in to her daughter in order to make the crying stop). Despite experiencing all of these feelings, the mother downregulates them because in that moment she knows that acting on them would ultimately not support her goal: to move on from the cereal aisle as soon as possible without the Lucky Charms, and without escalating her daughter’s behavior. When her daughter’s cry fades to a whimper and she starts to slowly walk away from the Lucky Charms, the first feeling that washes over the mother is relief. Instead of simply basking in the relief, though, she summons up feelings of pride in order to praise her daughter for calming down and following the rules and compassion to provide validation for her daughter’s disappointment.

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Nastassia J. Hajal and Galen D. McNeil Had the mother struggled to downregulate her feelings of anger, frustration, and anxiety, she may have acted on her urges: yelled “Fine! Fine! You can have the Lucky Charms too. Just be quiet already!” and yanked on her daughter’s arm to get her out of the store quickly. The mother would leave feeling defeated and telling herself she is a bad mother. The daughter would feel scared of her mother’s outburst and sore from her arm having been pulled. And the entire scenario would be more likely to happen again as the daughter’s tantrum behavior was reinforced.

The conceptualization of parenting as a process that is “affectively organized” came about in the early 1990s, with the publication of Theodore Dix’s seminal paper on the topic. Dix (1991) delineated how emotions and parenting are intertwined, focusing on how parenting activates emotions, how the specific emotions experienced by parents engage them in interaction with their children in particular ways, and how parents’ emotions are then regulated. In the 30 years since the publication of that paper, many studies have documented the wide range of emotions elicited by parenting (Bradley et al., 2013; Hajal et al., 2019), and meta-analyses have shown that the emotions parents experience during parent–child interaction have an impact on how they behave in those interactions (Rueger et al., 2011). However, although parents’ emotions influence behavior, they do not necessarily determine it (Hajal & Paley, 2020), as parents may – and often do – regulate their emotions. The notion that parents’ emotion regulation and dysregulation contribute to their parenting behaviors is now widely accepted, with enough studies conducted to support several reviews and even a recent meta-analysis (Havighurst & Kehoe, 2017; Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2022). Furthermore, intervention programs focused on preventing or reducing child mental health symptoms are increasingly incorporating components to enhance parents’ emotional regulation (Havighurst et al., 2021; Luby et al., 2018; Mogil et al., 2022; Sanders et al., 2007). Yet, there is still much to be understood about the nature of parental emotion regulation and the manner in which it supports (or undermines) parenting that leads to healthy outcomes for children. This chapter reviews advances in our understanding of associations between parental emotion regulation and parenting behavior over the past 30 years, as well as suggesting avenues for future research.

3.1 Key Concepts: Emotion Regulation and Parenting Emotion regulation (ER) refers to processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions (Gross, 1998, 2015). This includes both psychological and physiological processes that monitor, evaluate, and modulate

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emotions in the service of individuals’ goals (Gross 2015; Thompson, 1994). Notably, goals and ER processes may be within conscious awareness (explicit) or outside of it (automatic or implicit), and may occur within the individual (e.g. thoughts, physiological activation) or within the context of a relationship (e.g. when a parent provides external/coregulation to an infant by rubbing their back and cooing). It has been increasingly recognized that, whether consciously or not, regulatory processes are almost always recruited when an emotion occurs (Campos et al., 2004), and continuous monitoring of the situation that triggered the emotions, as well as one’s progress towards whatever the goal is, leads to the generation of new emotions and regulatory processes (Gross, 2015; Zhang et al., 2022). For example, the mother of the little girl in the grocery store story is continually monitoring her daughter’s behavior during the tantrum and assessing how close she is to her goal to move on from the cereal aisle as soon as possible (with a calm(er) daughter, and without the Lucky Charms). She realizes that she is getting closer to that goal when she sees that her daughter is calming down, and at that point a new emotion is generated, namely relief. However, this change in her daughter’s behavior also triggers another situational goal: a desire to reinforce her daughter’s compliance and ability to self-regulate. This new goal requires upregulation of positive emotions, specifically compassion to validate her daughter’s feelings and pride to offer reinforcing praise. In integrating work on ER and parenting, the assumption is that adaptive ER will lead to optimal parenting behavior. If ER has to do with modulating emotion in order to meet goals, then adaptive ER should facilitate parents’ ability to engage in parenting behavior that will help them meet their goals in any given parent–child interaction. In many cases, this will at least partly involve what they believe is optimal for their child’s development, although much of the time, parents are managing multiple demands simultaneously, some of which may be at odds with one another. In the grocery store story, the mothers’ immediate emotional reactions to her daughter’s tantrum were frustration (at both herself and her child), embarrassment, and anxiety. However, she realized that the parenting behaviors that these emotions might lead her to – yell at her daughter or give in to the tantrum – would not be in line with her ultimate goal to teach her daughter about accepting limits, to socialize healthy ways of expressing emotion, and to self-regulate effectively. A major challenge in this work is defining what “optimal” parenting behavior is because there arguably is no such thing. “Optimal” parenting depends on each parent’s goals for their child, based on the needs of their child, close others, and community, all in the context of their unique environment and culture (Lamborn & Felbab, 2003). The characterizations of parenting behavior measured in the parental emotion regulation

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(PER) literature to date are broad, from positive/negative, sensitive/ insensitive, hostile/harsh, overreactive, authoritarian/authoritative/permissive, and supportive/unsupportive emotion socialization behaviors. Even the labels for many of these types of parenting carry with them an assumption about their value for children’s development (e.g. positive versus negative, sensitive versus insensitive, supportive versus unsupportive). Yet, there are cultural and contextual nuances in beliefs about parenting, emotion expression, and how parents socialize emotions in their children, as well as environmental factors (e.g. systemic racism, poverty) that may have a substantial impact on what type of parenting behavior supports a child’s development. For example, the finding linking parents’ discouragement of children’s expressions of negative emotion to socioemotional maladjustment was robust enough that this socialization strategy is categorized as an “unsupportive” parent emotion socialization strategy (e.g. see Morris et al., 2017). Yet, historically the majority of this research has been conducted in White, European American samples. As emotion socialization research in Black and Latinx families has increased, it became clear that this association was not as robust as it initially seemed (Dunbar et al., 2017; Labella, 2018). Recent research suggests that in Black families, parents’ suppression of their children’s expressions of anger may be associated with better child adjustment, so long as parents also engage in racial socialization in a way that gives context to their suppression of certain emotions (Dunbar et al., 2022). Thus, in trying to understand what type of PER supports parenting behaviors that promote child, family, and community health, it is critical to keep in mind that designations of certain types of parenting as “optimal” or “nonoptimal” may vary substantially across contexts. In this chapter, whenever possible, we attempt to describe parenting in terms of behavioral descriptions (e.g. behaviors that encourage children to suppress emotional displays) as opposed to using terms that could be construed as value judgements (e.g. “unsupportive,” “unresponsive”); in cases where this is challenging (i.e. when reporting results of metaanalyses or review papers) we include footnotes.

3.2 Approaches to Studying PER and Parenting Behavior Although the affective organization of parenting framework (Dix, 1991) came about in the 1990s, scholarly interest in the intersection between emotion regulation (and dysregulation) and parenting dates back much farther. Although not directly measured, PER is implicated in the parent– child attachment relationship as well as in the large literature linking

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maternal depression (and other types of parental psychopathology) to parenting and child outcomes (Goodman et al., 2011; Lovejoy et al., 2000). As researchers homed in on emotion regulation (or dysregulation) as a potential mechanism explaining links among contextual factors, parental characteristics, parenting behavior, and child outcomes, they started including more direct measures of emotion regulation in their work. PER has been measured in a variety of different ways, including selfreport measures (rating scales, interview, experience sampling), observation, behavioral tasks, and physiological measures. Furthermore, within these methodologies, PER has been operationalized in multiple ways, including (1) emotional dysregulation, (2) use of ER strategies, and (3) changes in various streams of functioning (behavior, physiological activity, etc.). We describe each of these approaches next and call attention to how with each, as the field developed, greater attention has been called to studying parents’ ER in the specific contexts of parenting rather than as a broader human skill.

3.2.1 Difficulties in Emotion Regulation/Emotional Dysregulation To date, one of the most widely used approaches for studying PER is to measure dysregulation. A common approach is to examine parents’ selfreports on questionnaires, such as the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation scale (Gratz & Roemer, 2004). These scales solicit information on the general tendency to experience alexithymia and impaired capacity for goal-directed modulation of emotions. A recent meta-analysis showed that greater self-reported difficulties in ER are associated with lower levels of positive parenting and higher levels of negative parenting1 (Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2022). A key contribution of this body of work is that the impact of ER difficulties on parenting are not unique to parents who have a psychological disorder (as previously shown in the large body of work on parental psychopathology, e.g. Lovejoy et al., 2000). Rather, variations in emotion regulation difficulties contribute to 1

In this paper, the majority of articles used the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES; Fabes et al., 1990) in which “positive” parenting behavior can include up to three subscales measuring parents’ emotion-focused responses (e.g. helping the child feel better), their problem-focused responses (e.g. helping the child solve the problem that caused the distress), and expressive encouragement (e.g. actively encouraging children’s expression of negative emotions), and in which “negative” parenting behavior includes up to three subscales measuring parents’ minimization (e.g. discounting or devaluing the child’s negative emotions/problem), their punitive responses (e.g. using verbal or physical punishment to control the expression of negative emotion), and parents’ distress (e.g. becoming adversely aroused/distressed by child’s negative emotion).

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parenting in nonclinical, community samples, as well (e.g. Buckholdt et al., 2014; Caiozzo et al., 2018). Notably, the questionnaires used in these studies assess general tendencies for emotional dysregulation but not difficulties with ER during parenting specifically. It makes sense that parents who have broad difficulties regulating emotions in daily life would also have difficulties regulating emotions in their role as a parent, and the research largely bears this out (see Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2022). One thing that selfreport measures of general emotion dysregulation cannot do, though, is reveal aspects that may be unique to the parenting context. Given that emotions and ER are contextually dependent (Barrett & Campos, 1987; Cole et al., 2004; Gross, 2015), they should be studied in context whenever possible. A parent with their own childhood trauma may excel at regulating emotions in work or social contexts but may find they experience trauma reminders in the parenting context and are quick to express anger when their child has tantrums. One study examined both self-report of general difficulties in ER and observed maternal regulation during a conflict discussion task with their 8- to 11-year-old child. Interestingly, although both self-report of general dysregulation and observed dysregulation during parent–child interaction were associated with mothers’ self-report of their “unsupportive” emotion socialization behaviors (specifically with minimizing, punitive, and distress responses to children’s negative emotion as measured by the CCNES), they were not associated with one another (Morelen et al., 2016). Similarly, another study examined associations among parent self-report of global difficulties in ER and parenting behavior alongside performance on a computerized frustration tolerance task that was specific to the parenting context (Rodriguez et al., 2017). They found that although global difficulties in ER and performance on the frustration tolerance task were both associated with parenting behavior, the two measures of emotion regulation were not associated with one another. Although there are a multitude of reasons that selfreport and observed emotions or behavioral tasks might not be statistically associated, one possibility for these studies is that general measures of emotion dysregulation are capturing something different than parenting-specific ER; although they both have implications for parenting, they may not be one in the same in terms of their contributions.

3.2.2 Emotion Regulation Strategy Use Another more focused approach to studying PER that has grown out of our understanding parental dysregulation is to examine parents’ use of specific ER strategies. Studying ER strategies is of particular interest because specific strategies can be more directly translated into real-world

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applications than relatively diffuse concepts like difficulties regulating emotions. For example, a finding that cognitive reappraisal (i.e. modifying one’s appraisal of a situation; Gross, 2015) is an effective ER strategy for parents when supporting their child in a challenging, goal directed tasks (e.g. “My child is skipping items on his worksheet not because he is lazy, but because he’s having a really difficult time understanding these concepts and the worksheet reminds him of that”) could be incorporated into educational programming for parents or mental health professionals working with children. Consistent with the broader field of emotion regulation, the strategies most commonly studied in the PER literature include suppression (i.e. efforts to inhibit expression of emotion; Gross, 2015) and cognitive reappraisal (see Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2022). Findings of studies examining ER strategies in relation to parenting behaviors have been somewhat mixed. Overall, Zimmer-Gembeck and colleagues’ (2022) meta-analysis found that ER strategies considered adaptive in the wider literature had a small, but significant, association with positive parenting (r = 0.18, 95% CI 0.06 to 0.31) and negative parenting (r = 0.15, 95% CI 0.22 to 0.07) in the expected directions (see footnote 1 for parenting descriptions). Notably, when the authors reanalyzed only the studies that examined cognitive reappraisal specifically, the effect size of the relation with negative parenting was even smaller (albeit still statistically significant; r = 0.08, 95% CI 0.16 to 0.01). For suppression (which the meta-analysis considered to be part of difficulties in ER), the relation with negative parenting, the relation was smaller (although significant; r = 0.12, 95% CI 0.03 to 0.22), and the relation with positive parenting was nonsignificant (r = 0.03, 95% CI 0.12 to 0.05, Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2022). Thus, the findings linking parents’ cognitive reappraisal and suppression to their parenting behaviors are less robust than the general literature, which finds cognitive reappraisal and suppression to be consistently associated with a variety of affective, cognitive, physiological, and social outcomes (Gross, 2013). In parallel with the importance of considering emotion dysregulation in the context of parent–child interactions, one critical consideration in interpreting the parent ER strategy literature to date is that there is variation in terms of whether studies are measuring parents’ general use of the strategies, versus parenting-specific use of the strategies. The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003) is a widely used measure (including in the PER literature) of cognitive reappraisal and suppression that assesses one’s tendency to use these strategies in general daily life. It does not assess use of emotion regulation within the parenting context specifically, and presumably, when parents complete the questionnaire, they are answering questions based on their parenting experiences as well as experiences in other aspects of their life (e.g. work,

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with intimate partners, with adult family members, friends, etc.). Yet, parenting is a unique context in which one person (the parent) is responsible for the well-being of another person (Dix, 1991; Hajal & Paley, 2020; Teti & Cole, 2011), whose dependence on the parent for external regulation is greater the younger they are. Thus, it may be that strategies that are adaptive in the wider world of an adult’s life are not, in fact, adaptive when the parents’ goal is not only regulating their own emotion but also regulating their child’s. To address this issue, Lorber (2012) developed the Parent Emotion Regulation Inventory (now in its second edition, PERI-2; Lorber et al., 2017). The PERI was modeled on Gross’ Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) and asks the same cognitive reappraisal and suppression questions, but with the initial prompt “When my child misbehaves or does something that I don’t like . . . ,” thus tying the ER strategies specifically to parent–child interactions. Examining relations between the ERQ and the PERI across two samples of parents of toddlers suggests that global ER strategies and parenting-specific ER strategies cannot be conflated, as their bivariate association is moderate at best (Lorber, 2012; Lorber et al., 2017). Furthermore, the patterns of associations between global and parenting-specific strategies differed across the two samples. In one sample, global and parenting reappraisal were moderately and significantly correlated (r = 0.56) whereas global and parenting suppression were not (Lorber, 2012). In the other sample, however, the opposite set of relations was found (Lorber et al., 2017). Examinations of parenting behaviors with general versus parentingspecific ER strategies have also been mixed. Some studies have found greater PERI-measured reappraisal to be associated with lower overreactive discipline (Lorber, 2012), lower punitive and minimizing emotion socialization behaviors, and more supportive emotion socialization behaviors (Shenaar-Golan et al., 2017), whereas another found it to be unrelated to both self-reported and observed measures of overreactive and physical discipline (Lorber et al., 2017). Even more equivocal results have been found for PERI-measured suppression: whereas an early study showed that greater parenting suppression was associated with lower levels of over-reactive discipline (Lorber, 2012), another study showed it to be associated with higher levels of overreactive discipline (Lorber et al., 2017). A third study found no relation between suppression and parents’ emotion socialization behaviors (Shenaar-Golan et al., 2017). These findings suggest that we must think critically about applying models of individual, intrinsic ER to contexts that involve two people, one of whom is (at least partially) externally regulating for the other as well as regulating for themselves. Findings from the broader ER literature show that reappraisal is preferred in low intensity emotion situations

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whereas emotion disengagement/distraction is preferred in high intensity situations possibly because it blocks emotion at an earlier stage of processing (Sheppes et al., 2011, 2014). Given that parents are frequently regulating for two, the intensity may be high more often in parenting situations than in other contexts. Furthermore, if emotion regulation is inherently goal directed (Cole et al., 2004; Gross, 2013), the study of parenting emotion regulation must consider goals not only for parents’ regulation of themselves but also of their children (for intrinsic versus extrinsic ER in parenting, see also Chapter 6). For example, momentary suppression of negative emotion in certain parenting situations is an inherent component of behavior management strategies recommended by pediatricians and psychologists for both typically developing children and for those with behavioral challenges. Parents are taught to remain neutral when actively ignoring irritating child behaviors and to use a calm voice when putting a young child in a time-out. Yet, these are the very moments in which parents often experience strong emotions (Hajal et al., 2019). Thus, by instructing parents to remain calm and neutral, professionals are essentially asking parents to suppress the outward expression of their emotions as a part of the enactment of positive parenting strategies. Future research on PER strategy use should center the specific context of parenting in study conceptualization and interpretation of findings.

3.2.3 Psychophysiological Processes Related to Emotion Another approach to examining parents’ ER is to record their psychophysiology continuously while actually in the act of parenting. This approach addresses the issue of general/global ER versus parenting-specific ER, because many psychophysiological methods can be recorded relatively unobtrusively and so are suitable for moment-to-moment collection during parent–child interactions. Psychophysiological methods are also beneficial for studying emotions and emotion regulation in general because they address the bias-related issues that plague self-report, such as recall bias and social desirability bias. Furthermore, these methods can capture regulatory processes that are so quick or automatic that they occur outside of parents’ awareness (and so would be unavailable to self-report). Another benefit of using psychophysiological methods to assess PER is that it allows us to capture change in emotion-related processes. In their paper on methodological considerations in studying ER, Cole and colleagues (2004) emphasized that regulation cannot be inferred from the simple expression (or lack thereof ) of any particular emotion, but requires observation of a change in emotional state. Thus, studies of ER should include precise measurement of (1) an emotion occurring and (2) regulation of that emotion. If certain psychophysiological processes are

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viewed as related to emotion, or to different aspects of emotional reactivity and regulation, then measuring their moment-to-moment variation over time can address this methodological challenge. Some research groups have examined autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity during the act of parenting to understand parents’ emotion-related responses to parent-child interaction. The sympathetic branch of the ANS “turns on” in response to challenge and has been studied as an index of parents’ emotion-related reactivity or arousal. The ANS’s parasympathetic branch, on the other hand, is responsible for maintaining homeostasis; accordingly, shifts within the parasympathetic system have been viewed as indicators of regulatory processes. In research on PER, skin conductance level is the most commonly used measure of sympathetic nervous system activity; it is considered a physiological index of emotional reactivity or arousal. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA; a measure of heart rate variability based on respiration) is the most commonly used measure of parasympathetic nervous system activity; it is considered an index of physiological regulation (Leerkes & Augustine, 2019). Although the studies linking sympathetic activity (reactivity/arousal) directly to parenting behaviors have had mixed findings, those that measure shifts in parasympathetic activity as a measure of regulation – or better yet, studies that integrate both types of measures – appear to show more predictable associations with parenting behavior and child outcomes (Leerkes & Augustine, 2019). For example, Moore and colleagues (2009) showed that greater maternal physiological regulation during a challenging parent–infant interaction was associated with greater observed sensitivity2 when interacting with their babies. Going a step further, studies that assess sympathetic (reactivity/arousal) and parasympathetic (regulation) activity simultaneously show that the interaction between the two is most predictive of parenting behaviors, cognitions, and child outcomes like attachment disorganization and behavior problems (Leerkes et al., 2016, 2017). Specifically, greater maternal physiological reactivity/arousal was associated with maternal appraisals of infant behavior that supported sensitive parenting behaviors3 (both 2

3

Sensitivity was based on the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care coding systems and included five subscales: sensitivity/responsiveness, positive regard, stimulation of cognitive development, animation, and detachment/disengagement (reverse scored). First maternal behaviors during distress-eliciting tasks were categorized (negative, intrusive, mismatched affect, withdraw, distracted, persistent ineffective, monitor, task focused, calming, supportive, non-task focused engagement, routine care) and then coders rated the sensitivity of these behaviors on a 3-point scale (1 = insensitive, 2 = moderately sensitive; 3 = sensitive) based on the congruence of the behavior with the infant’s affect.

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simultaneously and 8 months later), but only when mothers also experienced greater physiological regulation (Leerkes et al., 2016). Although much of the work on parent physiological reactivity and regulation has not made full use of the millisecond-level data provided by common measures of parasympathetic activity (e.g. RSA), instead averaging across entire tasks or epochs of 30 seconds or more (GatzkeKopp et al., 2022; Zhang et al., 2022), some recent studies have used timeseries or dynamic systems analyses to capture moment-to-moment changes in children’s and parents’ behaviors alongside parents’ physiological responding. One study examined parents’ physiological regulation and behaviors in the 10 seconds following children’s aversive behaviors (e.g. whining) during an interaction task and found that mothers’ greater physiological regulation was followed by maternal behaviors that returned the dyad to a positive state (Gatzke-Kopp et al., 2022). Using a dynamic systems, time-series approach, another study showed that greater physiological regulation was associated with more responsive parenting behaviors (defined as attempts to acknowledge and address the child’s needs versus to dismiss or avoid attending to the child), which then led to a parasympathetic response indicating a return to baseline) as well as a decrease in children’s challenging behaviors (e.g. violations of task rules, negative emotion expressions; Zhang et al., 2022). In sum, measuring parental physiological processes during parent–child interaction facilitates gathering information about ongoing, parentingspecific emotion regulation in a scientifically rigorous way. Drawbacks include the inability of physiological measures to differentiate between specific emotions (e.g. is increased skin conductance associated with experiences of anger? Fear? Both?), which may have differential impacts on behavior (see further discussion of this next). Furthermore, although measurement of ongoing physiological processing may provide a methodologically rigorous way to measure emotion regulation as a modulation of activated emotions (per Cole et al., 2004), and to capture aspects of regulation that are outside of awareness, the only way to know whether (and which) voluntary ER strategies are used requires incorporating self-report.

3.3 Future Directions Over the last 30 years, the study of how parents modify their emotions and how this regulation shapes their behavior in parent–child interactions has flourished. Here we have highlighted how research first captured parents’ general emotion dysregulation, teaching us that impaired emotion regulation is not unique to the clinical domain, and newer avenues of work suggest a need to focus on emotion regulation specifically in the parenting context.

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Further study homed in on the specific strategies parents use to regulate their emotions and how it is critical to again consider these strategies in the parenting specific context. Lastly, we described advances in capturing parents’ physiological changes during parent–child interactions. We now outline important areas of growth for the field including (1) a specific emotion approach, (2) increased attention to positive emotion regulation, and (3) ecologically valid methodological approaches when possible.

3.3.1 Specific Emotion Approach One major gap in the PER literature to date is the lack of studies that attempt to disentangle the regulation of specific parental emotions (e.g. sadness, anger, fear, joy, pride). With very few exceptions, PER studies tend to focus on general difficulties in ER or ER strategies used to downregulate “negative emotions” or “distress” without disentangling the wide variety of negatively valenced emotions that distress may consist of. Furthermore, some studies do not explicitly measure parental distress but simply assume it based on a particular type of stressor (e.g. a child’s misbehavior), even though the same stressor may elicit different emotions in different people. The PER literature’s narrow focus on diffuse negative affect is at odds with research showing that parents’ discrete emotions are associated with different types of parenting behavior. For example, whereas parental positive affect is associated with sensitive/supportive parenting4 (Rueger et al., 2011), anger is associated with parenting that is characterized as harsh, hostile, or reactive (Ateah & Durrant, 2005; Jones et al., 1997; Leung & Slep, 2006; Rodriguez & Green, 1997), anxiety and worry with controlling over-protectiveness and restrictiveness (Dix et al., 2004; Kaitz & Maytal, 2005), and sadness with behavior that is noncontrolling and detached from children’s goals and needs (Dix et al., 2004). Thus, if parents engage in emotion regulation at least partly to modulate the impact of their emotions on their parenting behaviors, different emotions may be regulated differently. For example, one study used hypothetical vignettes to examine complex patterns between parents’ emotional suppression and parenting style, finding that associations differed based on the specific emotion expressed by the child and felt by the parents (Martini et al., 2004). Lower levels of selfreported authoritarian parenting were associated with (1) mothers’ suppression of their own anger in response to their child’s sadness and fear – but not in response to child anger and (2) mothers’ suppression of their own 4

Supportive-positive and harsh-negative parenting types were defined based on Dix (1991) and Lovejoy et al. (1999). The first type included behaviors that were “supportive, warm, and engaged” whereas the second type included behaviors that were “hostile, coercive, and inappropriately controlling.”

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sadness/anxiety in response to their child’s fear – but not in response to child anger or sadness (Martini et al., 2004). As noted by the authors, goals for parenting that are associated with authoritarian beliefs (e.g. having the parent appear dominant in the interaction, which could lead to a parent suppressing nonhostile emotions like sadness and anxiety but expressing hostile emotions like anger in the context of a child’s anger), may explain these results. Importantly, this study showed that parents regulate their own anger, sadness, and anxiety differently depending on the context and that they may do so purposely in an effort to meet specific parenting goals associated with their parenting beliefs. It is striking that so few PER studies have examined discrete emotions; however, this may be because it would be adding yet another layer into an already complex set of processes. Furthermore, because parenting typically involves managing multiple demands, it may lead to a predominance of emotion blends (the experience of more than one emotion at a time). For example, in the grocery store story, the mother had to manage the child’s behavior, the social norms at the grocery store, the impending traffic on the way home, and long-term goals for her child’s development. This led to a blend of anger, anxiety, embarrassment, relief, and pride, each of which was regulated in a different direction (down or up) and to a different extent (e.g. all three negatively valenced emotions were downregulated but the most effort went to regulating anger because it was the most predominant emotion experienced). Furthermore, in considering specific parent emotions, we must consider the orientation of the parent emotion that is to be regulated. Parental emotions may be child oriented (i.e. experienced on behalf of the child, such as being angry at oneself for not attending to the child’s needs) or they may be self/parent oriented (e.g. on behalf of the parent, such as being angry at the child for fussing; Dix et al., 2004; Leerkes & Augustine, 2019; Leerkes et al., 2016). In the grocery store example, the mother experienced both types of anger, which predisposed her toward different types of parenting behaviors: anger at her daughter led to an urge to yell at her daughter, whereas anger at herself led her to consider giving in to her daughter’s demands. In this case, both of these emotions were downregulated, but specific regulatory processes may have differed. In sum, future work on PER should consider specific parental emotions as opposed to regulation of general distress/nondistress, as this approach would increase our understanding of when different strategies may be effective and toward which goals.

3.3.2 Increased Attention to the Regulation of Positive Emotions There remains an assumption that emotion regulation refers to the modulation of negative emotions. Though positive emotions are often

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referenced, there has been significantly less empirical work studying their role in parent–child interactions, and a dearth of research remains on how parents regulate their own positive emotions while spending time with family (Lindsey, 2020; Paley & Hajal, 2022). Historically, a bias toward negative emotions existed in both basic science and clinical research with a broader interest in providing those suffering most with relief (Carl et al., 2013; Vazquez, 2017). This bias has extended to the parenting literature where studying parents’ difficulty regulating emotions such as anger, frustration, and fear has prevailed over our interest in the strategies needed for parents to express joy, contentment, or gratitude. However, summoning the feelings of pride to offer praise reinforcing the child’s leaving the Lucky Charms behind likely requires upregulation of positive emotions. Over the last decade, as recognition of the importance of studying positive emotion regulation has grown, work to integrate it into the existing emotion regulation framework has strengthened our understanding of it and a call to study it has loudened (Bryant et al., 2011; Carl et al., 2013; Dunn, 2017; Lindsey, 2020; Paley & Hajal, 2022; Quoidbach et al., 2015). Although research on the regulation of positive emotions is growing, very little of this research has been conducted with parents, and even fewer examined links between parents’ positive ER and parenting behavior. Given the importance of this emerging area of research, we briefly describe the prevailing conceptualizations of positive ER in the field, highlighting studies that have focused on the family context, and suggesting avenues for future research on parental regulation of positive emotions. Savoring is the strategy most often named in upregulating positive emotions (e.g. Bryant, 1989, 2021; Quoidbach et al., 2010) and subsumes more specific terms such as maximizing (Gentzler et al., 2010), amplification (e.g. Le & Impett, 2016), and capitalization (e.g. Peters et al., 2018). Savoring can differ based on the emotion upregulated: reflecting on one’s good feelings for happiness, reflecting on one’s good qualities for pride, counting one’s blessings for gratitude, marveling for awe (e.g. Bryant, 2003; Gentzler et al., 2016; Giuliani et al., 2008; Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2006). Dampening or minimizing are the terms used most frequently to refer to the downregulation of positive emotions (Gentzler et al., 2016; Quoidbach et al., 2010). Within the study of families, more attention has been called to children’s regulation of positive emotions and the parenting behaviors that socialize it than attention to how parents modulate their own positive emotions. For example, in an observational study of family daily life, children’s expressions of positive emotions were sustained by parents’ own positive emotion expression, physical touch, and further engagement (Bai et al., 2016). In the same sample, mothers who expressed more

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compassion, over and above other positive emotions, had children who expressed more positive emotion overall (McNeil & Repetti, 2021). In an observed interaction task, mothers active-constructive responses to adolescents‘ positive affect in a shared positive planning event uniquely predicted youths’ reported use of positive emotion regulation strategies (Fredrick et al., 2019). Both questionnaire and observational studies support the associations between parental dampening of youth positive affect, youth engagement in dampening strategies, and youth depressive symptoms (Nelis et al., 2019; Raval et al., 2019; Yap et al., 2008). For example, a study focused on clinically depressed adolescents compared with healthy controls found that both mothers and fathers of adolescents with depression were less likely to accept youths’ positive affect and fathers were less likely to respond to their youths’ positive affect with strategies that were likely to maintain or enhance it (Katz et al., 2014). Though parental responses to children’s positive affect appears to shape children’s ability to appropriately maintain positive emotions and in turn impacts child psychopathology, less is known about parents’ engagement or lack thereof in their own positive emotion regulation. Of the few studies that explicitly examine parents’ regulation, there is some evidence that parents’ regulation of positive emotions is associated with aspects of their parenting behaviors, including emotion socialization behaviors. In a multimethod study of mothers and school-age children (Moran et al., 2019), mothers’ self-reported savoring of their own hypothetical positive events was positively associated with self-report and child report of parents’ coaching of savoring, and self-reported encouraging of child’s positive affect. Similarly, mothers’ self-reported dampening of their own hypothetical positive events was positively associated with their self-reported coaching of dampening in their child, and self-reported discouraging of child’s positive affect. In a related study with the same sample of mother–child dyads, mothers who reported more intense positive affect in response to their own hypothetical events were observed using more positive affect-related words in a discussion task with their child (Morrow et al., 2021). Experimental studies designed to test the effectiveness of interventions targeting positive emotion regulation can also provide information about associations between PER and parenting behavior. A recent randomized controlled trial tested the impact of a parental savoring intervention on parenting behavior in families with young children. Furthermore, the study design allowed for comparing the impact of general positive ER to parenting-specific positive ER, as it tested the impact of training parents to savor aspects of closeness in the parent-child relationship (termed “relational savoring”; Borelli et al., 2020). In comparison to participants randomized to a general positive emotion savoring

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condition, parents randomized to the relational savoring condition showed greater pre- to postintervention increases in observed sensitivity to their toddlers’ cues during a teaching task (Borelli et al., 2022). These findings support the notion that parents’ regulation of positive emotions has an impact on their parenting behavior but only when regulation of positive emotions specific to the parenting context is considered. Thus, regulation of positive emotions is critical to consider in the study of PER, and there are many avenues within this area to explore. For example, ability to effectively regulate positive emotions is likely key to being able to perform the parenting behavior strategies recommended in parenting interventions designed to treat child pathology and increase the quality of the parent-child relationship. For example, the PRIDE skills in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT; Eyberg & Funderburk, 2011) includes both “praise” and “enjoy,” which are expressions of pride and joy. Studies are needed to examine the role parental regulation of positive emotions plays in parents’ ability to engage in these skills and other positive parenting behaviors. There is also some evidence that upregulation of positive emotion for parents may have a negative impact on parenting behavior. In a diary study, parents who were assigned to reflect on a time when they amplified their positive emotion in an interaction with their child reported less responsiveness to their child’s needs (Le & Impett, 2016). An important caveat to highlight in the study of positive emotion regulation in parents is that amplification of positive emotions and minimizing of negative emotions may not always be adaptive. More studies are necessary to understand the effort and costs associated with parents’ modulation of positive feelings. Finally, examination of positive emotions from a specific emotions approach – differentiating among emotions such as joy, pride, compassion and gratitude – would strengthen our understanding of the interpersonal emotion dynamics happening within families (Repetti & McNeil, 2018).

3.3.3 Ecologically Valid Assessment Studies cited throughout this chapter have used self-report questionnaires, multiple informants, observation of laboratory interactions and physiological measures to teach us about how PER and parenting behavior are interrelated; we have described many of the strengths and weaknesses of these methodologies. One area of growth for the field, especially as it increases its testing of emotion regulation specifically in the context of parenting, is to capitalize on technological advances that allow for increased access to life as it is lived within the family. Two key methodologies that would help researchers maximize the ecological validity of

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their findings and decrease the gap between what is captured and the phenomena of interest are experience sampling method (Hektner et al., 2007) or related repeated sampling techniques and naturalistic observations of family life. Experience sampling methods have benefits that include reducing memory biases and helping test the phenomena in its natural environment, such as in the family home (Reis, 2012). They also allow for new questions to be asked such as the variability of emotion regulation strategies used in daily life (Blanke et al., 2020). In one study of emotion regulation in mothers of toddlers, mothers were phoned four times a day for 6 days (Hajal et al., 2019). These brief interviews allowed for the assessment of mothers’ in-the-moment emotions, motivations, and behaviors and enabled the disentangling of associations between these three simultaneously occurring phenomena. When the goal is to capture behavior, such as how parents interact with their children, naturalistic observation of families in the home and community settings should be considered. As compared with questionnaire data, parent–child interaction tasks in the laboratory allow for direct observation of parenting behavior; they reduce bias with coding from impartial raters; and the structure of the situation can help isolate a variable of interest (Cole et al., 2004). However, they may suffer from being conducted in an unfamiliar setting and from occurring over a limited time in which a parent might display what they are capable of rather than how they regularly act (Repetti et al., 2013). One improvement may be moving these structured tasks into the home and capturing them over telehealth where the natural chaos of the home environment (distracting other toys, a sibling needing help) may pervade and a more accurate portrayal of daily parenting behavior may be captured. A further improvement may be to capture daily life as it is lived (e.g. Campos et al., 2013; Teti et al., 2010) in the home with the use of new, uninvasive recording tools, such as smarthome technology (Nelson & Allen, 2018). A study conducted by the Center on the Everyday Lives of Families recorded families across 4 days in their homes, cars, and communities as they went about their daily life (Ochs & Kremer-Sadlik, 2013). This type of naturalistic data allows for the investigations of frequency of behavior that is hard to capture accurately with other methods. For example, on average mothers in the family setting expressed gratitude over four times an hour, fathers expressed pride almost three times an hour and children expressed amusement around twice an hour (McNeil & Repetti, 2021). Recording families in their daily lives allows us to capture, not how parents perceive their parenting style or how they act for short bursts in unfamiliar settings, but parenting behaviors as they naturally occur and if they naturally occur. .

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3.4 Conclusion In sum, 30 years of rigorous scientific investigation provides support for Dix’s (1991) theory of parenting as an “affectively organized” process and concurs that parents’ regulation of emotion is key to their engaging in parenting behaviors aligned with their goals. As this robust body of work continues to grow, avenues for future research include increased attention to parents’ ER as measured in parenting specific contexts; multimethod approaches that integrate self-report, physiology, and naturalistic observation; and a shift away from a broad conceptualization of negative emotions or affect to the full spectrum of specific emotions (e.g. sadness, anger, fear, contentment, excitement, pride, gratitude, awe).

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CHAPTER 4

Parental Emotion Regulation: The Role of Parents’ Own Childhood Maltreatment Anat Talmon

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Viktor Frankl

Emotion regulation processes are prone to disruption during periods of transition. Such processes may occur during negative events, as well as through transitions considered common and natural or during periods perceived as positive. Those undergoing transitional periods experience many emotions that are often conflicting and complex (Stern & Bruschweiler-Stern, 1998), thus requiring specific tools. The transition into parenthood is often perceived as a positive experience involving aspects of growth and development (Mercer, 2004). Nevertheless, it is also a time of adjustment during which emotion regulation plays a particularly strong role due to the emotionally demanding nature of parenthood. Adjustment and adaptation to parenthood are likely challenging for all individuals. However, in this chapter, I focus on survivors of childhood maltreatment, who may find this period especially challenging (e.g. DiLillo, 2001).

4.1 Childhood Maltreatment: A Dark Cloud during the Transition into Parenthood According to the World Health Organization, child maltreatment (CM) is abuse and neglect of individuals under 18 years of age. It includes all forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, or commercial or other exploitations that result in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development, or

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dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust, or power (World Health Organization, 2014). CM is highly prevalent and globally widespread among both clinical and nonclinical populations. A metaanalysis of more than two hundred studies among nonclinical populations identified that approximately 23% of the participants reported childhood physical abuse, 13% reported childhood sexual abuse, 36% reported emotional abuse, 16% reported physical neglect, and 18% reported emotional neglect (Stoltenborgh et al., 2015). The long-lasting nature of the negative psychological effects of CM has been previously established by studies that have examined the impacts of CM in adulthood. Among these effects are a higher risk for depression (Talmon et al., 2019), anxiety disorders (Talmon et al., 2020), eating disorders (Talmon & Tsur, 2021; Talmon & Widom, 2021), self-harm behaviors (Talmon & Ginzburg, 2018b), and other manifestations of distress (Talmon & Ginzburg, 2017, 2018a, 2018b, 2019b; Talmon et al., 2022). Further studies have also suggested that those who were maltreated as children are at significant risk for several adverse mental health outcomes during adulthood, including depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse (Famularo et al., 1992; Livingston et al., 1993; McLeer et al., 1998). Individuals exposed to CM are often at the receiving end of continuous negative messages that may stimulate their sense of shame (Talmon & Ginzburg, 2017), which can endure many years after the traumatic experience(s) have ended. These messages may have been delivered explicitly or implicitly and possibly relied on the child’s perception of having been involved in behaviors considered to be deviant, disgraceful, or dishonorable (Finkelhor & Browne, 1985; Rahm et al., 2006; Wilson et al., 2006). Consequently, abusive experiences may affect children’s self-perceptions, and they may begin to perceive themselves as evil, worthless, or shameful (Finkelhor, 1987; JanoffBulman, 2010). For example, O’Mahen et al. (2014) concluded that CM is an established distal risk factor that triggers the development of proximal maladaptive cognitive and behavioral styles, increasing the risk for individual vulnerability to psychological dysfunction. Subsequently, when child survivors of CM transition into adolescence and adulthood, in particular during major life changes, such as the transition to parenthood, some of their previous core beliefs about themselves might be triggered and reactivated.

4.2 Parenting against the Backdrop of Childhood Maltreatment Becoming a parent is a very common life transition. In general, this transition can elicit emotions ranging from positive, such as joy, love,

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contentment, pride, and relief, to negative, such as anger, frustration, disappointment, worry, fear, and guilt (Bradley et al., 2013). These feelings may be oriented toward oneself vis-à-vis the child (e.g. being angry at oneself for not sufficiently attending to the child’s needs) or directed toward the child (e.g. being angry at the child for fussing) (Dix et al., 2004; Leerkes et al., 2016). Therefore, the transition into parenthood may constitute the basis for various manifestations of growth and well-being, but at the same time for various manifestations of distress. Surprisingly, research on the transition into parenthood against the backdrop of CM is limited, and the existing studies have focused on aspects other than these parents’ adjustment and well-being. Instead, the topic has been explored from the children’s perspective, mainly regarding how the parents’ history of maltreatment may affect their children. This phenomenon has also been examined in relation to the obstetric outcomes of women with a history of abuse and the implications of CM history for the newborn and their development (e.g. Buss et al., 2017). Other researchers have adopted a similar perspective, aiming to understand the cycle of abuse and the mechanism that “turns” a maltreated child into an abusive parent (e.g. Bly, 1988; Dixon et al., 2005). Additionally, some studies have focused on CM and its impact on parental decision-making skills. In these studies, it was found that maltreated mothers were often young (e.g. Anda et al., 2002; Becker-Lausen & Rickel, 1995) and demonstrated poorer parenting skills and abilities than mothers who were not maltreated as children (e.g. DiLillo & Damashek, 2003). The absence of studies that focus on the experiences of parents with a history of CM is apparent. Based on the existing studies, however, adults with a history of CM appear to have specific challenges in transitioning into parenthood. Encouragingly, research over the past few years has increasingly begun to move in a different direction that considers the previously abused parent as the focal point of investigation. Recent findings from a systematic review have suggested that, indeed, CM is a risk factor for additional challenges when transitioning into parenthood (Christie et al., 2017). Namely, during the transition into parenthood, those with a history of CM may experience a range of mental health problems, adverse physical effects, and more negative views of their child (or children), compared to parents without a history of CM. In some cases, those with a history of CM have also reported negative experiences regarding their identity as a parent, manifested by high levels of selfcriticism and low levels of self-esteem. In addition, recent studies have pointed to the implications of CM for a plethora of distress arenas, including an increased sense of fear of giving birth among mothers-tobe (Talmon & Ginzburg, 2019a), a lower sense of maternal efficacy, and a heightened risk for developing postpartum depression (Greene et al.,

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2020; Schuetze & Eiden, 2005; Talmon et al., 2019). One potential explanation for the challenges faced by parents with a history of CM is that exposure to CM often impairs one’s emotion regulation (ER), which is a crucial tool for resilience prior and during parenthood.

4.3 Childhood Maltreatment and Its Impact on the Development of Emotion Regulation Emotion regulation is defined as “how we try to influence which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we experience and express these emotions” (Gross, 2008, p. 497). Eisenberg et al. (2010) refer to childhood as a critical period for the development of ER skills and regulatory processes through which individuals modulate their emotions, both consciously and unconsciously (Bargh & Williams, 2007; Rottenberg & Gross, 2003), to effectively respond to environmental demands (Gross & Muñoz, 1995). The severe psychological implications of CM may reflect damage to a significant internal mechanism of ER (Dvir et al., 2014). Indeed, a clear link has been established between CM and impaired ER. Specifically, children exposed to CM might have their development or effective behaviors undermined. Therefore, they could be more susceptible to adopting ineffective ER strategies that, subsequently, have a negative impact on emotional functioning (Briere & Jordan, 2009; Shields & Cicchetti, 2001; Spasojević & Alloy, 2002). Previous studies in which this link was examined revealed that CM exposure was commonly correlated with maladaptive ER strategies, such as behavioral avoidance, rumination, and brooding (O’Mahen et al., 2014). Behavioral avoidance, which includes various behavioral attempts to reduce environmental events that are emotionally punishing (Aldao et al., 2009), has been identified as a likely occurrence in environments with low positive reinforcement and high negative reinforcement and punishment (Manos et al., 2010). Behavioral avoidance tends to take place in neglectful and abusive environments where positive emotions are not reinforced, leading children to develop negative coping mechanisms to survive their environment. Given that the literature has shown an association between CM and behavioral avoidance, it can be argued that such avoidant characteristics are endemic to abusive and neglectful environments. As such, children experiencing CM end up engaging in withdrawal behaviors, as well as using avoidance as a mechanism to reduce emotional and physiological arousal. Although these connections have not been examined directly, it seems plausible that this type of ER is highly associated with exposure to a history of abuse and/or neglect. Childhood emotional abuse and neglect, as well as sexual abuse, have also been linked with rumination, which refers to an individual’s

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repetitive focus on the causes and consequences of experiences and emotions (Crane et al., 2007; Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008; Spasojević & Alloy, 2002). Explicitly, rumination is an ER strategy potentially developed among those exposed to CM as a result of their experiences. Thus, the inconsistency, manipulation, and uncertainty associated with emotional and sexual abuse might shed light on the development of the tendency to ruminate (Conway et al., 2004; Spasojević & Alloy, 2002). As previously mentioned, another common negative ER strategy is brooding. Treynor et al. (2003) identified brooding (i.e. the maladaptive component of rumination, characterized by feeling worthless in consideration of an unattained standard) as being associated with a history of CM. In addition to these findings, strong links have been reported between emotional abuse and concurrent depressive symptoms, with brooding acting as a mediator in this relationship (Raes & Hermans, 2008). It is important to view CM as a springboard for ER strategies, whether positive or negative. Although using negative ER coping strategies may be a matter of survival for children during the maltreatment (e.g. a child does whatever they can to avoid meeting their father in the house to avoid being beaten), as adults, they may bring these strategies into parenthood, when ideally they should no longer need them. Perpetuating the use of these negative strategies can be potentially damaging for themselves and their loved ones, namely the child who is now involved. Given the available literature on the linkage between CM and dysregulated ER, it is not surprising that some individuals with a history of CM face challenges with ER processes during the transition into parenthood as well as during parenthood. This is particularly apparent when observing the transition into parenthood through the lens of exposure to childhood abuse and neglect and the psychological weight of their previous trauma (Hajal & Paley, 2020).

4.4 Emotion Regulation among Parents Who Have Experienced Childhood Maltreatment Parenting is a particularly unique and challenging milieu during which a person is responsible for and directly influences the emotional well-being of another, often requiring sophisticated ER abilities. Indeed, children are hugely impactful on their parents’ emotional lives (Rutherford et al., 2015) and evoke a broad range of emotions in both mothers and fathers (Hajal & Paley, 2020), which call for the parents’ use of ER. This is true in both direct parent–child interactions, such as times of achievement or tantrums, and indirect parent-related tasks, such as thinking about one’s children when they are not present or preparing and developing activities

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for them. Such a connection and the related responsibilities may be daunting against the background of CM as the parents may not have experienced healthy emotional responses and attachment patterns themselves in their childhood. The examination of attachment patterns of parents with a CM history forged with their caregivers in childhood is important in understanding the potential repetitive cycle of such behaviors. Parents with a history of CM often have a heightened risk of attachment difficulties with their children (Khan, 2017). For example, it was found that some mothers were unable to provide a secure emotional connection for their young children as a result of their experiences of maltreatment (Main & Solomon, 1990; Pajulo et al., 2012). It has also been suggested that mothers who experienced CM and had insecure attachment patterns with their caregivers were more likely to have difficulties bonding with others in general and, specifically, to have more disruptions in their attachments to their children (Cicchetti & Barnett, 1991). Given that the quality of the parent–child attachment is critical for the child’s ability to build healthy and adaptive relationships with other individuals over time (Kerns & Barth, 1995), CM may have long-term negative effects on parental regulatory processes. For example, mothers’ experience of rejection by their caregivers was found to be related to their rejection of their own children (Fonagy et al., 1991). Furthermore, in some cases, this behavior has been linked to their children’s avoidant behavior. Another link that connects CM history and patterns of insecure and anxious mother–child attachment is maternal psychopathology, particularly depression, which is an influencing factor in ER processes (Brown et al., 1999; Hipwell et al., 2000; Seng et al., 2013). It has been reported that women who experienced CM were three times more likely to develop depression than women who had not experienced CM (Brown et al., 1999). Maternal depression, in turn, has a negative effect on the parenting of young children (Goodman, 2007) as well as mother–child attachment (Hipwell et al., 2000; Martins & Gaffan, 2000). It should be noted that a limitation of this finding relates to the difficulty in determining whether parenting performances are a direct reflection of the parents’ own childhood experiences or evidence of their attempts to navigate between their own struggles to overcome the impact of the abuse and the demands of parenting. In addition to insecure attachment and depression being individually assessed, researchers have also found significant associations between mothers’ depression and insecure and anxious mother–child attachment (Hipwell et al., 2000; Muzik et al., 2012). According to Perry (2001), mother–child bonding is part of the process through which attachment is formed. Given that researchers have found significant associations between mothers’ depression and problematic mother–child

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bonding, it could be that depression is a significant predictor of developing an insecure attachment between mother and child. Another aspect of parenting that can be impacted considerably by the combined factors of a history of CM, anxious attachment, and depressive symptoms is parental self-efficacy (PSE). PSE is “the beliefs a parent holds of their capabilities to organize and execute the tasks related to parenting a child” (Montigny & Lacharité, 2005, p. 387). Indeed, major depression has been found to mediate the relation between attachment insecurity (i.e. anxious and avoidant attachment) and PSE. This could be because severe depression leads to lack of interest and, therefore, an inability to carry out daily functions for oneself and one’s child. Attachment anxiety and avoidance have also been found to predict low PSE through the mediating pathway of depression (Kohlhoff & Barnett, 2013). Such findings are consistent with those from a previous study (Caldwell et al., 2010) in which an association was found between early maladaptive parenting experiences and PSE. Moreover, these findings also relate to the significant association between maternal depression and attachment insecurity in the development of PSE. These findings align with prior research suggesting that maternal attachment vulnerability can have a prominent role in predisposing women to early PSE difficulties, particularly in the presence of maternal depression. Dix et al. (2004) explored the dynamics of families in which a depressed parent was present. They concluded that depressed mothers tended to be disengaged during conflicts with their child, and if the child’s behavior became highly aversive, the mothers displayed a high degree of distress. These findings suggest that parents with depressive symptoms exhibit both disengaged and overactive parenting behaviors that do not lead to healthy parent–child dynamics. Aside from the apparent influence of depression in various contexts of ER during parenting, other psychopathological conditions like borderline personality disorder (BPD) may also affect these processes. BPD is fundamentally a developmental disorder, characterized by disturbances in ER processes (Herman & van der Kolk, 1987), with a well-established etiology of childhood abuse history and insecure attachment during childhood (Prados et al., 2015). The characteristics of those diagnosed with BPD are similar to those diagnosed with complex posttraumatic stress disorder. Specifically, the main manifestation is severe disturbances in affect (emotion) and impulse control, with impairments in interpersonal relationships and sense of self, which are all crucial elements for healthy functioning as a parent. The connection between parenting outcomes (e.g. parenting stress, feelings of competence, and discipline strategies) stemming from depression and individual types of CM, such as a history of childhood sexual

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abuse (CSA), has also been examined in various studies. Schuetze and Eiden (2005) reported that women with a history of CSA who experienced depression and/or partner violence as adults were at the greatest risk for adverse parenting outcomes, including negative maternal attitudes and disciplinary strategies. Moreover, it was found that CSA was associated with increased maternal depression and increased partner violence. CSA, maternal depression, and current partner violence were also linked with more negative parental perceptions and punitive discipline. Therefore, the experience of CM – in this case, specifically CSA – is significantly linked with depression and partner violence, which further predicts negative parenting outcomes. However, maternal depression and domestic violence not only affect the involved adults and their parental attitudes but also hold additional risks for negative implications in the development of the children present (Kitzmann et al., 2003; Petterson & Albers, 2001). It should be noted that the literature has primarily focused on mothers’ experiences of this transition rather than fathers’, yet a study that focused on the impact of CM on fathers found that fathers with maltreatment histories were also at risk of developing psychopathological symptoms, such as anxious and depressive feelings, during the transition into parenthood (Skjothaug et al., 2014).

4.5 Childhood Maltreatment, Emotion Regulation, and Parenting: Implications for the Child The effects of CM do not end with the parents and often carry over to their children, as CM is known to have intergenerational effects. According to Chamberlain et al. (2019), the perinatal period is critical for parents with a history of childhood maltreatment trauma. Parents may experience a “triggering” of trauma responses during perinatal care or when caring for their distressed infant. The long-lasting relational effects of their tumultuous past may then impede the parents’ capacity to nurture their children, leading to intergenerational cycles of trauma. Moreover, according to Haapasalo and Aaltonen (1999), one factor implicated in the etiology of CM is the parents’ own childhood experiences of abuse. It is estimated that a maternal history of abuse accounts for up to one third of the variance predicting CM. Parents who have experienced some form of abuse during their lifetime are more likely to engage in negative responses and abusive behavior toward their children than parents who have not experienced abuse (Dixon et al., 2005). Such responses and behaviors could be considered an instance of failed ER. However, clear evidence regarding the mechanisms involved in the intergenerational transmission of CM is still lacking

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(Ertem et al., 2000). Nevertheless, it is known that mothers who were abused have a lower threshold for tolerating their children’s misbehavior than mothers without such a history. This lower threshold can manifest in the use of harsh discipline (Pears & Capaldi, 2001). Furthermore, this reactive propensity can create a situation in which even minor infractions are likely to set off a series of negative mother–child interactions. By way of explanation, it may be that parents who failed to discipline their children experience higher stress and frustration levels in dealing with their children than those with better discipline skills. When this stress is combined with a history of physical abuse, the outcome is more likely to result in the transmission of abuse from one generation to the next (Pears & Capaldi, 2001). Parental CM history has also been known to increase the risk for nonabusive yet poor caregiving. In this case, children are not provided with adequate opportunities to observe healthy parenting behaviors. In addition, a mother’s CM history has been found to compromise her ER abilities, impairing her capacity to respond sensitively to her child’s needs (DiLillo & Damashek, 2003). Such responses include hostility, intrusiveness, inconsistency, decreased involvement, and rejection (e.g. Bailey et al., 2012). Another outcome of a history of CM for parents is increased mental health issues, social isolation, inappropriate developmental expectations, and aggressive response biases in adulthood, all of which increase the risk of engaging in abusive parenting behaviors (e.g. Berlin et al., 2011). Bandura’s (1973) paradigm of social learning through the lens of social cognitive theory may also be relevant regarding the intergenerational effects of CM. In accordance with this model, abusive and neglectful parenting are learned behaviors, passed on from parent to child. Namely, abused children perceive negative behaviors that they have learnt from their early life experiences, such as through harsh parenting, as successful methods for getting one’s needs met (i.e. obedience and the release of frustration). Such behavior may later translate into how they react to current and future negative interactions, particularly in regard to negative interactions between themselves and their own children (Bert et al., 2009). There have been attempts in several theoretical models to explain these intergenerational effects, especially regarding ER, as it could be a transdiagnostic factor, albeit an important one. Such effects could explain (1) the importance of parental ER for children’s emotional development and (2) the increased risk for psychiatric disorders among individuals with a history of CM (Ferrari, 2002; Greene et al., 2020). Hajal and Paley (2020), building on a previously established theoretical model, pointed to parental behaviors as the motivating force behind children’s emotional

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socialization. For parents to be successful emotional socialization agents for their child, they must be able to express their own emotions and react to their child’s emotions (Bariola et al., 2011), as many children look to their parents for guidance on how to cope with uncomfortable social situations (Morris et al., 2007). Other models in the literature have addressed parenting styles and the emotional climate of the family as driving forces behind children’s social development. These ideas have been further supported by recent findings showing that higher levels of maltreatment and difficulties with ER are associated with an increased likelihood of behaving in an unsupportive way, such as responding to a child’s distress in a neglectful, aggressive or disciplinary manner, which increases the child’s use of emotional inhibition (Cabecinha-Alati et al., 2022). Although more research is required, an association has been found between parents’ mentalization of their child’s behaviors (e.g. believing that their child was intentionally annoying or bothering them) and their child’s functioning (Wang, 2021). In yet another study, the biological impact on trauma-exposed children was examined and it was found that a decrease in parental avolition (goaldirected behavior) negatively affected the child’s heart rate variability reactivity (a physiological measure of children’s self-regulation; Osborne et al., 2022). These findings suggest that children are influenced not only by direct parenting behaviors (unsupportive responses) but also by indirect parenting behaviors (parental avolition). Reinserting the CM concept into the formula captures a possible underlying cause of such behaviors. Regardless of whether it is abuse or neglect perpetrated on the child, these behaviors will shape the child’s sense of self and eventually be echoed in the (now adult) child’s parental ER. This can manifest not only in how these parents relate to their children but also in the ways they relate to themselves during this period.

4.6 “Ghosts in the Nursery”: From Maltreated Child to Parent In summary, extensive research has been conducted on the developmental psychopathology theory, which offers a framework for considering parental CM as a predictor for increased mental health risks for these parents’ children. It has been suggested that exposure to negative environmental influences (i.e. CM) can lead to (1) permanent disruptions in stress regulation abilities via the functioning of physiological systems involved in stress reactivity (e.g. hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, autonomic nervous system); (2) changes in the structure and functioning of brain areas involved in mental health (e.g. amygdala, prefrontal

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cortex); (3) impaired cognition and emotional and behavioral regulation abilities; and (4) diminished capacity to develop healthy relationships with peers and adults (e.g. Cloitre et al., 2009; Maughan & Cicchetti, 2002). These effects have been found to be particularly robust when CM exposure occurs in early life (e.g. Enlow et al., 2009), as demonstrated in Figure 4.1. The relation between CM and parenting is complex and involves, as previously mentioned, difficulties in attachment styles, bonding, and the propensity toward using harsher discipline. In addition, there is the possibility of having more negative parent–child interactions and greater negative effects on children’s ER processes than for parents without a history of CM. Exposure to the aforementioned caregiving patterns has been found to increase mental health risks across childhood (Sroufe, 2005). Connections have also been made between parental CM and ER as mediators contributing to a risk for psychiatric disorders in children. As one study concluded, children of maltreated mothers were at an increased risk of emotional and behavioral problems by age 7 (Bosquet Enlow et al., 2018). Moreover, it has been found that maltreated mothers experience increased stress and diminished social support, potentially negatively influencing the caregiving context and the relationship with their child. This combination of physiological and neurocognitive vulnerabilities, the diminished ability to self-regulate, continued exposure to maltreatment and other stressors, and limited access to mitigating social support, leave children of maltreated parents vulnerable to experiencing a trajectory of poor mental health (Bosquet Enlow et al., 2018). The connections between parents’ CM, ER, the outcomes for children’s mental health and the children’s own ER processes are significant and have been thoroughly examined in the literature. However, parents’ demographics as possible factors in abuse exposure, parenting, and ER have yet to be considered. This lacuna in the literature presents a considerable limitation, as parents’ race, gender, culture, and socioeconomic situation have been known to be linked to CM (e.g. Wertheimer et al., 2008). Therefore, we – namely, society, policymakers, parents, clinicians, and researchers, collectively – must take such factors into account in terms of prevention and intervention. Specifically, we must consider ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, and culture regarding parenting disciplinary practices as well as parental and child ER processes in circumstances where the parents have a history of CM. 1w?>Every nursery is inhabited by either the ghosts (Fraiberg et al., 1975) or the angels (Lieberman et al., 2005) of the parents’ childhood, as echoes of the parents’ own childhood history permeate their child’s environment and experiences. The long-lasting outcomes of CM can be devastating, and parenting might trigger the reopening of hidden scars.

affects

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shapes

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Parental childhood maltreatment

Potential impairments in:

• • • • •

• • • •

Emotional abuse Physical abuse Sexual abuse Emotional neglect Physical neglect

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Parental mental health

Childhood experiences of:

Psychological functioning Affect Interpersonal relations Self-perception

yields

Maladaptive emotion regulation strategies: • • •

Behavioral avoidance Rumination Brooding

Parenting characterized by: • •

Negative reinforcement Punishment

Impairments in: • • • • • •

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Parenting

Bonding Self-efficacy Sensitivity to the child’s needs Affect Interpersonal relations Self-perception

Figure 4.1 Illustration of the different impact of CM on ER and parenting

Outcomes for the children

Development in an environment where one’s emotional and physical needs might not be fulfilled •

In some cases, this may lead to the transmission of abuse across generations

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This triggering, in turn, brings to the fore some extremely challenging scenarios as parents are forced to deal with their past, which can become almost like an “additional child,” with all the attendant burden and emotional engagement one would expect. At the same time, these parenting experiences can provide CM survivors an opportunity for true recovery as they embrace feelings of love, empathy, and connection (Arriaga et al., 2021). Recent studies have revealed that psychological interventions targeting ER and mentalization in parents increased their caregiving quality, bonding with their children, and both parents’ and children’s well-being. However, these interventions are not specific to the CM population, which often has different needs and challenges. Parenting may provide such individuals with a chance to do the difficult inner work necessary to establish a stable and regulated identity and self and, thereby, fill their toolbox with positive skills for their children to emulate. In the words of John F. Kennedy, “the best time to repair a roof is when the sun is shining.” As the sun potentially never shines so bright as when a parent brings a child into the world, perhaps it is during the transition into parenthood that individuals with their own painful childhood histories can best make these crucial repairs. In so doing, they will contribute to the long-term health, happiness, and well-being of their families.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Tova Lewin for her comments on a previous version of this chapter.

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CHAPTER 5

The Role of Parental Emotion Regulation in Parental Neglect and Violence Sarah Miragoli, Luca Milani, and Elena Camisasca

5.1 Parenting Stress: The Key Concept between Emotion Regulation and Child Maltreatment In the literature, parenting stress encompasses the psychological/emotional reactions arising from attempts to adapt to the demands of parenthood (Deater-Deckard, 1998, 2004) and is associated with parenting outcomes and the quality of dyadic parent–child interactions (Camisasca et al., 2014; Crnic & Low, 2002; Miragoli et al., 2018). Specifically, parenting stress develops from parents’ evaluations that the demands of the parenting role are currently exceeding their coping abilities. It has been theorized as a multifactor process, which includes both individual and parenting-related sources of distress, ranging from objective life events (e.g. the death of a family member) to the parent’s evaluation of the child’s behavior and to the parent’s subjective feeling of failing in their own parental responsibility (Abidin, 1992, 1995; DeaterDeckard, 1998). High levels of parenting stress interfere with the caregiver’s ability to effectively cope with parenting-related difficulties (Jackson & Huang, 2000; Scheel & Rieckmann, 1998), increasing negative emotions and interactions with children (Coyl et al., 2002), and the use of ineffective disciplinary strategies (Cain & Combs-Orme, 2005; Crouch & Behl, 2001). In the field of child maltreatment, several studies have documented that maltreating parents report significantly higher levels of parenting stress and negative affect than non-maltreating parents and that parenting stress is related to increased child maltreatment (e,g., Ethier et al., 1995; Krahé et al., 2015; McPherson et al., 2009; Whipple & Webster-Stratton, 1991). In the social information processing (SIP) model (Milner, 1993, 2000, 2003), child maltreatment is regarded exclusively as an extreme consequence of parenting problems, resulting from bad cognitive processing of

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social information and from high levels of emotional distress (Azar, 1998, 2002; Bugental et al., 2002). The SIP model (Milner, 1993, 2000, 2003) assumes that parenting behaviors are marked by three cognitive processing stages (perceptions of the child’s behavior; interpretations and evaluations of the child’s behavior; and information integration and disciplinary response selection) and a fourth cognitive/behavioral stage consisting of the monitoring process and response implementation. These different processes are theory driven (based on preexisting cognitive schemata and beliefs about children and child-rearing, expectations concerning the child and concerning themselves as parents, including emotional components originating from emotions experienced during previous events involving attachment and parenting) and context driven (affected by situational factors, such as level of stress). According to this cognitive-behavioral approach, maltreating (or atrisk) parents fail at several steps of the parenting process, leading to a negative characterization of their relationship with the child and increasing levels of stress (Dadds et al., 2003; Francis & Wolfe, 2008; Montes et al., 2001). Specifically, they fail to objectively interpret the child’s behavior, which is viewed as more problematic than it actually is (Stage 1 of SIP model; e.g. Crouch et al., 2008; Lau et al., 2006; Miragoli et al., 2018). Moreover, several studies have linked these negative views of children’s behavior to parental attributions of child-related stable, hostile, and provocative intent, due to automatic accessibility of developmental expectancy biases (Stage 2; e.g. Farc et al., 2008; Haskett et al., 2003; Mammen et al., 2002). Finally, the use of harsh parenting behaviors, including acts of physical maltreatment (Timmer et al., 2002), arises from some marked difficulties with assuming the child’s perspective, which interfere with a parent’s processing of mitigating information in discipline situations (Stage 3; e.g. de Paúl et al., 2006; McElroy & Rodriguez, 2008; Perez-Albeniz & de Paúl, 2003). For these reasons, in daily interactions, maltreating (or at-risk) parents experience a lack of efficacy in their own parental skills (in terms of self-efficacy) and their parent–child relationship is impaired by negative mental representations (expectations about their parenting and about their children’s abilities and intent) and feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction, with high levels of parenting stress and emotional reactivity (in terms of sadness, anger, hostility, and fear; Berryhill, 2016; Crnic & Ross, 2017). Parenting stress and reactivity to negative emotions are further amplified by the embedded emotional components of the preexisting cognitive schemata (mainly due to previous childhood experiences; Lavi et al., 2021; Milner, 2003), which severely hinders parents’ ability to attend to the child’s needs and increases the risk of child maltreatment (Milner, 1993, 2000, 2003). Parents who maltreat their children, or are at risk of

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doing so, have more inaccurate and biased cognitive preexisting schemata than other parents, involving beliefs and values that influence the way they perceive, evaluate, integrate, and respond to information related to children (e.g. Dadds et al., 2003; Francis & Wolfe, 2008; Montes et al., 2001). In addition to ideational components, preexisting schemata include affective/emotional components (e.g. sadness, anger, hostility, anxiety, etc.) that were experienced during previous relational events and that influence how new information is perceived and processed. Maltreating (or at-risk) parents are more likely to use preexisting cognitive schemata if they are experiencing negative affect and/or high levels of emotional distress connected to parenting practice (e.g. Crouch et al., 2010; Dadds et al., 2003; de Paúl et al., 2006; Haskett et al., 2003). Although evidence suggests a substantial link between parenting stress and child maltreatment, the underlying emotional mechanisms that could potentially moderate this relationship have been less investigated. Internal appraisals of parenting (perceptions and attributions deriving from preexisting cognitive schemata) and emotional distress may interact and spill over into daily caregiver–child relationships, promoting maltreatment behaviors.

5.2 Emotion Regulation in Child Maltreatment Emotion regulation is defined as the “processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions” (Gross & Thompson, 2007, p. 275). Parental emotion regulation serves several important goals in parenting (see Chapter 2), and, in disciplinary encounters with the child, involves the ability for parents to control and inhibit their avoidant, intrusive, and aggressive actions, when experiencing negative and stressful emotions (Leith & Baumeister, 1996). In contrast to the many investigations of emotions as reliable correlates of parenting behaviors (e.g. Crandall et al., 2015; Rueger et al., 2011), work on parents’ emotion regulation (ER) and child maltreatment has lagged behind. In the examination of the predictors of child maltreatment, one important focus has been parents’ emotion reactivity and regulation (Lavi et al., 2021). To date, studies have shown great variability in the magnitude of the relationships between parental emotional processes and the risk of child maltreatment. In this perspective, Dix’s model (1991) suggests that dysfunctional and ineffective parenting is characterized by inadequate ER, in terms of hyporeactivity (to positive emotions) or hyperreactivity (to negative emotions) or a mismatch of emotions between parent and child (e.g. child

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expressing happiness and parent expressing disappointment), with deleterious effects on the parent–child relationship. Therefore, according to the model, guided by cognitive preexisting and biased schemata (Milner, 1993, 2000, 2003), when faced with urgent negative emotions, maltreating (or at-risk) parents potentially tend to respond to the child with aversive control, avoidance, and emotional cutoff behaviors1 (Bowen, 1993; Smith, 2003), in order to find a way to reduce the burden of emotional distress (Mence et al., 2014). For example, anger is conceptualized in the literature as an emotion leading the parents to react to the child with intrusiveness or disengagement (Crittenden, 1993), narrowing their attention to the anger-provoking stimuli alone (Gibb et al., 2011). This narrowing affects the parents’ cognitive processes and leads them to express anger via impulsive and aggressive actions, with an elevated propensity to child maltreatment (Rodriguez, 2018; Rodriquez & Green, 1997; Rodriguez & Richardson, 2007). According to the SIP model (Milner, 1993, 2000, 2003), maltreating (or at-risk) parents could be prone to respond aggressively to the perceived provocations of the child, because they feel that aggressive actions will enable them to let off steam and feel less upset and angry (Francis & Wolfe, 2008). Overall, the literature suggests that aggressive and violent behaviors (e.g. child maltreatment, domestic and intimate partner violence) may function to regulate stress and negative emotions (Jakupcak et al., 2002). Aggressive people believe that violence can be a good way of getting rid of their emotional distress and that aggressive behaviors can be undertaken as a good strategy of emotion regulation (Bushman et al., 2001). Therefore, during daily caregiver–child interactions, for maltreating (or at-risk) parents, aggressive and violent behaviors could represent not only the inability to manage negative and stressful emotions but also a strategy to cope with this emotional dysregulation (Marziali et al., 2003). In summary, parental reactivity to negative emotions could become a significant risk factor for child maltreatment, via the path of parental intrusiveness, disengagement, and cognitive narrowing of attention (Bowen, 1993; Crittenden, 1993; Dix, 1991), and this emotion dysregulation could be intended as an outcome of the activation of 1

Emotional cutoff behavior can be considered a process of distancing and cutting oneself off from emotions or affects that lead, most often unconsciously, to a feared loss of control and/or suffering (Titelman, 2014). People who are emotionally cut off find intimacy profoundly threatening and, therefore, tend to display an exaggerated independence and to isolate themselves from others, denying the importance of attachment and family. In family systems theory of Bowen (1993), emotional cutoff behavior is a mechanism for managing relational anxiety and parenting stress, and in caregiver–child interactions is manifested in physical distance, lack of contact, and avoidance toward the child.

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preexisting cognitive schemata that include previous unresolved relational experiences and unrealistic expectations of self and child (Milner, 1993, 2000, 2003).

5.3 Gender Differences Currently one of the most interesting aspects of the field of child maltreatment is the analysis of possible gender differences to explain dissimilar trajectories of maltreating parenting and also to provide valuable information for intervention and prevention plans. Some studies have investigated general constructs (parenting stress, ER, negative affect, emphatic skills, etc.) and have shown comparable risk profiles for maltreating (or at-risk) fathers and mothers (Asla et al., 2011; Perez-Albeniz & de Paul, 2004; Smith Slep & O’Leary, 2007), although some specific differences have emerged in other studies (e.g. Miragoli et al., 2018; Pittman & Buckley, 2006; Schaeffer et al., 2005). Overall, in terms of emotional reactivity and regulation, parents show some significant gender differences, which are attributable to biological factors, in interaction with social roles and ecological conditions (Wood & Eagly, 2002). In parenthood, social roles and sex-typed goals help define relationships, direct behaviors, and guide decision-making processes (Grusec & Davidov, 2014). Culturally shared beliefs may drive parenting practices of knowledge, expression, and regulation of emotions: mothers are expected to be more emotionally expressive through prosocial and caring parenting actions, whereas fathers are expected to be more pragmatic, detached, and oriented toward achievement (Goodnow & Collins, 1990; Sigel et al., 1992). Moreover, parenting stress appears to have a greater impact on a mother’s self-assessment of her role as a mother (Berryhill, 2016; Pearlin et al., 1981), further contaminating the quality of the caregiver-child relationship more easily. With a view to identifying possible gender differences in maltreating (or at-risk) parenting, Miragoli and colleagues (2020) analyzed the ER processes in fathers and mothers. Whereas previous studies had illustrated the role of ER in the risk of child maltreatment, in terms of a unitary construct or the effects of single dimensions (e.g. impulsivity, emotional distress, or anger; e.g. Bushman et al., 2001; Dadds et al., 2003; Francis & Wolfe, 2008; Rodriguez & Green, 1997), in this study some individual components of ER were evaluated comprehensively (acceptance of emotional responses, ability in distracting and performing alternative behaviors when experiencing negative emotions, confidence in the emotional regulation skills, ability in controlling impulsive behaviors when distressed, recognition of emotions, and emotional awareness). The findings

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confirmed the important role of ER in the risk of child maltreatment and provided support for gender differences in at-risk fathers and mothers. When at-risk fathers experienced negative and stressful emotions, they showed a significant lack of emotional awareness and difficulties in distracting themselves and using alternative behaviors. By contrast, when distressed about an unsatisfactory relationship with the child, at-risk mothers experienced more nonacceptance of negative emotions, difficulties in distracting themselves and using alternative behaviors, and subsequent difficulties in controlling impulsive/aggressive behaviors toward the child. Both at-risk fathers and mothers, regardless of gender, when feeling emotional parenting stress, showed difficulty in distracting themselves and using alternative behaviors, resulting in an inability to concentrate or effectively complete their activities, because of emotional arousal and the consequent tendency to focus all attention resources on the negative emotional experience. More precisely, these parents failed to pursue goal-directed behaviors, in which distraction could be a protective factor for stress and predictive of adaptive coping (oriented to problem-solving and emotional acceptance; Reynolds & Wells, 1999). A significant gender difference concerns at-risk fathers, who are more characterized by a lack of awareness in the management of negative emotions. A good level of emotional awareness allows individuals to know what they are feeling and to identify useful coping strategies to cope with the emotions and the demands of the context (Clore et al., 1994). Attention and emotional awareness are specific elements of mindful parenting (Kabat-Zinn & Kabat-Zinn, 1997) and allow parents to communicate acceptance, compassion, and kindness in interactions with their child (Duncan et al., 2009; Turpyn & Chaplin, 2016). According to the SIP model (Milner, 1993, 2000, 2003), in maltreating (or at-risk) parents a lack of emotional awareness interferes with all the cognitive stages of discipline response processing (perception and interpretation of child behavior, and integration of available information), causing a failure to choose an effective parenting behavior and leading to episodes of maltreatment to release the emotional anxiety. For these reasons, maltreating (or at-risk) fathers often show authoritarian and intrusive parenting, lack of anger and hostility control, and ineffective and coercive discipline (Rodriguez, 2010). By contrast, nonacceptance of emotional responses and difficulties in controlling impulsive behaviors (when distressed) were specific deficits of at-risk mothers. In social contexts, individuals who do not accept their negative emotions appear avoidant and constantly absorbed in suppressing this emotional distress, failing to achieve the social information needed to respond appropriately to others (Brockman et al., 2017).

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Specifically, nonacceptance and repeated efforts to suppress negative emotions deplete cognitive resources that could otherwise be used for optimal performance in the social context (for example, for parents, for effective behavior in interactions with their children). In the literature, these individuals are described as avoidant and distracted, with negative feelings about the self and a sense of alienation from others, which often impede the development of emotionally satisfying relationships (Purnamaningsih, 2017). Clinical research has shown that these individuals may not always be healthy or effective: nonacceptance and emotion suppression could have paradoxical effects on adjustment, increasing the severity and frequency of stressful and unwanted internal experiences (Gross & John, 2003; Hayes et al., 2006). Therefore, for at-risk mothers, in discipline encounters with their child, non-acceptance and suppression of negative emotions decrease the behavioral expression of those emotions but not the subjective experience (Bailey et al., 2007; Jacobvitz et al., 2006). Thus this emotional strategy does not reduce the subjective experience but contributes to the maintenance and accumulation of unresolved emotions (Gross, 1998; Richards & Gross, 1999). In the literature, maltreating mothers show atypical caregiving and are basically unable to accept, monitor, and contain the emotional negative experiences of interaction with their child (e.g. Lyons-Ruth et al., 1987; Savage et al., 2019). At the base of these dysfunctional caregiving behaviors, many authors have identified different traumatic childhood experiences that break into the mother’s mental state and prevent her from being responsive and sensitive with her child (e.g. Hesse & Main, 2006; Lyons-Ruth & Block, 1996). Accordingly, in discipline encounters, nonacceptance and suppression of negative emotions could be positively associated with poorer parental functioning (e.g. poorer parental adjustment and compromised discipline practices; Lorber, 2012) and more aggressive parental behaviors, as the capacity to accept negative emotions is a prerequisite for the development of the consequent capacity to maintain control over behavior even in the presence of emotional distress (Gratz & Roemer, 2004).

5.4 Clinical Implications This chapter shows that ER processes must be considered when training programs for maltreating or at-risk parents are designed, to promote, specific adaptive regulative skills and adequate parenting behaviors in stressful conditions (Gratz & Gunderson, 2006). Overall, treatments that focus on avoidance or control of negative and undesirable emotions may not be useful with maltreating or at-risk

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parents and may inadvertently reinforce a damaging nonacceptance of negative emotions. Instead, treatments based on learning alternative ways of coping and responding to emotional distress could be more productive in mitigating aggressive parenting behaviors. Emotion coaching and mindfulness may be valuable skills for maltreating or at-risk parents, as they promote the emotional modulation of the arousal caused by negative experiences (rather than emotional detachment) resulting from the relationship with the child (Gratz & Tull, 2010). Specifically, for maltreating or at-risk fathers, interventions could focus more on the promotion of emotional awareness, by encouraging fathers to observe and label the negative emotions, facilitating contact with these emotions and differentiating between emotional states. By contrast, for maltreating or at-risk mothers, interventions could be more focused on letting go of evaluations (such as “bad” or “wrong”) and taking a nonjudgmental opinion toward the unwanted emotions, facilitating the acceptance and decreasing the development of secondary emotional responses (e.g. fear, anger, guilt or shame). Therefore, clinical interventions with maltreating or at-risk parents should involve reappraisal and modulation of arousal of the negative experience of emotions (rather than eliminating emotions). For at-risk fathers and mothers, it is important to learn to manage the emotional distress deriving from the relationship with the child, understanding that negative emotions can be tolerated (without necessarily being acted on) and facilitating the ability to control impulsive and aggressive behaviors.

5.5 Conclusions and Future Directions In conclusion, this chapter set out to illustrate the essential role of emotional processes in underlying a cluster of maltreating behaviors and conditions, with significant practical implications for primary and secondary interventions. First, it is important to highlight that the relation between ER and child maltreatment is bidirectional (Figure 5.1): (1) previous experiences of child maltreatment lead to parental dysfunctional emotion reactivity/ regulation and (2) parental dysfunctional emotion reactivity/regulation leads to a higher propensity to child maltreatment (see Chapter 5). Second, child maltreatment can be understood as the result of a dysfunctional ER strategy, where aggressive, violent, and avoidant parenting behaviors are a way to relieve the pressure of stress and negative emotions associated with interacting with the child. Finally, although much remains to be done at the intersection of ER and child maltreatment, the most pressing requirements appear to be to

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Previous Experiences of Child Maltreatment

Parental ER

Child Maltreatment

Figure 5.1 Bidirectional relation between emotion regulation (ER) and child maltreatment

explore the possible role of ER as a moderator between parenting stress and child maltreatment (in particular, the question whether stressed parents with good levels of ER are less likely to maltreat or be violent with their children), and to identify precise risk profiles for at-risk fathers and mothers to improve understanding of the emotional processes that guide the intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment.

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CHAPTER 6

Parental Emotion Regulation, Stress, and Burnout Moïra Mikolajczak, James J. Gross, and Isabelle Roskam

Emotion regulation (ER) in parenting is ER undertaken in one’s role as a parent. More specifically, it refers to the automatic or strategic process of regulating either one’s own or one’s child’s emotion with the goal of maintaining one’s well-being as a parent and/or fostering one’s child’s well-being or development (Mikolajczak & Roskam, in press). Thus, as illustrated in Table 6.1, the target of ER in parenting can be the parent’s emotion (intrinsic ER, also labeled self-focused ER) or the child’s emotion (extrinsic ER, also labeled other-focused ER), and the goal of ER can be self-serving (i.e. with an eye to benefits for the parent) and/or childserving (i.e. with an eye to benefits for the child). Note that, as pointed out earlier by Petrova and Gross (see Chapter 2), self-serving and child-serving regulatory goals can be co-activated on many occasions. Consider for instance the bottom left corner of Table 6.1: if the daughter is brilliant and will most likely pass her exam, the father may be driven in his actions exclusively by the goal of changing his daughter’s emotion and making her feel more emotionally comfortable. But if his daughter has not done so well in school so far and she does even less well when she is stressed, the father may act with the goal of both making her feel more emotionally comfortable and increasing her chances of passing, and also of reducing his own stress about the possibility that she may fail. ER in parenting is highly frequent and varied. As the examples in Table 6.1 suggest, parents do not downregulate only negative emotions. They also downregulate positive emotions or upregulate both negative and positive emotions. Thus, parental ER encompasses the downregulation of negative emotions (e.g. self-focused: downregulating one’s anxiety at a teenager’s first evening out with friends; child-focused: downregulating the child’s sadness at a friend’s move), the upregulation of negative emotions (e.g. self-focused: up-regulating one’s facial manifestations of disappointment at a young child’s misbehavior; child-focused: upregulating a

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Table 6.1 Illustrations of the 2  2 matrix of emotion regulation in parenting Target of ER/ Goal of ER

Self-focused ER (i.e. the parent’s emotion)

Child-focused ER (i.e. the child’s emotion)

Self-serving (i.e. the parent’s benefits)

e.g. a mother downregulates her sadness when her son is ungrateful

e.g. a father upregulates his adolescent son’s enthusiasm for helping him in the garden

Child-serving (i.e. the child’s benefits)

e.g. a mother upregulates her own pride at her daughter’ success to enhance her daughter’s self-esteem

e.g. a father downregulates his daughter’s anxiety before an exam

ER, emotion regulation.

teenager’s stress to prompt him or her to study), the downregulation of positive emotions (e.g. self-focused: hiding one’s amusement at a teenager’s new outfit; child-focused: reducing a young child’s interest in a product that is environmentally harmful), and the upregulation of positive emotions (e.g. self-focused: increasing displays of gratitude when teenager is helping; child-focused: increasing the child’s pride at a hard-won success).

6.1 Protective Role of Parents’ Self-Focused (Intrinsic) Emotion Regulation vis-à-vis Parenting Stress and Burnout As the examples provided in the preceding section suggest, being able to efficiently regulate one’s own emotion as a parent confers many benefits. Other chapters in this volume emphasize several of these (see Chapters 5 and 7). Here, we focus specifically on the benefits regarding parenting stress and parental burnout. The vast majority of studies show that efficient ER strategies strongly reduce parenting stress and, accordingly, the risk for parental burnout. For instance, Babore et al. (2019) showed that the propensity to use cognitive reappraisal was negatively linked to parenting stress. In the same vein, Iswinarti et al. (2020) showed that the use of generally “adaptive” emotion regulation strategies (measured via the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire [CERQ; Garnefski et al., 2002]) was also related to lower scores for parenting stress. Unsurprisingly given these results, Vertsberger et al. (2022) found that higher use of cognitive reappraisal was related to lower levels of parental burnout. Although most studies are based on self-reported correlational designs, the relationship seems real and causal: real, because better ER not only

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Moïra Mikolajczak, James J. Gross, and Isabelle Roskam Direct effect

Parent’s selffocused ER ability

Parenting stress

Parenting practices

Child’s ER ability

Child behavior

Indirect effects

Figure 6.1 Hypothetical mediators of the relationship between parent’s self-focused (i.e. intrinsic) emotion regulation (ER) and parenting stress

predicts lower self-reported levels of stress but also some biological indicators of lower stress such as higher heart rate variability (Costa et al., 2017; but see Doan et al., 2020 for null results on hair cortisol); and causal, because when ER is improved via a short psychological intervention (consisting for instance of teaching reappraisal skills), subjective parenting stress decreases (Preuss et al., 2021). That a parent’s ER predicts the parent’s level of stress is not surprising given that studies have previously shown that both ER capacity and ER self-efficacy buffer the impact of parenting stressors on parents’ affective response (Deater-Deckard et al., 2016). Beyond this effect, the parent’s ER may also influence parenting stress indirectly. Although proper mediation studies are missing, likely mediators are represented in Figure 6.1. One candidate is parenting behavior. Poor parental ER self-efficacy is associated with poorer parenting practices (e.g. authoritarian parenting; Hughes & Gullone, 2010; Shaw & Starr, 2019) and these have been associated with increased parenting stress (Hutchison et al., 2016). A second candidate is the child’s ER. Poor parental ER self-efficacy is associated with poor child’s ER and emotional lability (Bariola et al., 2012; Rogers et al., 2016; Tan & Smith, 2019), and poor child’s ER and lability are related to higher parenting stress (Williford et al., 2007). A third candidate is the child’s behavior. Poorer parental ER self-efficacy is related to more externalizing behavior problems in the child (Crespo et al., 2017) and these usually predict higher parenting stress (Stone et al., 2016; Williford et al., 2007). Note that, with the notable exception

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of Deater-Deckard et al. (2016), most studies have measured parental ER using self-reported measures of parents’ perceptions of their own ability (hence our label “ER self-efficacy” because self-reports capture ER selfefficacy rather than ER capacity). Future mediation studies would certainly benefit from going beyond self-reports and using indicators of both ER self-efficacy and ER capacity.

6.2 Protective Role of Parents’ Child-Focused (Extrinsic) Emotion Regulation vis-à-vis Parenting Stress and Burnout The examples provided in the first section suggest that it is useful not only to be able to regulate one’s own emotions as a parent but also to be able to regulate one’s children’s emotions (i.e. extrinsic ER). It seems quite intuitive to think that parents who are able to regulate their children’s emotion may be less overwhelmed by the latter’s emotions and may also have children with better adjustment, both of which would contribute to lowering their level of parenting stress. Several chapters in this volume emphasize the importance of parents’ extrinsic ER for their children’s adjustment (see Chapters 7, 8, and 9). Here, we examine specifically the advantages of parents’ extrinsic ER vis-à-vis parenting stress and parental burnout. Unfortunately, and somewhat surprisingly, the first thing that our literature review revealed is that this subject has not yet been researched. The closest proxy for measuring parents’ extrinsic ER is the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES; Fabes et al., 1990; Fabes et al., 2002) and its version for toddlers, the Coping with Toddlers’ Negative Emotions (CTNES; Spinrad et al., 2004). To date, neither the CCNES nor the CTNES has been studied in relation to parenting stress or burnout. Pending such research, we turned to slightly broader proxies of parents’ extrinsic ER, namely the concepts of parental emotion socialization practices (Eisenberg, 2020; Eisenberg et al., 1998) and parental metaemotion philosophy (PMEP; Gottman et al., 1996). These concepts capture how parents perceive children’s emotions and react to them. “Supportive socialization practices” in Eisenberg’s terms and “emotion coaching“ in Gottman’s terms refer to parents who are aware of their children’s emotions, are supportive of emotional expression, and use emotion episodes as opportunities for intimacy and for teaching their children ways to understand and regulate their emotions. In contrast, “unsupportive socialization practices” in Eisenberg’s terms and “dismissing emotions” in Gottman’s terms refer to parents who feel threatened by children’s emotions and who are likely to invalidate or punish emotional

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expression, attempt to reduce the emotion quickly, and teach their child that emotions are undesirable or unimportant (Johnson et al., 2017). We could therefore consider supportive/coaching practices as a proxy for “adaptive” parental extrinsic ER and unsupportive/dismissing practices as a proxy for “maladaptive” parental extrinsic ER, and expect that parents who display the former may be less stressed than parents who display the latter. Unfortunately, there is a lack of research examining the impact of either parental emotion socialization practices or PMEP on parenting stress. That said, two intervention studies suggest that better parental extrinsic ER may possibly decrease parenting stress. The first is a pilot study conducted by Cortell (2009). This examined the impact of an intervention aimed at increasing parents’ emotion coaching of their adolescents. The results showed that parents who participated in the intervention displayed decreased use of emotion dismissing parenting behaviors and decreased parenting stress. Children of participating parents showed less anxiety and depression and exhibited fewer aggressive behaviors by the end of the intervention. Unfortunately, there was no control group. However, a dose-response effect was present: parents who attended more sessions had greater increases in emotion coaching behaviors, and increased emotion coaching was linked with increased parental positive emotions, as well as a reduction of aggressive behavior by children and parenting stress. The second is a randomized controlled trial by Havighurst and colleagues (2022). This examined the effect of an emotion socialization parenting program (Tuning in to Toddlers) on parenting, children’s behavior, and the stress hormone cortisol. Compared to the control group, the intervention led to moderate increases in parents’ emotion coaching behaviors and a moderate decrease in emotion dismissing behaviors. There was only a small effect of the intervention on parents’ own emotion regulation, which can be interpreted as the intervention having a specific impact on parents’ extrinsic ER. There was also a small effect of the intervention on children’s emotional and social competence and a small-to-moderate effect of the intervention on parents’ cortisol level (Cohen’s d = .36, not reaching significance due to insufficient statistical power). Taken together, these results may be interpreted as providing preliminary support for the idea that a parent who is able to regulate his/her children’s emotion may have children with better emotional/social adjustment, which in turn reduces the parent’s stress. There are, however, other possible interpretations of the findings: for example, participating parents may have been less stressed simply because the intervention made them feel more competent as parents or more supported by the group. Future studies are thus urgently needed to determine whether or not better parental extrinsic ER leads to lower parenting stress. This is all the more important given that such effects appear highly likely.

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Child’s ER ability Parent’s childfocused ER ability (indicated by emotion coaching or emotion socialization practices)

Parenting stress

Child behavior

Indirect effects

Figure 6.2 Hypothetical pathways leading from parent’s childfocused (i.e. extrinsic) emotion regulation (ER) to parenting stress

Although proper mediation studies are needed, likely mediators are represented in Figure 6.2. One candidate is the child’s ER. Poor socialization of emotion is associated with poor child’s ER (Price & Kiel, 2022; Shaffer et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2019; but see England-Mason & Gonzalez, 2020 and Rogers et al., 2016, for mixed results) and poor child’s ER is related to higher parenting stress (Williford et al., 2007). Another candidate is the child’s behavior. Poor socialization of emotion is related to more externalizing behavior problems in the child (for a meta-analysis, see Johnson et al., 2017) and these usually predict higher parenting stress (Stone et al., 2016; Williford et al., 2007). Note that feedback loops are likely because, as suggested by Havighurst and Kehoe (2017), when parents are emotionally overwhelmed by stress, their ability to engage in perspective taking and extrinsic ER is compromised due to limited access to executive functions (Suchy, 2011). Moreover, the relationship between ER and mediators could also run in the opposite direction: the child’s ER and the child’s behavior could influence the parent’s capacity to engage in extrinsic ER, and this may in turn increase the parent’s own level of stress.

6.3 Might Too Much Parental Emotion Regulation Increase Parenting Stress and Burnout? The preceding sections support the view that intrinsic and extrinsic parental ER may have positive outcomes for the parent. These results may have contributed to an increase in the pressures on parents to

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practice ER in parenting and the constant efforts that today’s parents make to regulate their emotions in the presence of their children (Lin et al., 2021). These pressures and efforts are based on the idea that the effects are linear: parents as well as parenting experts have assumed that the more ER, the better. Although this assumption may appear sensible at first glance, recent evidence suggests that it may not always be valid. Recent research shows that when parents make too much effort to regulate their emotions, ironically, their risk of parental burnout increases (Lin et al., 2021). This is not so surprising, as ER can be costly (Milyavsky et al., 2019; Sheppes et al., 2009; Sheppes & Meiran, 2008), and the higher the discrepancy between the actual and desired affective state, the higher the negative affect and the higher the cost of ER (for a review, see Tamir, 2021). In addition to being costly to parents, there are at least two reasons to suspect that too much intrinsic and extrinsic parental ER may also backfire on children (Mikolajczak & Roskam, in press). First, parents who are constantly regulating their own emotions may prevent children from being confronted with their parents’ negative emotions, which would reduce their opportunities to learn to cope with others’ emotions in a safe context. Second, parents who are continuously regulating their children’s emotions to avoid them being distressed may reduce their children’s opportunities to learn to manage their own negative emotions and hence slow down or even prevent the acquisition of ER skills, leaving children dependent on others to regulate their emotions. Thus, it is possible that too much intrinsic and extrinsic parental ER may actually help create “cotton wool children” (Bristow, 2014), that is, overprotected kids who become fragile through lack of opportunity to face adversity and develop strength and resilience.

6.4 Directions for Future Research In spite of the frequency of ER in parenting, the ER field has long overlooked the parenting domain (for a recent review, see Mikolajczak & Roskam, in press). The field remains largely unexplored, and this chapter highlights three important research directions. The first is focused on content: more research is needed on the impact of intrinsic and extrinsic parental ER on parenting stress and burnout. If future research confirms the preliminary findings reviewed in this chapter, studies will be needed to uncover the mediators of these relationships. We have proposed several possible mediators here, and research that confirms or refutes their mediating status is needed. The second is methodological: future studies should use more objective measures of ER and systematically distinguish the effects of intrinsic

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versus extrinsic parental ER on parenting stress. They should also go beyond cross-sectional designs. Longitudinal cross-lagged designs are necessary not only to inform causation (e.g. does parents’ ER influence parenting stress?) but also to disentangle the direction of effects (e.g. parenting stress may reciprocally influence parents’ ER). While such cross-lagged longitudinal studies are awaited, researchers should probably be more cautious in their interpretation of correlational results. So far, findings linking ER to another variable are almost systematically interpreted in the direction parent to child. In other words, we infer that it is the parent’s ER that influences the child’s ER or behavior. However, the child’s ER and behavior may facilitate or, conversely, complicate the efficiency of parents’ extrinsic ER. The direction of causation could therefore be different from what we have so far assumed. The third direction is related to what we mentioned at the end of this chapter: future studies would certainly benefit from going beyond linear conceptions (where more ER is always better) and consider also curvilinear hypotheses (where too much parental ER may actually have adverse consequences). We hope that this chapter will encourage these studies and stimulate research at the intersection of ER and parenting more broadly.

References Babore, A., Bramanti, S. M., Lombardi, L., Stuppia, L., Trumello, C., Antonucci, I., & Cavallo, A. (2019). The role of depression and emotion regulation on parenting stress in a sample of mothers with cancer. Supportive Care in Cancer, 27(4), 1271–1277. Bariola, E., Hughes, E. K., & Gullone, E. (2012). Relationships between parent and child emotion regulation strategy use: A brief report. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21(3), 443–448. Bristow, J. (2014). The double bind of parenting culture: helicopter parents and cotton wool kids. In E. Lee, J. Bristow, C. Faircloth, & J. Macvarish (Eds.), Parenting culture studies (pp. 200–215). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/ 10.1057/9781137304612 Cortell, R. (2009). A pilot study of an emotion coaching and mindfulness program for parents of early adolescents [Unpublished master’s thesis]. Catholic University of America. Costa, A. P., Steffgen, G., & Ferring, D. (2017). Contributors to well-being and stress in parents of children with autism spectrum disorder. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 37, 61–72. Crespo, L. M., Trentacosta, C. J., Aikins, D., & Wargo-Aikins, J. (2017). Maternal emotion regulation and children’s behavior problems: The mediating role of child emotion regulation. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 26(10), 2797–2809. Deater-Deckard, K., Li, M., & Bell, M. A. (2016). Multifaceted emotion regulation, stress and affect in mothers of young children. Cognition and Emotion, 30 (3), 444–457.

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Doan, S. N., Venkatesh, S., Predroza, M., Tarullo, A., & Meyer, J. S. (2020). Maternal expressive suppression moderates the relations between maternal and child hair cortisol. Developmental Psychobiology, 62(8), 1150–1157. Eisenberg, N. (2020). Findings, issues, and new directions for research on emotion socialization. Developmental Psychology, 56(3), 664–670. Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., & Spinrad, T. L. (1998). Parental socialization of emotion. Psychological Inquiry, 9(4), 241–273. England-Mason, G., & Gonzalez, A. (2020). Intervening to shape children’s emotion regulation: A review of emotion socialization parenting programs for young children. Emotion, 20(1), 98–104. Fabes, R., Eisenberg, N., & Bernzweig, J. (1990). The Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale: Procedures and scoring. Arizona State University. https://ccnes.org/ Fabes, R. A., Poulin, R. E., Eisenberg, N., & Madden-Derdich, D. A. (2002). The Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES). In R. Fabes (Ed.), Emotions and the family (pp. 285–310). Routledge. Garnefski, N., Kraaij, V., & Spinhoven, P. (2002). CERQ. Manual for the use of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire: A questionnaire measuring cognitive coping strategies. DATEC VOF. Gottman, J. M., Katz, L. F., & Hooven, C. (1996). Parental meta-emotion philosophy and the emotional life of families: Theoretical models and preliminary data. Journal of Family Psychology, 10(3), 243–268. Havighurst, S., & Kehoe, C. (2017). The role of parental emotion regulation in parent emotion socialization: Implications for intervention. In K. DeaterDeckard & R. Panneton (Eds.), Parental stress and early child development: Adaptive and maladaptive outcomes (pp. 285–307). Springer. Havighurst, S. S., Kehoe, C. E., Harley, A. E., Radovini, A., & Thomas, R. (2022). A randomized controlled trial of an emotion socialization parenting program and its impact on parenting, children’s behavior and parent and child stress cortisol: Tuning in to Toddlers. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 149, 104016. Hughes, E. K., & Gullone, E. (2010). Parent emotion socialisation practices and their associations with personality and emotion regulation. Personality and Individual Differences, 49(7), 694–699. Hutchison, L., Feder, M., Abar, B., & Winsler, A. (2016). Relations between parenting stress, parenting style, and child executive functioning for children with ADHD or autism. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25(12), 3644–3656. Iswinarti, I., Jadmiko, G., & Hasanati, N. (2020). Cognitive emotion regulation: Its relationship to parenting stress. Journal of Social Studies Education Research, 11(2), 204–222. Johnson, A. M., Hawes, D. J., Eisenberg, N., Kohlhoff, J., & Dudeney, J. (2017). Emotion socialization and child conduct problems: A comprehensive review and meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 54, 65–80. Lin, G.-X., Hansotte, L., Szczygieł, D., Meeussen, L., Roskam, I., & Mikolajczak, M. (2021). Parenting with a smile: Display rules, regulatory effort, and parental burnout. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 38(9), 2701–2721. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075211019124 Mikolajczak, M., & Roskam, I. (in press). Emotion regulation in parenting. In J. J. Gross & B. Ford (Eds.), Handbook of emotion regulation. Guilford Press.

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Milyavsky, M., Webber, D., Fernandez, J. R., Kruglanski, A. W., Goldenberg, A., Suri, G., & Gross, J. J. (2019). To reappraise or not to reappraise? Emotion regulation choice and cognitive energetics. Emotion, 19(6), 964–981. Preuss, H., Capito, K., van Eickels, R. L., Zemp, M., & Kolar, D. R. (2021). Cognitive reappraisal and self-compassion as emotion regulation strategies for parents during COVID-19: An online randomized controlled trial. Internet Interventions, 24, 100388. Price, N. N., & Kiel, E. J. (2022). Longitudinal links among mother and child emotion regulation, maternal emotion socialization, and child anxiety. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, 50(2), 241–254. Rogers, M. L., Halberstadt, A. G., Castro, V. L., MacCormack, J. K., & GarrettPeters, P. (2016). Maternal emotion socialization differentially predicts thirdgrade children’s emotion regulation and lability. Emotion, 16(2), 280–291. Shaffer, A., Suveg, C., Thomassin, K., & Bradbury, L. L. (2012). Emotion socialization in the context of family risks: Links to child emotion regulation. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21(6), 917–924. Shaw, Z. A., & Starr, L. R. (2019). Intergenerational transmission of emotion dysregulation: The role of authoritarian parenting style and family chronic stress. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 28(12), 3508–3518. Sheppes, G., Catran, E., & Meiran, N. (2009). Reappraisal (but not distraction) is going to make you sweat: Physiological evidence for self-control effort. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 71(2), 91–96. Sheppes, G., & Meiran, N. (2008). Divergent cognitive costs for online forms of reappraisal and distraction. Emotion, 8(6), 870–874. Spinrad, T., Eisenberg, N., Kupfer, A., Gaertner, B., & Michalik, N. (2004, May). The coping with toddlers’ negative emotions scale [Poster presentation]. Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, Chicago, IL. Stone, L. L., Mares, S. H., Otten, R., Engels, R. C., & Janssens, J. M. (2016). The codevelopment of parenting stress and childhood internalizing and externalizing problems. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 38(1), 76–86. Suchy, Y. (2011). Clinical neuropsychology of emotion. Guilford Press. Tamir, M. (2021). Effortful emotion regulation as a unique form of cybernetic control. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(1), 94–117. Tan, L., & Smith, C. L. (2019). Intergenerational transmission of maternal emotion regulation to child emotion regulation: Moderated mediation of maternal positive and negative emotions. Emotion, 19(7), 1284–1291. Vertsberger, D., Roskam, I., Talmon, A., Van Bakel, H., Hall, R., Mikolajczak, M., & Gross, J. J. (2022). Emotion regulation during the COVID-19 pandemic: Risk and resilience factors for parental burnout (IIPB). Cognition and Emotion, 36(1), 100–105. Wang, M., Liang, Y., Zhou, N., & Zou, H. (2019). Chinese fathers’ emotion socialization profiles and adolescents’ emotion regulation. Personality and Individual Differences, 137, 33–38. Williford, A. P., Calkins, S. D., & Keane, S. P. (2007). Predicting change in parenting stress across early childhood: Child and maternal factors. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 35(2), 251–263.

PART III

Influence of Parenting on Child Emotion Regulation

CHAPTER 7

Parental Coregulation of Child Emotions Manfred Holodynski and Joscha Kärtner

Emotions can be conceived as systems that regulate actions in ways that serve a person’s concerns (Frijda, 1986). They establish, maintain, or disrupt individually significant relations between a person and the internal or external environment (Campos et al., 2018). Understanding how emotions regulate a person’s actions in social contexts opens up a sophisticated approach to how emotions develop over the course of ontogenesis from biologically given precursor emotions to a repertoire of differentiated emotions that the developing child becomes increasingly aware of. This awareness of one’s own and others’ feelings can be seen as a prerequisite for a volitionally driven regulation of one’s own emotions. Parents play a pivotal role in this development, which can be conceptualized as a transition from comprehensive coregulation of an infant’s emotions and behaviors to increasing self-regulation of emotions and actions by the growing child. This chapter highlights these interwoven developmental trajectories and gives an overview of how parents contribute to them. The first section focuses on the development of emotions, and the second section on the development of a reflective form of emotion regulation. The third section provides an outlook on further research questions that follows from the described state-of-the-art.

7.1 Development of Emotions 7.1.1 Defining Emotions Emotions are defined as a functional psychological system involving the interplay of several components that serve to initiate and regulate a person’s actions. These components appraise and regulate the relation between the person and their environment in the service of that person’s concerns (needs, motives, values, aims of life) (Campos et al., 2018; Frijda, 1986). Emotions occur as episodes with a limited time span. They

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disappear (or change into another emotion) when an adaptive action changes the person’s relation to the environment in a way that affects the signaled concern (Shuman & Scherer, 2014). The set of components that an emotion must have in order to fulfill these functions is controversial (Shuman & Scherer, 2014). However, most emotion theories, and especially so-called multicomponent theories of emotions (Campos et al., 2018; Camras, 2022; Frijda, 1986; Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2006), agree on the following components: appraisal, action readiness and expression, body reactions, and feeling. 1. Through the appraisal component, the actual or imagined situation is appraised in terms of its significance for the person’s concerns (Moors et al., 2013). Initial appraisal processes are involuntary and not conscious. They need to be distinguished from any (subsequent) conscious reflection on and voluntary evaluation of possible elicitors of an emotion (Engelen et al., 2009). 2. The component of action readiness and expression comprises the motor activities that initiate the appraised urge to establish, maintain, or change the person–environment relation during an emotion episode (Frijda, 1986); this indicates that the emotions are regulating the actions. Action readiness relates to an instrumental use of movements to change the person–environment relation directly, for example, the readiness to flee when a situation is appraised as threatening, whereas the expression part relates to a semiotic use of movements to change the person-environment relation indirectly by appealing to the interaction partner to bring about the desired change, for example, a passerby shows an expression of fear on their face as a dog approaches, such that the dog’s owner, upon noticing the expression, feels compelled to leash their dog, which, in turn, causes the passerby’s fear to subside. 3. Body reactions comprise an interplay of (peripheral) physiological processes (e.g. blood pressure, heartbeat, breathing) as well as psychoendocrinological reactions (e.g. cortisol secretions) that prepare the body to deal with the elicited action readiness and expressions (Norman et al., 2014). There is, nonetheless, some controversy over whether emotions always have to be accompanied by body reactions (Lewis, 2011). 4. Regardless, the feeling component can be defined as the internally experienced sensations of the ongoing body reactions, action readiness, and expressions from a first-person, present-tense perspective (Damasio, 1994; Price & Harmon-Jones, 2015). A feeling works as an internal monitoring device by signaling that one should either act or stop acting (Frijda, 1986; Scherer, 2004). Longstanding controversy

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exists over the significance of this component and, in particular, over how it relates to the other components (Russell, 2014).

7.1.2 Trajectories of Emotional Development The development of emotions has been conceptualized in very different ways ranging from evolutionary (e.g. Izard, 2009) to functionalist (e.g. Campos et al., 2018), and from dynamic-system theories (e.g. Camras, 2022) to sociocultural theories (Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2012). A closer look at the course of emotional development reveals at least three overarching developmental trajectories: the differentiation of emotion qualities, a shift from coregulation to self-regulation, and an increasing awareness of one’s own emotions. For all trajectories, parents play a pivotal role in how children manage these tasks.

7.1.2.1 Differentiation of Emotion Qualities Development starts from a restricted set of so-called precursor emotions (Sroufe, 1996) and differentiates into a set of culturally reshaped emotions in children, adolescents, and adults. Beyond the ongoing discussions between functionalistic and discrete emotion theorists, who debate the emotions with which newborns are equipped, five emotional reaction patterns have been identified in newborns according to the coincidence of elicitors and expressions. These are distress, disgust, interest, endogenous pleasure, and fright. At the age of 2 to 3 years, about 15 emotion qualities are differentiated, according to the elicitors, inferred appraisal patterns, and perceivable expressions (Camras, 2022; Holodynski & Seeger, 2019; Sroufe, 1996). These emotion qualities are joy, amusement, affection, distress, frustration and anger, fear, disgust, interest, surprise, jealousy, and embarrassment as well as the moral emotions of pride, shame, guilt, and compassion that enable children to consider the concerns of others in their own actions long before they are capable of metacognitive perspective taking. 7.1.2.2 From Coregulation to Self-Regulation by Emotions This developmental trajectory deals with the question of whose actions are regulated by an elicited emotion. Emotional development can be described as a shift in the way emotions regulate subsequent actions during an emotion episode, namely from comprehensive coregulation by parents to self-regulation of actions by emotions in older children (Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2006). As Sroufe (1996, p. 151) puts it, “In fact, the general course of emotional development may be described as movement from dyadic regulation to self-regulation of emotion. Moreover, dyadic regulation represents a prototype for self-regulation;

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the roots of individual differences in the self-regulation of emotion lie within the distinctive patterns of dyadic regulation.” In infants, the main function of emotions is to regulate the actions of their parents by the expression of emotions. A cry expressing distress does not lead an infant to engage in any actions. Instead, it is directed toward influencing their parent’s mind and leads them to perform the necessary action to satisfy the infant’s need, which will stop the infant’s crying. Alongside the aforementioned differentiation of emotions, children learn a variety of actions in their first years of life that enable them to autonomously satisfy some of their concerns and needs signaled via their emotions, such as fetching things for themselves, handling everyday objects and extending their range of mobility. As a consequence, by the age of 3, they can already carry out a number of need-serving actions by themselves, making them less dependent on vicarious regulation by their caregivers. Children need to learn to address their emotions as signaled by expressions not only so that their caregivers respond, for example by comforting them when they are sad, but also so they can use their emotional feelings and expressions acquired during coregulation for their own self-regulation. They should start using their feelings as an appeal to the self to carry out the necessary actions alone, for example by comforting themselves when they are sad. This transition to self-regulation of actions by emotions is a very lengthy process extending across the entire preschool age and into the elementary school age (Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2006).

7.1.2.3 From Unreflective to Reflective Emotions Feeling an ongoing emotion from a first-person, present-tense perspective is not the same as being aware that one is currently feeling an emotion. For example, a person in a life-threatening situation may feel an overwhelming urge to run away. However, only during a short rest in a hiding place may the person become aware that what they are feeling is fear. Fogel (2009) labels the former state of feelings as embodied selfawareness and the latter state of mediated feelings as conceptual selfawareness, because, in the latter scenario, the protagonist can label their feelings and can describe them with gestures and words. Lambie (2009) also differentiates in a similar fashion between so-called unreflective and reflective emotions. Conceptual self-awareness is not innate. It develops during early childhood and is a necessary prerequisite for becoming able to regulate one’s own emotions volitionally (Holodynski, 2017; Holodynski & Seeger, 2019). One of the pivotal characteristics of emotions is that they are felt as involuntarily happening to the person and are accompanied by a strong urge to act (or to withdraw from acting) (Frijda, 1986).

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Controlling this (emotional) urge to act requires the ability to psychologically distance, such that one can acknowledge “I am currently in an emotional state and can thereby reflect on possible alternatives to the strong impulse to take action provided by the emotion I feel.” In their Affective Social Competence Model, Halberstadt and colleagues (2001) describe four levels of such an ability: (1) the protagonist becomes aware that they are feeling something like an emotion; (2) they can label the felt emotion and its elicitor; (3) they fully understand its significance in the given context and the possibility of regulating their feelings and/or expressions; and (4) they can choose emotion regulation strategies for regulating their emotion appropriately. An even more highly developed ability is the ability to anticipate which emotion may be elicited in a forthcoming situation in order to decide how to regulate the emotion in advance, which is much easier than regulating an already elicited emotion. Gross and Thompson (2007) label this type of regulation as situation selection and modification. Becoming aware of one’s feelings and labeling them is a challenging task (Gebauer, 2012; Lambie, 2009). At first glance, it seems similar to perceiving and labeling a property of an object. For example, one can say, “this dog is black” because of its evident color or “this person is happy” because of the smile on their face. However, this kind of labeling does not apply to the subjective state of a feeling, which is, by definition, a sensation that is accessible only to the person experiencing it and nobody else (Gebauer, 2012). Therefore, a first challenge for parents and a child is to refer an emotion term to a mental state, the child’s feeling, that cannot be observed from the outside. A second challenge is that children can observe their parents’ emotional expressions and corresponding antecedents and consequences but cannot observe their parents’ feelings. During their own emotional episodes, children may experience many subjective sensations but are not yet able to link these sensations to an image of how these sensations may look from the outside in the form of perceivable expressions, which is especially the case for facial expressions. Therefore, for a child to assign a word or an expression to a subjective feeling and not just to an expression, this requires that they already have the ability in question: being aware of one’s feelings. How can children acquire the ability of becoming conceptually aware of their embodied feelings? Emotional expressions can serve as an interface between embodied and conceptual feelings, as postulated in so-called feedback theories of emotions. These theories have a long but also controversial tradition in psychology (Russell, 2014). The core idea is that a perceivable expression is the connecting link that is represented as a subjective sensation for the sender (the feeling component) but also as a perceivable expressive behavior for the receiver (Holodynski, 2017;

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Holodynski & Seeger, 2019). An important task of parents during early infant–caregiver interactions is to help their child grasp this relationship between feeling and expression and establish a mode of mutual reassurance by referring to feelings via expression signs. Gergely (2007) has formulated a social biofeedback theory of parental affect mirroring that shows how this task can be solved; Stern (1985) called it affect attunement. By observing infant–caregiver interactions in Western samples, both Gergely (2007) and Stern (1985) found that caregivers intuitively mirror their infants’ emotion-specific expressions in their own expressions. They do this using conventionalized, succinct expression signs that are marked clearly through exaggeration and repetition, which makes it possible to distinguish between when a caregiver is mirroring the child’s emotion and when the caregiver is showing a genuine emotion. This mirroring process provides children with a perceivable expression in others of the sensations they are currently feeling through their emotion in themselves. Because young children are capable of grasping contingencies in their flow of experiences, they learn that their parents are referring to their feeling when mirroring their expression, given sensitive parents who mirror their child’s expression appropriately. Fonagy et al. (2002) refer to this competence, called mentalization, as the capacity to ascribe and understand the mental states of others and of oneself (Midgley et al., 2017). At least for mothers in Western cultures, affect attunement is often observed during everyday mother-infant interactions with 2- to 12month-olds (Jonsson & Clinton, 2006). Infants from 10 months onward begin to understand the mirrored expressions as symbols that refer to their own corresponding feeling state. However, this understanding initially works only on the level of exchanging expressions. In a subsequent developmental task, children begin to assign words to feelings via expressions and begin to understand elicitors, consequences, and the social dynamic of an ongoing emotion episode; in turn, they acquire all three ability levels of full-blown reflective emotions (Álvarez et al., 2022; Holodynski, 2017, Itakura et al., 2013). In recent studies, reflective functioning has also been conceptualized to involve parents’ references to their children’s mental states in their sensitive affective and behavioral responses to their children’s needs and demands (Camoirano, 2017; Slade, 2005).

7.1.3 Differential Impact of Parents on the Development of Emotions For all three aforementioned developmental trajectories, parents play a pivotal role in supporting their children in mastering these developmental tasks (Morris et al., 2007). This is because children’s emotions develop in a social context that is mainly preselected and shaped by their

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caregivers, especially their parents, in their first years of life. Parents interpret their children’s emotional reactions against the background of both their cultural and their individual child-rearing attitudes. Different child-rearing attitudes are related to different child-rearing practices that result in different impacts on children’s development of emotions (Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2012; Röttger-Rössler et al., 2013). Three interrelated parental strategies can be identified that shape the actions and expressions of children in a given context. Whether this shaping contributes to a more functional or dysfunctional development seems to depend mainly on parental sensitivity, at least in Western cultures (Mesman et al., 2018), with parental sensitivity being defined as a caregiver’s ability to perceive and infer the meaning behind the infant’s behavioral and expressive signals and to respond to these promptly and appropriately. In the long run, differential parental childrearing practices lead to both cultural and individual pathways of emotion differentiation (e.g. Kärtner et al., 2013; Keller et al., 2018).

7.1.3.1 Preselection of Contexts Parents preselect the contexts in which their infants and children grow up, which enables and restricts their modes of experience. For example, when parents strongly encourage their infants to have face-to-face interactions and provide opportunities for object manipulation and exploration, as many parents in Western cultures do, they enable their infants’ early experiences of self-efficacy, resulting in joy, but such interactions may also result in infants experiencing a loss of self-efficacy, resulting in frustration. In contrast, when parents favor a rather calm child, as they do in rural Nso in Cameroon or rural Bara in Madagascar, for example, they restrict infants from exciting exploration but enable close body contact and often feeding; this satisfies their infants’ needs, making it unnecessary for them to show distress through distress expressions (Kärtner et al., 2013). 7.1.3.2 Mirroring Children’s Expressions and Reflective Functioning Sensitive parents often model and mirror their children’s expressions from an early age. This provides the child with an image of what their inferred feeling looks like. This affect mirroring is not a mere copying of the child’s expression but a succinct, conventionalized pattern of emotion expression that is being assigned to the child. One result of this affect mirroring is that the child’s expressions are shaped toward more synchronized and conventionalized expression signs for the inferred emotion. A second result is that the child can match their actual feeling of an emotion to the corresponding expression of what their feeling looks like (Álvarez et al., 2022). In her review of empirical studies, Camoirano

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(2017) summarized that maternal reflective functioning correlates with quality of caregiving (even in clinical samples), correlates with children’s own reflective functioning and promotes children’s understanding of emotions and their emotional self-regulation. Low maternal reflective functioning was correlated with impairments in emotion regulation and children’s externalizing behaviors.

7.1.3.3 Modeling Children learn the elicitors of emotions not only through their own experiences but also through observing and imitating their parents’ emotional expressions, especially when confronted with new or ambiguous objects, people or situations. From the age of 10 months onward, children start using the signaled conventionalized expressions of their parents as social referencing for how to feel toward ambiguous elicitors (Vandivier & Hertenstein, 2013); this is especially the case for elicitors of fear (e.g. de Rosnay et al., 2006). Taken together, infants’ precursor emotions develop into fully functioning emotions. Parents support this development by appropriately interpreting their infant’s expressions and body reactions, mirroring them in their own expressions in the form of succinct expression displays, and responding promptly with actions that meet their child’s signaled needs. Hence, emotional development and processing in infants are initially shared between the child and caregiver. Starting with coregulation initiated by the caregiver, the infant develops an increasingly autonomous regulation of their actions by their own elicited emotions.

7.2 Development of a Reflective Form of Emotion Regulation 7.2.1 Relation between Emotion and Emotion Regulation The aforementioned shift from coregulation to self-regulation is also related to the emergence of a reflective form of regulating one’s own emotions by volitionally applying emotion regulation strategies. This regulation of emotions is called emotion regulation and can be defined in line with Thompson (1994, pp. 27–28) as “extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions, especially their intensive and temporal features, to accomplish one’s goal.” The concept of emotion regulation has been defined in multiple ways. In a broader sense, every action associated with the modification of emotions could be seen as emotion regulation (Thompson, 1994). However, from a developmental perspective, we find it critically important to distinguish regulation by emotion from regulation of emotion

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(Gross & Thompson 2007; Holodynski et al., 2013). Both constitute developmental achievements during children’s development, but they occur at different ages. Regulation by an emotion refers to an action readiness that is inherent to the emotion itself (Frijda, 1986), for example, the avoidance of gaze in situations of (social) overstimulation or fleeing in situations of fear. This process develops relatively early in ontogenesis (Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2006). By contrast, regulation of an emotion refers to situations that arise when the individual first experiences an emotion and then tries to regulate it, for example, they avoid looking at an attractive gift in a situation that requires delaying gratification. Thus, the emotion and its associated action readiness are no longer the motivating force of behavior but are the target process that becomes regulated. In this case, emotion regulation is based on the volitional inhibition or modification of an elicited emotion so that the dominant action readiness of an emotion is not enacted but replaced by a subdominant behavioral alternative (Campos et al., 2004). In the following discussion, this process is referred to as reflective emotion regulation (Holodynski et al., 2013).

7.2.2 Emotional Awareness and Acquisition of Emotion Regulation Strategies The acquisition of a reflective mode of emotion regulation is an endeavor that takes one’s whole childhood and consists of at least two intertwined abilities: (1) transitioning unreflective emotions into reflective emotions, that is, becoming aware of one’s own and others’ emotions and (2) acquiring emotion regulation strategies and using them appropriately. Most recent parental intervention programs, such as Tuning in to Kids, Parent–Child Interaction Therapy-Emotion Development and Emotion Enhanced Triple P, address both abilities (but in slightly different terms) with empirically confirmed success, especially concerning improved parenting behavior (England-Mason & Gonzalez, 2020).

7.2.2.1 Transitioning Unreflective Emotions into Reflective Emotions The ability to perform this transition has been already described in Section 7.1.2, Trajectories of Emotional Development. Becoming aware of a currently felt emotion and understanding its relational meaning in the specific context enables children to psychologically distance themselves from the spontaneous action readiness of the felt emotion; this distancing facilitates the selection and application of an appropriate regulation strategy. However, only a few intervention programs explicitly mention the strategy of affect mirroring as a first step in triggering emotional awareness (Silkenbeumer et al., 2016). Most of them start with the second step, labeling, exploring, and validating the inferred feeling of

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the child, which is suitable only when the child is already aware of their feelings (England-Mason & Gonzalez, 2020; Gottman et al., 1997).

7.2.2.2 Acquiring Emotion Regulation Strategies Gross and Thompson (2007) distinguish four classes of regulation strategies: distraction, reappraisal, soothing, and response modulation. These strategies have their primary impact at different points in the emotion-generative process, but any of these strategies can lead to the desired behavioral outcome, that is, effective emotion regulation. For instance, whereas distraction strategies shift the focus to a new event that establishes a new line of consecutive emotion-generative processes (e.g. appraisal, action readiness, feeling) resulting in a different emotion, response modulation strategies directly operate on the level of the behavioral inclination and either inhibit the impulse or transform it to an appropriate response. During the preschool years, children establish an increasing repertoire of effective emotion regulation strategies. Early in the second year, a significant developmental achievement can be seen in social referencing and the self-initiation of interpersonal regulation. Hence, an intentional search for social support is considered a rudimentary form of selfregulation. During the second and third years, there is a transition from using passive to more active strategies of emotion regulation, and, as a consequence, the two first truly self-initiated strategies emerge, namely distracting oneself from emotion-eliciting events and self-soothing (Bridges & Grolnick, 1995; Calkins & Hill, 2007; Spinrad et al., 2004). During preschool years, children learn advanced forms of mentalizing (Matthews et al., 2018) and self-distancing (Grenell et al., 2019) that enables them to become aware of their emotional and motivational action readiness and to inhibit and modify them by applying a regulation strategy on them. The latter ability is also called “hot executive functions” because they are directed to emotional and motivational action readiness and their volitional inhibition and modification in contrast to “cool executive functions” that are directed to thoughts and actions and their volitional inhibition and modification (Zelazo et al., 2005). Together with further sociocognitive achievements, such as normative development that enables thinking based on rules and social norms (Rakoczy & Schmidt, 2013), children refine their skills to modulate emotionally triggered behavioral inclinations, and they acquire increasingly complex cognitive regulation strategies, such as reappraisal strategies, that allow them to satisfy their motives in socially coordinated and accepted ways. Regulation of behavior and emotions that are disapproved of can also be achieved by acquiring and eliciting moral emotions such as

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compassion, shame, and guilt, which trigger a strong readiness to override the ostracized behavior (Hofmann & Doan, 2018). The acquisition of emotion regulation strategies can also be described as a shift from coregulation to self-regulation, as was already stated for the action regulating function of emotions. The internalization model of reflective emotion regulation addresses the gradual transition that occurs as a child acquires increasingly self-regulated levels of emotion regulation (Silkenbeumer et al., 2016, 2018). During infancy and early childhood, parents’ and other caregivers’ focus is primarily on coregulation by their child’s emotions, that is, they interpret their child’s emotion expressions as appeals to carry out suitable actions on behalf of the child. However, as children grow older, parents increasingly start to apply coregulation of their child’s emotions, as defined previously, when they use distraction or soothing strategies when the intended action would be infeasible or inappropriate, for example, when a young child starts crying because their father prevents them from picking up a sharp knife, as it would be inappropriate to let the child have the knife. In social interaction, parents introduce culturally generated emotion regulation strategies that, in the course of development, their child can adopt and internalize as mental functions. The internalization model of reflective emotion regulation (Silkenbeumer et al., 2016) postulates three different levels that specify the strategies used by parents and the implications that these levels have for child development (see also Figure 7.1). At Level 1 (substitutional emotion regulation), parents adopt all components of reflective emotion regulation. Thus, it is the parent who becomes

Figure 7.1 The internalization model of reflective emotion regulation

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aware of their child’s emotion by mirroring it, understands its significance and decides whether and how an emotion needs to be regulated, and does so where necessary, for example, by soothing or distracting the child. At Level 2 (specific prompts), parents start prompting the child to carry out simple actions that enable a modification of the emotion in question. More specifically, coregulation is characterized by providing specific prompts that the child should follow. This might, for example, be an instruction to follow a specific rule (e.g. to take turns), to take a deep breath, or to play with the building blocks instead of the ball. This level of coregulation helps the child to establish a basic repertoire of effective behavioral routines to regulate emotions. Children can adopt the used strategy, the verbal instructions, into their repertoire by instructing themselves how to behave in order to regulate an elicited emotion. At Level 3 (metacognitive prompts), caregivers use metacognitive prompts that leave the generation, selection, and application of strategies to the child: more specifically, caregivers prompt the child either to choose from a set of alternative appraisals or responses and execute the self-chosen alternative or to generate alternative appraisals or behavioral responses. This level of coregulation supports the child in flexibly exploring and evaluating alternative regulation strategies and in choosing and executing a specific regulation strategy from a set of possible responses. Through these different levels of coregulation, children regulate emotions in increasingly self-regulated ways: they become aware of their inner feeling states (starting at Level 1), they establish a repertoire of effective strategies to regulate emotions (starting at Level 2), and they start to generate alternative strategies and select and enact one of these alternatives (starting at Level 3). Unlike other approaches (e.g. Crick & Dodge, 1994; Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000), this model postulates a formative phase in which self-regulation is critically constituted by the way in which caregivers coregulate emotionally challenging episodes.

7.2.3 Parents’ Influences on the Development of Coregulation Both correlational and intervention studies support the claims of the internalization model of reflective emotion regulation. For instance, a gradual transition occurs from parents to their child regarding who initiates emotion regulation, and parents’ coregulation decreases as children acquire the necessary skills for self-regulation (Grolnick et al., 1998; Holodynski & Friedlmeier, 2006). Although parents initially adopt distraction and soothing strategies, children increasingly apply these strategies themselves (Bridges & Grolnick, 1995; Sroufe, 1996). Furthermore, evidence suggests that a shift occurs from more substitutional strategies that are typically provided at Level 1 or 2 (e.g. distraction, soothing) to

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more instructive and reflective ways of coregulation that are provided at Level 2 or 3 (e.g. prompts for reappraisal or response modulation). Importantly, these age-dependent changes support children’s emotion regulation competence concurrently and prospectively (Morris et al., 2011; Putnam et al., 2002). Following a transactional approach, Silkenbeumer et al. (2018, 2022) showed that, first, caregivers’ (i.e. preschool teachers’) coregulation was sensitive to children’s developmental status. More specifically, the likelihood of coregulation decreased across the preschool years, and caregivers more often coregulated using metacognitive prompts when children had higher levels of socioemotional competence. Furthermore, caregivers were more likely to use distraction, reappraisal, and soothing strategies when children were sad, whereas they were more likely to apply response modulation strategies when children were angry (Silkenbeumer et al., 2022). Second, the findings suggest that children were more likely to carry out a specific strategy successfully when this strategy was prompted by their caregiver and, for older children, when caregivers used metacognitive prompts (Silkenbeumer et al., 2018, 2022). For parents, converging evidence from correlational studies (for a meta-analysis, see Zinsser et al., 2021), intervention studies (for a review, see England-Mason & Gonzalez, 2020) and experimental studies (e.g. Loop & Roskam, 2016) indicates that parents’ coregulation can be improved and has immediate and long-term effects on children’s effective emotion regulation.

7.3 Outlook The aim of this chapter was to embed the development of emotion and emotion regulation in a broader sociocultural context by emphasizing the constitutive role of culturally saturated social interaction between caregivers and their children. At the same time, the proposed models are normative in that they clearly focus on children’s explicit emotional awareness and reflective, rational forms of emotion regulation, which is a specific approach to emotion regulation that characterizes Western cultures (Kärtner et al., 2013; Keller & Kärtner, 2013). As outlined in this chapter, becoming aware of feelings is fostered through specific parenting strategies in the coregulation of children’s emotions, especially affect mirroring, modeling, labeling, and validating children’s emotions. Later in development, caregivers help children to build an increasingly complex repertoire of regulation strategies by supporting emotion regulation at different levels through the provision of specific and, when appropriate, metacognitive prompts. Most of the recent parental intervention

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programs mentioned here consider one or more of these prerequisites. Based on this framework, we highlight three important directions for future research.

7.3.1 Developing Measures of Emerging Emotional Awareness Although the theories on the early emergence of emotional awareness are well established, direct measures of emotional awareness mainly rely on self-report, that is, the labeling by the subject of their own emotions, or emotional awareness is inferred indirectly from the labeling of others’ emotions (which similarly depends on advanced language development) or from other downstream developmental attainments such as successful emotion regulation. In order to better document the developmental emergence of emotional awareness and to test the relation between emotional awareness and emotion regulation more directly, the construction of methods beyond verbal self-reports is needed to assess emotional awareness in young children. One promising approach is measures that are based on the action readiness of the elicited emotion. For instance, in the study by Kortas-Hartmann (2013), children’s feelings of pride that prototypically lead to a stretching of the body with raised arms were translated into an upward movement of a marker on a vertical scale (in the study, a 1 m scale was used). The more intense the child’s sensation of stretching and raising arms, the higher up the scale the marker moved. The opposite movement was used for signaling the intensity of disappointment, corresponding to a collapsing of the body and a downward movement of the marker on the vertical one-meter scale. These nonverbal measures correlated with the valence and intensity of a pride elicitor resulting in an upward movement of the marker and of a disappointment elicitor resulting in a downward movement of the marker, as well as with the intensity of displayed expressions (Kortas-Hartmann, 2013).

7.3.2 Probing the Function of Affect Mirroring across Childhood Although affect mirroring is a key concept of emotion development during infancy, its role during childhood needs to be further analyzed. Although most concepts and programs (e.g. the emotion coaching of Gottman et al., 1997 or Havighurst et al., 2009) mainly rely on labeling, exploring, and validating children’s emotions, we propose that mirroring children’s affect retains an important function beyond infancy, and maybe even beyond childhood: it creates a closer connection with others, signals acceptance, and catalyzes awareness of others’ emotions. First evidence for such a function is provided by Silkenbeumer et al. (2022), showing that preschool teachers’ initial mirroring of their children’s emotion helps them to show self-regulation in emotionally challenging

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episodes that occur during natural observation. Beyond replication, it would be promising to provide experimental support for the function of affect mirroring for children’s emotion regulation.

7.3.3 Complementing Reflective Emotion Regulation with Regulation by Moral Emotions The first two perspectives for future research are situated within the framework elaborated here; the third perspective aims at complementing the ideal of reflective emotion regulation with other mechanisms supporting socially appropriate experience and behavior. Although reflective forms of emotion regulation are often emphasized in parental training programs as the “royal road” to regulating inappropriate emotional reactions, inappropriate reactions can also be regulated by moral emotions such as shame or guilt. These emotions can be elicited through reappraisal strategies. In fact, these coregulation strategies occur across cultures, but are evaluated very differently: although they are typically associated with an emotion-dismissive meta-emotion philosophy in Western culture, they are evaluated very positively in other cultures (Quinn, 2005; Röttger-Rössler et al., 2013, 2015). The framework elaborated here clearly leans toward a normative perspective on the self (i.e. mirroring and validating disruptive emotions such as anger as well as self-enhancing emotions such as pride, but minimizing emotions that may harm children’s self-esteem such as shame; see, for instance, Miller et al., 1997). However, an interesting perspective lies in synthesizing these approaches and elaborating the healthy function of regulating moral emotions (e.g. guilt and shame) within this framework.

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Stern, D. N. (1985). The interpersonal world of the infant. A view from psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. Basic Books. Thompson, R. A. (1994). Emotion regulation: A theme in search of definition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(2–3), 25–52. Vandivier, L. E., & Hertenstein, M. J. (2013). Social referencing in infancy: Important findings and future directions. In C. Mohiyeddini, M. Eysenck, & S. Bauer (Eds.), Handbook of psychology of emotions: Vol, 1. Recent theoretical perspectives and novel empirical findings (pp. 81–85). Nova Science Publishers. Zelazo, P. D., Qu, L., & Müller, U. (2005). Hot and cool aspects of executive function: Relations in early development. In W. Schneider, R. SchumannHengsteler, & B. Sodian (Eds.), Young children’s cognitive development: Interrelationships among executive functioning, working memory, verbal ability, and theory of mind (pp. 71–93). Lawrence Erlbaum. Zinsser, K. M., Gordon, R. A., & Jiang, X. (2021). Parents’ socialization of preschool-aged children’s emotion skills: A meta-analysis using an emotionfocused parenting practices framework. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 55, 377–390. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2021.02.001

CHAPTER 8

Parental Assistance with Children’s Extrinsic Emotion Regulation across Development Emily M. Cohodes and Dylan G. Gee

Though many questions remain about the specific ways in which emotion regulatory processes function in the context of relationships across the life span (Zaki & Williams, 2013), it is well understood that emotion regulation is prominently socialized with caregivers, in the context of children’s first relationships (Diaz & Eisenberg, 2015; Kiel & Kalomiris, 2015; Murray et al., 2019). From birth through adolescence, parents play a critical role in supporting children’s development of their intrinsic capacity to regulate their own emotions (Dozier et al., 2018; Gianino & Tronick, 1988; Hofer, 1994; Katz & Hunter, 2007; Pratt et al., 2015), and the impact of this socialization is profound (Tan et al., 2020). The ability to regulate one’s emotions effectively has been found to buffer individuals from developing psychopathology later in life (e.g. Kim & Cicchetti, 2010), and, conversely, emotion regulation difficulties in childhood are associated with behavioral problems across the life span (e.g. Halligan et al., 2013). Children undergo a dramatic shift from full reliance on parents for external regulation in infancy to the intrinsic capacity for self-regulation later in development (Grolnick et al., 2006; Thompson & Goodman, 2010). Paralleling this shift, the nature of parents’ specific role in scaffolding children’s emotion regulation also shifts as children mature (see Gee & Cohodes, 2021). Despite the dynamic nature of parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation, across development and even into adulthood, parents consistently exert a powerful influence on children’s socioemotional development via both implicit and explicit efforts to teach children to identify, express, and regulate emotions (Saarni, 1999). In this chapter, we employ a neurobehavioral lens to focus on parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation as a key construct of parental emotion socialization. We begin by grounding our understanding of the critical role of parents in assisting children in regulating emotions in

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the cross-species literature delineating the neurobiological underpinnings of parental involvement in children’s emotion regulation. With this framework in place, we next review the current literature on parental assistance with children’s emotions – with a focus on Gottman’s metaemotion philosophy – and review associations between parental beliefs about the optimal role of parents in assisting children in regulating their emotions – at the non-strategy-specific level – and children’s developmental outcomes. Third, we discuss the importance of a new line of research focused on assessing parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation at the strategy-specific level and review recent advances in the measurement of this construct. Finally, we discuss future directions in the study of parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation, with an emphasis on the development of additional and more varied measurement tools, establishment of normative trajectories of parental assistance with children’s execution of specific strategies, and investigation of neurobiological bases of parental assistance with child emotion regulation – at the strategy-specific level – across development.

8.1 Neurobiological Bases of Parental Assistance with Children’s Emotion Regulation Humans have evolved to expect the presence of a predictable, safe, and supportive caregiver, and decades of research have demonstrated the importance of such relationships early in life in supporting children’s healthy socioemotional (for a review, see Gee & Cohodes, 2021), cognitive, and behavioral development (Ellis et al., 2009; Gee, 2020; Glynn & Baram, 2019; Mason et al., 2019; Tottenham, 2012). Burgeoning crossspecies evidence suggests that caregivers directly affect children’s emotional development by influencing the neurobiological systems that govern emotion regulation (Callaghan et al., 2019; Callaghan & Tottenham, 2016; Gee, 2016; Gee et al., 2014; Gunnar & Donzella, 2002; Hostinar et al., 2015; Tottenham, 2015). Corticolimbic circuitry, specifically the amygdala, involved in detecting emotionally salient stimuli in the environment; the hippocampus, a structure central to learning and memory; and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which is implicated in regulating amygdala reactivity, may be particularly susceptible to caregiving influences. Specifically, the presence of a caregiver has been shown to both reduce hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity by suppressing cortisol activity (Hostinar et al., 2014) and to modulate mPFC-amygdala connectivity such that amygdala reactivity to emotionally-valenced stimuli is suppressed in the presence of a caregiver (Gee et al., 2014). These results echo findings from the animal literature

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that caregiver presence suppresses corticosterone and amygdala activity in rodent pups (Moriceau & Sullivan, 2006) and, together, set up the basis of our understanding of the salient biological influence of caregiver presence on the capacity for self-regulation among offspring. Further, the neurobiological bases of caregiver involvement in extrinsic regulation of children’s emotions are dynamic and likely change across development (Callaghan et al., 2019; Callaghan & Tottenham, 2016; Gee, 2016; Gee & Casey, 2015; Gee et al., 2014; Gunnar & Donzella, 2002; Hostinar et al., 2015; Tottenham, 2015). When corticolimbic circuitry is still developing, caregivers exert a critical external regulatory function (Callaghan & Tottenham, 2016; Gee, 2016; Gee et al., 2014). However, across development, the centrality of caregivers’ provision of extrinsic regulation may fade as children become more reliant on intrinsic regulatory capacities and as other attachment figures outside of the nuclear family take on increased salience in the coregulatory relationships of an adolescent (Gee, 2016; Hostinar et al., 2014; see Figure 8.1). In other words, there may be a normative decrease in the potency of a caregiver’s presence on child emotion regulation across human development, such that parents are able to provide more significant extrinsic regulation of neurobiological correlates of offspring emotion (e.g. amygdala reactivity or cortisol reactivity) in younger versus more mature youth (Gee et al., 2014; Hostinar et al., 2015). This line of research has underscored the key role of parents in modulating child emotion regulatory capacities – merely by their presence in children’s lives – and has highlighted potential neurobiological processes underlying parental facilitation of children’s emerging emotion regulation; however, key questions remain in this line of work to fully understand how parental support of children’s emotion regulation “gets under the skin.” As we review in this chapter, advances in this area will likely by rooted in a bridging of biological and behavioral inquiries related to parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation.

8.2 Correlates of Parental Assistance with Children’s Emotion Regulation: The Broad Influence of Gottman’s Meta-emotion Philosophy A substantial body of work has elucidated processes by which parents socialize their children’s emotional development by assisting children in effectively regulating their emotions. Perhaps most notably, Gottman’s extensive work on parental meta-emotion philosophy posits that parents have an organized set of beliefs about children’s emotions, including their awareness, acceptance, and assistance with regulation of their children’s negative emotions. These beliefs underlie specific parental behaviors in

152 Figure 8.1 Caregiver influences on corticolimbic circuitry underlying emotion regulation across development. Evidence from both human and animal studies points to a potential sensitive period, spanning infancy and toddlerhood, during which caregiver inputs to the developing brain may have a particularly salient impact on the development of corticolimbic

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response to children’s displays of negative affect, and, in turn, Gottman’s theory posits, these beliefs exert a powerful influence on child development, shaping myriad developmental outcomes ranging from biological responsivity to stress to cognitive development (Gottman et al., 1997; Katz & Windecker-Nelson, 2004). The parental awareness tenet of Gottman’s tripartite meta-emotion philosophy refers to a parent’s receptivity to a child’s emotional displays encompassing the degree to which parents recognize, describe, and demonstrate engagement with children’s emotions. Parental acceptance describes the degree to which parents are comfortable with a child’s emotions, and the parental assistance tenet specifically refers to the degree to which parents engage in assisting their children in identifying the emotions they are experiencing, show respect for their children’s expression of emotion, and actively engage in helping children cope with situations that elicit negative emotions for children using developmentally-appropriate regulation strategies (Gottman et al., 1996, 1997). Within the Gottman framework, parents who exhibit high levels of awareness, acceptance, and assistance of their children’s negative emotions view their children’s displays of negative emotion as opportunities to promote increased and more varied use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies, to build intimacy with their children, and to scaffold their child’s development of coping strategies when faced with situations that may trigger negative emotions. Among typically-developing children, children whose parents exhibit high levels of awareness, acceptance, and assistance with their children’s negative emotions have been found to exhibit a relatively increased capacity for self-regulation (e.g. more adaptive physiological reactivity to stress,

Figure 8.1 (cont.) circuitry underlying emotion regulation. Specifically, caregiver inputs that are predictable and that are associated with safety may promote healthy neurodevelopment such that caregivers are able to support youth emotion regulation via modulation of this circuitry in later developmental stages. During infancy and toddlerhood, caregivers play a central role in regulating human amygdala function. As corticolimbic circuitry (e.g., functional connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and amygdala) matures, children experience a shift from greater reliance on extrinsic emotion regulation (e.g., caregiving influences) to greater reliance on intrinsic emotion regulation. This transition also corresponds to a shift in the role of the caregiver in supporting the child’s development, as the child faces novel tasks and compounding developmental challenges at each stage. Figure reproduced with permission from Gee & Cohodes, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2021.

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more facility in employing emotion regulation skills, higher levels of effortful control), as well as lower levels of externalizing and internalizing problems, and better academic performance and cognitive function (BrajšaŽganec, 2014; Chen et al., 2012; Cohodes et al., 2016; Gerhardt et al., 2020; Gottman et al., 1996; Katz & Hunter, 2007). Sampling from this broad literature, in a longitudinal study that followed children from preschool to middle childhood, children whose parents exhibited high levels of awareness, acceptance, and assistance with their children’s negative emotions – namely anger and sadness – had higher levels of inhibitory control, higher rates of academic achievement, and better physical health, relative to their counterparts whose parents did not exhibit such a meta-emotion profile (Gottman et al., 1996). Relative to children whose parents engaged in lower levels of awareness, acceptance, and assistance with children’s negative emotions, both preschool-age and school-age children of parents who engaged in higher levels of these three meta-emotion strategies were found to have better peer relationships (Denham et al., 1997; Hooven et al., 1995), suggesting that parental assistance with negative emotions – as an aspect of a parent’s working meta-emotion philosophy – may promote children’s adaptive socioemotional functioning across development. It is important to note that associations between parental meta-emotion philosophy and children’s self-regulation and socioemotional functioning may also be driven by shared genetic variance between parents and children (e.g. Wang & Saudino, 2013). Future studies should aim to disentangle these factors via empirical research that examines a range of psychobiological factors in the context of parental influences on children’s emotion regulation. In addition, several studies have examined the function of parental assistance with children’s negative emotions in clinical populations, most notably among children exposed to stress. Parents who engage in high levels of awareness, acceptance, and assistance with their children’s negative emotions may more effectively buffer children from developing both internalizing and externalizing problems following exposure to trauma (Johnson & Lieberman, 2007; Katz & Windecker-Nelson, 2006). Parental assistance with children’s negative emotions, specifically, appears to be an important driver of this effect such that high levels of parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation appear to moderate the effect of stress on children’s development of symptomatology (Cohodes et al., 2017, 2021; Katz & Windecker-Nelson, 2006). Current theory posits that this buffering effect may be due to the fact that parents’ baseline tendency to assist their children with engaging in effective emotion regulation may bolster children’s intrinsic capacity for regulation of negative emotion during periods of heightened stress (Ellis et al., 2014; Wu et al., 2020). Although the parental assistance component of Gottman’s metaemotion philosophy has served as a key foundation for questions about

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the effects of parental support of children’s emotion regulation on child development, this line of research has been limited by the fact that Gottman’s parental assistance construct encompasses both parental beliefs and behaviors related to children’s displays of negative emotion. Thus, studies relying solely on Gottman-based coding of parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation render it difficult to isolate correlates of direct parental assistance of children’s regulation of their own emotions, and, further, parental assistance with specific emotion regulatory strategies, which has motivated recent advances in assessment of parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation.

8.3 Parental Assistance with Children’s Emotion Regulation at the Strategy-Specific Level: Advances in Measurement of the Construct In addition to Gottman’s meta-emotion philosophy framework, multiple assessment tools have been validated to measure parental beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in response to children’s negative emotions. For example, the Parents’ Beliefs about Children’s Emotions Questionnaire (Halberstadt et al., 2013) assesses the degree to which parents believe that children’s negative emotions are valuable or dangerous. The Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (Fabes et al., 1990) assesses parents’ tendency to react to displays of negative emotions with expressive encouragement or punishment by querying parental responses to a series of vignettes. In addition, several measures assess parental awareness of their children’s own internal emotion regulatory processes. For example, based on Gottman’s meta-emotion philosophy, the Emotion-Related Parenting Styles Self-Test (Hakim-Larson et al., 2006) queries parents’ perception of their children’s awareness of negative emotion and receptivity to discussing emotional content with others. Despite this growing area of research and the number of assessment tools available to query parental beliefs, awareness, and behaviors related to children’s emotions, there is a dearth of research on parental assistance with children’s execution of specific emotion regulation strategies. Further, increasingly, evidence from studies comparing the adaptive function of different emotion regulatory strategies among adults has indicated that certain strategies (e.g. reappraisal, problem-solving, acceptance) are more effective at changing an individual’s affective state (Aldao & Christensen, 2015), as compared to other strategies (e.g. suppression, rumination, and avoidance), which have been conceptualized as dysfunctional strategies due to their theorized contribution to the development of psychopathology (e.g. Aldao & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2010). Despite

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empirical support for associations between a variety of strategies and the development of psychopathology (e.g. Aldao et al., 2010; Izadpanah et al., 2016; Ruiz, 2010), the majority of current measures of emotion regulation only assess a small subset of strategies (e.g. Emotion Regulation Questionnaire [Gross & John, 2003]; Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents [Gullone & Taffe, 2012]; Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale [Gratz & Roemer, 2004]; Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire [Garnefski et al., 2002]). Representing a major advance in this line of work, the recentlydeveloped Parental Assistance with Children’s Emotion Regulation (PACER) Questionnaire (Cohodes et al., 2022) assesses parental assistance of child emotion regulation from birth to age 17 across 10 different strategies spanning each phase of the extended process model (Gross, 1998, 2015) of emotion regulation. The PACER queries 50 caregiver-rated items (e.g. I help my child solve problems that are causing those feelings) that comprise five items querying each of the following strategies: acceptance, avoidance, behavioral disengagement, distraction, expressive suppression, problem-solving, reappraisal, rumination, social support search, and venting. To our knowledge, the PACER is the first instrument that comprehensively measures parental extrinsic emotion regulation via assessing parental assistance with children’s deployment of specific emotion regulation strategies. Development of this tool has afforded a preliminary exploration of associations between parents’ tendency to support specific emotion regulation strategies and children’s developmental outcomes. Initial results from the first two validation studies of this instrument have begun to further our understanding of the correlates of parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation at the strategy-specific level. Specifically, results of the initial validation study of the PACER suggest that parental assistance with their children’s execution of a certain emotion regulation strategy (e.g. reappraisal) is significantly associated with parents’ intrinsic use of that strategy to regulate their own emotions (Cohodes et al., 2021). In addition, preliminary results suggest that parents who broadly report high levels of scaffolding their children’s use of prototypically-maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (e.g. expressive suppression, rumination), coupled with low levels of scaffolding their children’s engagement with prototypicallyadaptive emotion regulation strategies (e.g. reappraisal), were more likely to report difficulty regulating their own negative emotions, poorer parentchild attachment quality, poorer meta-emotion and broad attunement to their children’s emotional experience, more negative reactions to their children’s displays of emotions, as well as higher levels of stress and psychopathology (Cohodes et al., 2021). These associations between parent-level factors and parental behavior regarding support of their children’s

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deployment of specific emotion regulation strategies motivate more thorough examination of the myriad influences on parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation, which is likely to have important implications for both prevention and intervention efforts in clinical settings. Relative to parents who reported high levels of assistance with children’s regulation using prototypically adaptive strategies, parents who engaged in higher levels of assistance with children’s deployment of maladaptive strategies also reported higher levels of symptomatology among their children (Cohodes et al., 2021). In addition, both validation studies to date provide evidence for age-related effects of caregiver assistance with specific emotion regulation strategies. In a sample of children under 5, child age was significantly positively correlated with parental assistance with problem-solving, reappraisal, and venting (Mancini et al., 2022). Further, the association between parental assistance with execution of specific strategies and children’s symptomatology appeared to be age specific such that, among younger children (aged 1.5–5), caregivers’ increased assistance with problem-solving, social support search, acceptance, and venting were associated with lower levels of both child internalizing and externalizing problems; conversely, among children aged 6–17, caregivers’ increased assistance with a different set of strategies (rumination and expressive suppression) were associated with increased symptomatology (Cohodes et al., 2021). Taken together, these findings suggest that, consistent with the dynamic role of caregivers in modulating neurobiological bases of emotion regulation, parental assistance with children’s execution of emotion regulation strategies – at the behavioral and strategy-specific level – may vary as a function of child age. One primary question surrounding parents’ scaffolding of children’s emotion regulation – at the strategy-specific level – is whether parents’ support of a broad range of specific strategies may cluster together, and, in turn, whether there are meaningful correlates of a parent’s tendency to engage in supporting a specific cluster of strategies versus another. In the second validation study of the PACER, Mancini and colleagues (2022) found that caregivers of children under 5 could indeed be effectively clustered into three groups pertaining to the degree to which parents reported supporting their child’s use of each of the 10 strategies queried by the PACER. This clustering analysis yielded three significant profiles: parents who assisted their children with “mostly adaptive” strategies (i.e. parents who reported above-average assistance with children’s execution of problem-solving, social support search, reappraisal, acceptance, and venting and who reported below-average assistance with children’s execution of behavioral disengagement, rumination, distraction, expression suppression, and avoidance); parents who assisted their children with “mostly maladaptive” strategies (i.e. parents who reported above-average

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assistance with children’s execution of behavioral disengagement, rumination, expressive suppression, and avoidance and who reported belowaverage support for problem-solving, social support search, reappraisal, acceptance, and venting); and, finally, parents who assisted their children with “mixed strategies” (i.e. parents who reported above-average assistance with children’s use of all strategies except for expressive suppression, which was below average; Mancini et al., 2022). Though correlates of assignment to a specific cluster of regulation strategies have yet to be examined empirically, this initial research invites future interrogation of family-level factors that predict and are associated with parents’ tendency to assist children in engaging with certain regulatory strategies. Also of note, findings from the first validation study of the PACER revealed that parents’ more generalized beliefs about their children’s emotions were related to many PACER scales representing parental assistance with children’s adoption of specific, isolated emotion regulation strategies (Cohodes et al., 2022). Parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation may be particularly nuanced such that parental assistance with specific strategies may not map onto highly related and aforementioned constructs such as Gottman’s meta-emotion philosophy. Therefore, assessment of parents’ specific profiles of assistance with a broader range of prototypically adaptive and maladaptive strategies is likely to yield a more detailed understanding of the complex ways in which parental assistance with emotion regulation influences child development. Though preliminary, development of the PACER establishes a foundation for future studies to examine developmental trajectories of children’s reliance on parental support for the execution of specific regulation strategies from infancy through adolescence. Results to date point to complex interactive effects between child age and strategy type and underscore a potential mechanism by which parental socialization of specific emotion regulation strategies may confer risk for children’s development of psychopathology (or, alternatively, may suggest that children with relatively higher levels of symptomatology may elicit more parental assistance with emotion regulation). Additional research using novel measures that assess parental assistance at the strategy-specific level is needed to understand these complex patterns.

8.4 Future Directions in the Study of Parental Assistance with Children’s Emotion Regulation Despite recent advances in the study of parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation, several key questions remain. First, with regard to measurement, paralleling the development of the PACER, development

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of assessment tools that query the degree to which youth engage in a variety of emotion regulation strategies (spanning all phases of the extended process model) will allow researchers to investigate concordance between parental assistance of children’s execution of specific strategies and children’s actual use of these strategies. Further, a child-report version of an instrument like the PACER that measures the degree to which children perceive their parent to be assisting them in executing specific emotion regulation strategies will also enrich our understanding of the association between parents’ self-reported tendencies to support children and children’s actual adoption of strategies. Ecological momentary assessment is gaining traction in the broader study of emotion (Colombo et al., 2020; Gee & Caballero, 2019) and will likely be a critical tool in further understanding the real-time, dynamic processes by which parents assist their children in executing specific emotion regulation strategies. In addition, the PACER focuses on assessment of parental assistance with a broad range of children’s negative emotions. Future assessment tools should aim to quantify the degree to which parents assist their children in regulating emotions at the level of discrete emotions. As it is well understood that parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation is a dynamic process that varies as a function of child age, future studies should focus on furthering our understanding of the developmental time course of parental assistance with specific emotion regulation strategies. Querying parental assistance with specific emotion regulation strategies in longitudinal samples of children and parents beginning in infancy and spanning adolescence will yield insight into the unique normative developmental time courses for parental assistance with specific strategies. Collecting behavioral data regarding parental tendency to support their children’s use of certain strategies in conjunction with neuroimaging data will allow for mapping of the behavioral correlates of parental assistance with emotion regulation onto observed changes in parents’ modulation of corticolimbic circuitry across development. Utilizing a multimodal approach to understand how parents, specifically, support their children’s adoption of specific emotion regulation strategies will yield important insight into the ways in which the quality or frequency of parental assistance with emotion regulation affects developing neural circuitry. Establishment of normative developmental curves for parental assistance with specific strategies will also lay the foundation for understanding how these processes may go awry in the context of stress exposure or in clinical populations. With an established understanding of normative parental assistance with specific emotion regulation strategies, researchers and clinicians alike will be better poised to identify parental assistance with emotion regulation as a treatment target in the context of both

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prevention and intervention efforts and to track changes in profiles of parental assistance over time and during treatment. Relatedly, future studies that begin to examine both parent- and child-related correlates of parental tendency to support certain clusters of regulation strategies (Mancini et al., 2022) will enable screening for potentially problematic patterns of parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation in clinical populations. In conclusion, the study of parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation is at a critical juncture. Our knowledge of both the neurobiological underpinnings of parental modulation of children’s emotion regulation, and the correlates of generalized parental assistance with emotion regulation, have laid the foundation for more nuanced measurement of parental assistance with emotion regulation at the strategy-specific level. The next wave of research that bridges the neurobiological and behavioral study of the effects of parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation promises to unveil deeper understanding about the myriad ways in which parents shape child development via involvement in the emotional lives of their children.

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Gee, D. G., & Caballero, C. (2019). Predicting mental health in adolescence: Frontoinsular circuitry, emotion in daily life, and risk for depression. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 4, 684–685. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2019.06.004 Gee, D. G., & Casey, B. J. (2015). The impact of developmental timing for stress and recovery. Neurobiology of Stress, 1, 184–194. https://doi.org/10.1016/j .ynstr.2015.02.001 Gee, D. G., & Cohodes, E. M. (2021). Caregiving influences on development: A sensitive period for biological embedding of predictability and safety cues. Current Directions in Psychological Science 30(5), 376–383. https://doi.org/10 .1177/09637214211015673 Gee, D. G., Gabard-Durnam, L., Telzer, E. H., Humphreys, K. L., Goff, B., Shapiro, M., Flannery, J., Lumian, D. S., Fareri, D. S., Caldera, C., & Tottenham, N. (2014). Maternal buffering of human amygdala-prefrontal circuitry during childhood but not during adolescence. Psychological Science, 25(11), 2067–2078. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614550878 Gerhardt, M., Feng, X., Wu, Q., Hooper, E. G., Ku, S., & Chan, M. H. (2020). A naturalistic study of parental emotion socialization: Unique contributions of fathers. Journal of Family Psychology, 34(2), 204–214. Gianino, A., & Tronick, E. Z. (1988). The mutual regulation model: The infant’s self and interactive regulation and coping and defensive capacities. In T. M. Field, P. M. McCabe, & N. Schneiderman (Eds.), Stress and coping across development (pp. 47–68). Lawrence Erlbaum. Glynn, L. M., & Baram, T. Z. (2019). The influence of unpredictable, fragmented parental signals on the developing brain. Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, 53, Article 100736. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yfrne.2019.01.002 Gottman, J. M., Katz, L. F., & Hooven, C. (1996). Parental meta-emotion philosophy and the emotional life of families: Theoretical models and preliminary data. Journal of Family Psychology, 10(3), 243–268. Gottman, J. M., Katz, L. F., & Hooven, C. (1997). Meta-emotion: How families communicate. Routledge. Gratz, K. L., & Roemer, L. (2004). Multidimensional assessment of emotion regulation and dysregulation: Development, factor structure, and initial validation of the difficulties in emotion regulation scale. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 26(1), 41–54. Grolnick, W. S., McMenamy, J. M., & Kurowski, C. O. (2006). Emotional selfregulation in infancy and toddlerhood. In L. Balter & C. S. Tamis-LeMonda (Eds.), Child psychology: A handbook of contemporary issues (pp. 3–25). Psychology Press. Gross, J. J. (1998). Antecedent-and response-focused emotion regulation: Divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(1), 224–237. Gross, J. J. (2015). The extended process model of emotion regulation: Elaborations, applications, and future directions. Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 130–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2015.989751

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Katz, L. F., & Windecker-Nelson, B. (2006). Domestic violence, emotion coaching, and child adjustment. Journal of Family Psychology, 20(1), 56–67. Kiel, E. J., & Kalomiris, A. E. (2015). Current themes in understanding children’s emotion regulation as developing from within the parent–child relationship. Current Opinion in Psychology, 3, 11–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc .2015.01.006 Kim, J., & Cicchetti, D. (2010). Longitudinal pathways linking child maltreatment, emotion regulation, peer relations, and psychopathology. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 51(6), 706–716. https://doi.org/10.1111/j .1469-7610.2009.02202.x Mancini, V. O., Heritage, B. J., Preece, D., Cohodes, E. M., Gross, J. J., Gee, D. G., & Finlay-Jones, A. (2022). How caregivers support children’s emotion regulation: Construct validation of the Parental Assistance with Child Emotion Regulation (PACER) Questionnaire. Assessment, 30(4), 1040–1051. https:// doi.org/10.1177/10731911221082708. Mason, G. M., Goldstein, M. H., & Schwade, J. A. (2019). The role of multisensory development in early language learning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 183, 48–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2018.12.011 Moriceau, S., & Sullivan, R. M. (2006). Maternal presence serves as a switch between learning fear and attraction in infancy. Nature Neuroscience, 9(8), 1004–1006. Murray, D. W., Rosanbalm, K., Christopoulos, C., & Meyer, A. L. (2019). An applied contextual model for promoting self-regulation enactment across development: Implications for prevention, public health and future research. Journal of Primary Prevention, 40(4), 367–403. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10935-019-00556-1 Pratt, M., Singer, M., Kanat-Maymon, Y., & Feldman, R. (2015). Infant negative reactivity defines the effects of parent–child synchrony on physiological and behavioral regulation of social stress. Development and Psychopathology, 27(4 Pt 1), 1191–1204. Ruiz, F. J. (2010). A review of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) empirical evidence: Correlational, experimental psychopathology, component and outcome studies. International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy, 10(1), 125–162. Saarni, C. (1999). The development of emotional competence. Guilford Press. Tan, P. Z., Oppenheimer, C. W., Ladouceur, C. D., Butterfield, R. D., & Silk, J. S. (2020). A review of associations between parental emotion socialization behaviors and the neural substrates of emotional reactivity and regulation in youth. Developmental Psychology, 56(3), 516–527. Thompson, R. A., & Goodman, M. (2010). Development of emotion regulation: More than meets the eye. In A. M. Kring & D. M. Sloan (Eds.), Emotion regulation and psychopathology: A transdiagnostic approach to etiology and treatment (pp. 38–58). Guilford Press. Tottenham, N. (2012). Human amygdala development in the absence of speciesexpected caregiving. Developmental Psychobiology, 54(6), 598–611. https://doi .org/10.1002/dev.20531

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CHAPTER 9

Parental Socialization of Children’s Emotion and Its Regulation Tracy L. Spinrad and Nancy Eisenberg

Decades of research indicate that the constructs of emotion and emotion regulation are critical for a wide range of developmental outcomes in childhood (see Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Eggum, 2010). Caregivers undoubtedly affect the experience and expression of children’s emotions and their regulation, and consequently, such socialization processes have important implications for children’s subsequent emotional and social competence. In this chapter, we first present our theoretical model of the socialization of emotion and discuss relevant literature supporting the relations of various parental emotion-related socialization behaviors to children’s emotion-related outcomes. We next discuss potential moderators involved in these relations and conclude with a focus on intervention and prevention efforts and areas for future research.

9.1 A Heuristic Model of Emotion Socialization Emotion socialization refers to the processes involved in the ways that socializers teach about and affect children’s experience, expression, and regulation of their emotions and emotion-related behaviors. Eisenberg and colleagues (1998a, b; Eisenberg, 2020) coined the term emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) to describe the ways that caregivers contribute to children’s emotionality and regulation. ERSBs are thought to be somewhat distinct from other parenting behaviors such as general warmth and/or harshness because they are strategies that may be directly modeled and/or enable children to understand and regulate their own emotions (see Speidel et al., 2020). In their heuristic model, the authors proposed that some of the relations between ERSBs and children’s outcomes (e.g. social competence, adjustment) are mediated by children’s arousal and regulation skills and moderated by a variety of factors such as children’s characteristics (e.g. age, sex, temperament) and situational factors (see Figure 9.1).

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Child Characteristics e.g., Age, Sex, Temperament

Parent Characteristics e.g., Sex, Personality, General parenting style, Emotion-related beliefs and values, Parental goals (e.g., empathic, personal, socialization goals) Cultural Factors e.g., Emotion-related beliefs, norms and values, goals, and communication preferences, Gender stereotypes

Context e.g., Degree of emotion in context, Potential for harm to someone, History of emotion-related interactions in family, including marital discord

Emotion-related Parenting Practices e.g., Reactions to child’s emotions, Discussion of emotion, Emotional expressiveness, Selection/modification of situations

Child’s Arousal

Subsequent Child Outcomes e.g., Experience of emotion, Expression of emotion, Regulation in the specific context, Acquisition of regulation capacities, Understanding of emotion and regulation, Affective stance toward emotions and oneself as an expressor of emotion, Attempts at thought suppression, Schemas about self, relationships, and the world (including working models of relationships)

Social Behavior & Social Competence

Moderators e.g., Parenting style, Quality of parent–child relationship Type and intensity of child’s emotions, Type and intensity of parents’ emotions, Appropriateness of parents’ emotions and behavior in the context, Cultural/subcultural views, norms, values, etc., Child’s temperament/personality, e.g., self-regulation, Child’s sex and developmental level, Variability and consistency of parental behavior, Clarity of parental communication, Fit of parental behavior with child’s developmental level Whether parental behavior is directed at child, Whether parental behavior is proactive or reactive

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Figure 9.1 A heuristic model of the socialization of emotion Note. There also may be linear relations and interactions among the four predictors on the left. Moreover, the four predictors can predict child outcomes.

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ERSBs are thought to be of at least three types: (1) socializers’ responses to children’s emotions; (2) socializers’ own expression of emotions in the family or toward the child; and (3) socializers’ discussions of emotions.

9.1.1 Socializers’ Reactions to Children’s Emotions In everyday contexts, parents’ reactions to their children’s displays of emotions, especially to their children’s negative emotions, provide rich opportunities for the socialization of emotional experience and expression, as well as its regulation. Researchers examining emotion socialization in infancy and the first few years of life often focus on how socializers respond to and deal with their infants’ cues and emotional reactions, as well as the sensitivity of parenting to children’s emotionality more generally. (Note that parental responsivity and warmth are examples of emotion-related socialization only when this parenting behavior is in response to children’s emotionality or potential experience/expression of emotion.) When caregivers meet their infants’ needs and appropriately respond to their expressions of emotions, they are providing a context that supports infants’ and toddlers’ regulation. Researchers have found that responsive, supportive parenting in infancy and toddlerhood has been linked with children’s relatively low emotional negativity and high regulatory skills and/or effortful control (the temperamental characteristic that reflects voluntary (willful) regulatory processes; Davidov & Grusec, 2006; Eisenberg, Spinrad, Eggum, Silva, et al., 2010; Feldman et al., 2011; Gilliom et al., 2002; Kochanska et al., 2000, 2008; Kochanska & Kim, 2014; Mintz et al., 2011; Spinrad et al., 2007, 2012). As a case in point, Spinrad and colleagues (2012) found that a maternal warmth and sensitivity positively predicted children’s effortful control concurrently and over time in toddlerhood. On the other hand, intrusive parenting, which is reflected in parent-centered, overcontrolling behaviors, has been related to lower regulation/effortful control (Taylor et al., 2013). Although parental warmth, sensitivity, and intrusive parenting are not always expressed in a context that involves the socialization of emotion, these findings support the potential importance of these parenting behaviors for the socialization of emotion. From an attachment perspective, caregivers’ emotional availability and responsivity foster a secure parent– child relationship and in turn enable children to develop better selfregulation skills (Boldt et al., 2020; Cassidy, 1994). In a meta-analysis of 106 studies, Pallini and colleagues (2018) found a significant effect size for the relation between the quality of children’s attachment and their effortful control. This association is likely due to responsive caregiving – often in response to children’s expression of emotion – that is a core feature in a secure attachment.

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Similar to investigators’ research on parents’ responsivity and sensitivity to children’s cues, researchers have examined caregivers’ specific behavioral reactions to children’s expression of emotion, especially their negative emotions (Spinrad et al., 2004). Investigators suggest that socializers’ reactions to children’s negative emotions can provide children with valuable information about the experience of emotions and can also directly teach ways to handle emotions in the future. For example, socializers can support their children’s emotions and emotion regulation by encouraging the child to express their feelings, helping them to resolve the issue that is causing the distress, and helping their children to find appropriate ways to handle their distress. In support of this reasoning, researchers sometimes have found parents’ reactions to children’s emotions that encourage problem-solving or coping with distress to be positively associated with children’s adaptive regulation or effortful control (Berona et al., 2022; Blair et al., 2014; Cui et al., 2020; Eisenberg et al., 1996; Godleski et al., 2020; Raval et al., 2018; Spinrad et al., 2007; Yap et al., 2007, 2008). In other studies, parents’ punitive or minimizing reactions to children’s negative emotions have been associated with children’s dysregulation or maladaptive strategies. When children receive the message that emotions are unacceptable and should not be expressed, or are not very important, children may have difficulty acknowledging and expressing their negative emotions when in future distressing situations. When they feel emotionally aroused, these children may become anxious, feel overwhelmed, react intensively, or destructively. It is also possible that children eventually learn to suppress or detach from their emotions in the future. Investigators have found that parents who minimize their children’s emotions or who respond punitively to their negative emotions have children who exhibit more negative emotionality (Blair et al., 2014; Briscoe et al, 2018; Eisenberg, Spinrad, Eggum, Silva, et al., 2010) and display relatively low levels of effortful control or adaptive regulation or coping (Berona et al., 2022; Morelen et al., 2016; Valiente et al., 2007, 2009). In a recent meta-analysis, a small but significant positive effect size was found between parents’ responses to children’s emotions that validated/acknowledged their feelings and preschool-aged children’s self-regulation skills (Zinsser et al., 2021). Interestingly, researchers have often obtained the expected associations between parents’ reactions to children’s emotions and their children’s emotional competence across various samples. For example, parental reactions to emotions have been found to predict children’s regulation skills in clinical populations, such as children with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; Breaux et al., 2018; Oddo et al., 2022), anxiety disorders (Hurrell et al., 2015), and the risk for externalizing symptoms (X. Zhang et al., 2020), as well as in high-risk samples, such as in families with fathers with an alcohol problem (Godleski et al., 2020).

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9.1.2 Socializers’ Own Expression of Emotions and Regulation Socializers’ emotional expressivity involves the display of either positive, negative dominant (e.g. anger, hostility), or negative submissive (e.g. sadness, crying) emotions. Parents’ expressions of emotion are thought to affect children’s regulatory abilities and emotion-related behaviors in at least two ways. First, caregivers’ own expression of emotions can serve as models for children’s own expressiveness. That is, socializers’ modeling of emotion provides guidance to children regarding how emotions should be handled, when and where they should be expressed, and ways that emotions can be regulated. Second, caregivers’ expressivity may contribute to children’s emotionality and emotional skills due to parents’ emotion eliciting children’s emotion and producing arousal that can disrupt children’s attempts to regulate their emotions. For example, parents’ general expression of positive or negative emotionality in the home may induce children’s emotions through emotional contagion. Specifically, if a parent explodes or displays intense anger in the home, children may become anxious or distressed themselves and, due to negatively valenced arousal, may become dysregulated. Consistent with expectations, in empirical studies, children’s emotion and emotion-related self-regulation have been associated with parents’ own expressions of emotion. Parents’ positive expressivity has been related to relatively high effortful control/regulation both concurrently (Eisenberg, Gershoff, et al., 2001; Speidel et al., 2020) and longitudinally (Valiente et al., 2006). Parents’ expressions of negative emotion (especially anger, hostility) have been negatively related to children’s adaptive regulatory skills (Ogbaselase et al., 2022; Valiente et al., 2004, 2006; Yap et al., 2010). In addition to the ways that parents express emotions, socializers are likely modeling ways to regulate their feelings. It is possible that parents’ own regulation predicts children’s regulatory skills through their regulated parenting practices (see Leerkes & Augustine, 2019; Morelen et al., 2016). Prior work has shown that maternal regulation (or dysregulation) has been related in expected ways to children’s and adolescents‘ regulatory skills (Bridgett et al., 2011; Buckholdt et al., 2014; Ramsden & Hubbard, 2002; Xu et al., 2019 for a review, see Bridgett et al., 2015). In a recent meta-analysis, Zimmer-Gembeck and colleagues (2022) reported a significant effect size (r = .21, p < 0.001) across 10 studies for the positive association between parents’ own emotion regulation skills and children’s emotion regulation.

9.1.3 Discussion of Emotion Socialization of emotion also includes the ways that caregivers talk about emotions, label emotions, and explain the causes and consequences of

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emotions. Parents who discuss emotions with their children are providing important lessons about the meaning of emotions, the circumstances in which they should be expressed, and ways to regulate distress and other types of feelings. Discussions about emotions may also provide children tools to use in managing their feelings. In one recent study, Curtis et al. (2020) reported that Chinese American mothers’ discussion of emotion with their 6- to 9-year-old children predicted higher effortful control 2 years later. In another study, Eisenberg and colleagues (2008) found that mothers’ discussion of emotion with their young adolescents during a conflict discussion was negatively related to youths’ negative reactions when discussing conflictual situations with their parent. These findings point to the benefits of parental emotion talk for children’s regulatory abilities. A similar concept includes the notion of emotion coaching. Emotion coaching involves validating and accepting children’s emotions, helping children to understand their emotions, labeling the emotion in response to children’s feelings, and encouraging the expression of both positive and negative emotions (Gottman et al., 1996). Emotion coaching sends the message to children that is acceptable to express both positive and negative emotions. Empirical findings indicate that parents who discuss emotions with their children or use emotion coaching strategies have children who tend to be well-regulated (Dunsmore et al., 2013; Eisenberg et al., 2008; Gentzler et al., 2005; Lunkenheimer et al., 2007; Ramsden & Hubbard, 2002; Shipman et al., 2007; Shortt et al., 2010) and have reduced emotional lability (Ellis et al., 2014). Conversely, emotion-dismissing practices (e.g. “he’s such a brat when he’s angry”) involve invalidating children’s emotions by conveying to children that their emotions are unimportant. Emotion dismissing practices has been associated with relatively low regulation skills in children (Lunkenheimer et al., 2007). In sum, research on emotion-related socialization practices has demonstrated that parents’ reactions to children’s emotions, parents’ own emotional expressiveness, and their discussion of emotions predict children’s emotion-related regulation. Further, researchers have found that ERSBs have distinct prediction to children’s emotion-related outcomes from other general parenting styles (Speidel et al., 2020). Specifically, Speidel and colleagues (2020) found that family expressiveness uniquely predicted children’s emotion regulation, even after accounting for more general positive parenting (i.e. involvement, responsivity).

9.2 Bidirectional Relations Although most often it is assumed that children’s emotions and emotion regulation are affected by parental socialization practices, it is also

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recognized that children can evoke certain parenting reactions and that the process of influence between socializers and children’s self-regulation is likely bidirectional. Children who are unregulated or highly negatively reactive undoubtedly can elicit controlling, negative, or ineffective parenting behaviors. Consistent with this line of reasoning, children’s self-regulation has been shown to positively predict parents’ later sensitivity, warmth, support and cognitive assistance (Eisenberg, Vidmar, et al., 2010; Otterpohl & Wild, 2015; Van Lissa et al., 2019), that is, behaviors similar to emotion-related socialization behaviors. In a recent meta-analysis, Li et al. (2019) found bidirectional relations between parenting and adolescents‘ self-control, with no significant difference between the longitudinal associations from parenting to youths’ selfcontrol compared to the other direction of effects. In a meta-analysis, Xu (2022) showed significant effect sizes for both parent and child effects for longitudinal relations between parenting behaviors and children’s effortful control. In contrast, in some studies, child effects have been tested but were not found (Eisenberg, Spinrad, Eggum, Silva, et al., 2010). Thus, it is critical for researchers to consider bidirectional and transactional relations between ERSBs and children’s self-regulation. Researchers also have begun to examine the temporal, moment-tomoment dyadic relations between ERSBs and children’s emotions or emotion-related regulation (Lunkenheimer et al., 2020). As a case in point, Chan and colleagues (2022) assessed children’s positive and negative emotions during a challenging puzzle task, and mothers’ regulatory strategies were observed. Children’s positive emotion 2 seconds earlier predicted mothers’ lower problem-solving strategies, whereas child negative emotion predicted lower approval but higher comforting behaviors. Further, maternal approval predicted children’s positive emotion 2 seconds later. These findings point to the dynamic nature of children’s emotions and the ways that parents and children may feed off each other at the micro level.

9.3 Moderation In Eisenberg and colleagues’ heuristic model (Eisenberg et al., 1998a, b; Eisenberg, 2020; see Figure 9.1), pathways between ERSBs and children’s emotion/regulation are sometimes moderated by a number of factors. That is, relations of ERSBs might depend on variability in parents’ or children’s emotions, the context (immediate and cultural), and children’s temperament. Next, we briefly consider the ways that culture or race, child characteristics, or more global parenting behaviors might moderate the relations between ERSBs and children’s regulatory skills.

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9.3.1 Culture and/or Race In their heuristic model of the socialization of emotion, Eisenberg and colleagues (1998a, b; Eisenberg, 2020) highlighted the possibility that racial and cultural goals and values shape caregivers’ ERSBs. For example, communicating one’s emotions appears to be encouraged in some cultures (such as in European American families) and discouraged (or expected to be suppressed or controlled) in other cultures, particularly for emotions that are viewed as disruptive to social harmony and communality (such as in some Asian cultures). For example, researchers have shown that Asian parents often enact more punitive responses to negative emotions (Cho et al., 2022; McCord & Raval, 2016; Yang et al., 2020) and make fewer references to emotions during storytelling (Doan & Wang, 2010) than do European American parents. In addition, Cho and colleagues (2022) found mean-level differences in the frequency of caregivers’ encouraging the expression of joy, pride, and sadness among German, Nepali, and Korean mothers. Specifically, in Germany, parents encouraged the expression of pride and sadness more than in Nepal and Korea, whereas Nepali mothers encouraged the expression of joy more than did German and Korean caregivers. In addition to mean-level differences in ERSBs, the impact of caregivers’ socialization behaviors likely can vary as a function of culture. For example, Eisenberg, Liew, and Pidada (2001) found that, unlike in samples from the United States, parental positive expressivity was not related to children self-regulation in Indonesia, perhaps due to the cultural norms discouraging the expression of intense emotion (even positive emotion) in Indonesia. Similarly, in another study, mothers’ encouraging the expression of pride was positively related to emotion regulation in German children but was negatively related to emotion regulation in Nepali children (Cho et al., 2022). These findings could be due to the notion that expressions of pride are considered inappropriate or lacking consideration in Asian cultures. Thus, the differential associations between ERSBs and children’s emotion-related outcomes suggest that socialization experiences function differently across cultures. Even within the United States, there is evidence that culture and race norms should be considered when predicting relations of socialization processes to children’s emotional experience, expression of emotion, and emotion-related functioning. For families of color living in the United States, the context of racism and discrimination undoubtedly is relevant for caregivers’ emotion socialization values and beliefs. For example, Nelson and colleagues (2012) found that Black American parents engage in more punitive and negative responses to their children’s (especially their boys’) negative emotions than do European American parents.

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However, such differences should be interpreted with parents’ values and goals in mind. In this case, Black American parents might socialize emotional control in their children to protect their children from discrimination or racially biased situations when and if expressing negative emotions could be dangerous (Dunbar et al., 2017). In Black American families, the use of punitive and minimizing responses in response to children’s emotions was not related to negative emotional outcomes in children (see Dunbar et al., 2017) In fact, among Black American families, the use of punitive and minimizing reactions to children’s emotions has been linked with more adaptive behavioral and emotion regulation, but only if these practices are paired with discussions about racism (Dunbar et al., 2022). These findings further support the need to understand racial and cultural socialization practices in addition to emotion-related parenting practices and their joint relations to children’s emotions and emotion-related regulation. Punitive and minimizing reactions have previously come to be labeled as “nonsupportive”; however, this term is inappropriate (and arguably, harmful) in light of research noting that such strategies might reflect Black parents’ strategies to protect their children from racism by suppressing negative emotions in certain circumstances. Thus, we now endorse the use of nonjudgmental labels for these strategies and refer to them as suppressive and corrective (rather than nonsupportive). Moving forward, it is critical that race and culture are considered in nuanced ways in work focusing on the socialization of emotion.

9.3.2 Child Characteristics Children’s characteristics, such as age, gender, and temperament, might serve as important moderators of the relations between parental ERSBs and children’s emotion-related regulation. For example, the frequency and effectiveness of parental ERSBs undoubtedly change with children’s development. Spinrad and colleagues (2004) found that between 18 and 30 months, mothers decreased their attempts to regulate their child’s emotions and the types of strategies that mothers used, such as comforting or distracting at each age, differentially predicted children’s regulation and emotions at age 5. These findings suggest that the effectiveness of particular strategies could depend on their children’s self-regulatory abilities as they develop. Similarly, Mirabile and colleagues (2018) reported that parents’ use of emotion-focused/problem-focused reactions to children’s negative emotions predicted children’s emotional competence for children younger than age 4 but not for older children. The role of parents as socializers is likely to change with development due to the increased roles of teachers, peers, and youths’ own autonomy. Thus, it is

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expected that parents’ strategies not only change with age, but the relations of socialization to children’s emotion-related regulation also weaken (see Valiente et al., 2006). Gender differences in emotion and emotion-related regulation have been established (Chaplin et al., 2005) and researchers have sometimes considered the moderating role of child gender in emotion socialization research. For example, boys may be vulnerable to particular socialization responses compared to girls. In one study, mothers’ emotion coaching philosophy related to boys’ but not girls’ emotion regulation (Cunningham et al., 2009). In contrast, maternal support has been found to predict adolescent girls’, but not boys’, emotion regulation (Van Lissa et al., 2019), suggesting that the quality of the mother–daughter relationship might play a particularly prominent role in outcomes for teens. Further, parents’ gender should be examined when studying the socialization of emotion. Mothers and fathers not only respond differently to children’s emotions (Cassano et al., 2007; Chaplin et al., 2005), but each of their behaviors may also uniquely predict children’s emotional outcomes (Van Lissa et al., 2019).

9.3.3 Global Parenting Behaviors The degree to which ERSBs play a role in children’s emotionality and emotion-related regulation likely depends on other aspects of parenting. Darling and Steinberg (1993) suggested that parents create an ‘emotional climate’ to communicate their socialization goals. In other words, ERSBs may be more or less effective depending on the global quality of parenting or the parent–child relationship. For example, children may be more receptive to ERSBs if they have a warm and reciprocal relationship with the parent. Consistent with this reasoning, Jin and colleagues (2017) found that mothers’ supportive responses to negative emotions were positively related to children’s emotion regulation only when the parent–child dyad was relatively collaborative and they worked together on a task (and not under conditions of low dyadic collaboration). Other researchers have reported interactions between maternal warmth and discipline strategies when predicting children’s subsequent effortful control (Kopystynska et al., 2016).

9.4 Promoting Children’s Regulation Skills through Parenting Intervention Although the research is somewhat limited, there is evidence that interventions can promote children’s ability to regulate their emotions. There are promising school-based interventions that target children’s emotion

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regulation skills; nonetheless, for the purposes of this chapter, we focus on interventions targeting parenting and parent-child interactions. Recently, Hajal and Paley (2020) reviewed the literature on parental intervention programs and noted that they are focused on four areas of emotion socialization: (1) emotion coaching; (2) parent–child attachment; (3) family-based programs that focus on teaching all family members emotional skills, often in the context of family trauma; and (4) programs that are designed to reduce problem behaviors, such as conduct problems, and focus on emotion management. Parenting interventions that specifically target emotion socialization include those that teach emotion coaching behaviors. The Tuning into Kids program (Havighurst et al., 2010, 2013) and the parallel program for parents of young adolescents (Tuning into Teens; Kehoe et al., 2014, 2020) specifically teach parents how to recognize and manage their children’s emotions and provide strategies for parents to improve their emotion coaching. Results of randomized control trials indicate that these programs improve parental emotion socialization and reduce children’s problem behaviors and emotional negativity. In another emotion-coaching intervention, Katz and colleagues (2020) developed a parenting intervention for survivors of intimate partner violence. In this 12-week intervention program, mothers were taught skills to improve their own emotion regulation as well as emotion coaching skills. Findings showed that, compared to mothers who were in a waitlist (control) group, mothers in the intervention group showed improvements in emotion coaching, awareness and validation of their children’s emotions, and confidence in their parenting. Also, mothers in the intervention group decreased their use of negative parenting strategies, such as scolding or lecturing, compared to the control group. Children whose mothers were in the intervention group increased their mother-reported emotion regulation and decreased their negativity toward their mothers compared to children of mothers in the waitlist group. Also at least partially informed by Eisenberg and colleagues’ heuristic model, interventions that focus on discussions of children’s past emotions have been conducted. For example, mothers participating in a reminiscing and emotion training program were trained to increase conversations with their children that make connections between the causes and consequences of emotions and help resolve children’s negative emotions. In a randomized control trial in a sample of maltreating and nonmaltreating mothers, the intervention predicted improved maternal sensitive guidance and positive family expressiveness, which in turn, predicted greater improvements in children’s emotion regulation compared to those in the control condition (Speidel et al., 2020). Other intervention programs have been conducted that incorporate emotion socialization, but these programs often have somewhat broader

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goals. That is, although each program has an emotion socialization component, they mainly target the parent–child attachment system, family resiliency, and/or specific child symptoms such as child behavioral problems, disruptive behavior disorders, or anxiety and depression. Nonetheless, many of these programs have shown progress in improving both parenting and child outcomes (see England-Mason & Gonzalez, 2020; Hajal & Paley, 2020, for reviews). Interestingly, in a meta-analysis testing different components of parental intervention programs, those programs the included emotional communication and/or consistent responding demonstrated larger intervention effects on parenting behaviors than programs that did not include emotional components (Kaminski et al., 2008). In a recent parenting intervention program that included a focus on mindfulness and emotion coaching skills for post-deployed military families, N. Zhang and colleagues (2020) found that parents in the intervention group showed greater declines in both mothers’ and fathers’ corrective and suppressive responses to children’s negative emotions over 2 years compared to families in the control group. Thus, although there are few longitudinal studies that examine the effectiveness of various intervention programs targeting parental emotion socialization, the existing research is encouraging in regard to the goal of improving children’s self-regulation through promoting change in parenting practices (Speidel et al., 2020).

9.5 Future Directions for Research on Parental Socialization of Emotion Studies focused on the socialization of emotion and emotion-related regulation could benefit from advanced methodological approaches. For example, recently researchers have studied the socialization of emotion in various innovative ways, including using time series data (Zhang et al., 2022), dyadic data (Lunkenheimer et al., 2020), or neurological measures (Tan et al., 2020). Such data can be used to understand moment-tomoment dynamics of emotional parent–child interactions and can take into account the transactional nature of interactions. Although research focusing on the role of fathers’ emotion socialization has received increasing attention in recent years (see Eisenberg, 2020), there is a need to study the additive and interactive effects of different socializers on children’s emotionality and self-regulation. For example, it is important to understand the additive (cumulative) prediction of children’s emotionality and other aspects of emotion-related functioning from each parent’s emotion-related socialization behaviors. Perhaps each parent’s behaviors uniquely predict children’s emotion-related outcomes.

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In addition, fathers’ emotion-related socialization behaviors could interact with mothers’ emotion-related socialization behaviors to either amplify, compensate, or undermine the impact of the other parents’ behaviors. As one possibility, one parent’s validation of their child’s emotions could compensate for the other parent’s invalidation or punitive responses to their child’s emotions. Furthermore, other socializers such as older siblings and extended family members (i.e. grandparents) might also be considered in future work. Finally, research on contexts outside of the family must be considered with regard to the socialization of children’s emotional competence. For example, Valiente and colleagues (2020) posited that the school context provides important socialization of emotions. That is, teachers’ own regulation and interactions with students likely play an important role in the socialization of emotion for school-aged children. Further, peers undoubtedly function as important socializers of emotion in the classroom context (and outside of the classroom). Additional research on the roles of multiple sources of socialization on children’s regulation is needed. In this chapter, we have explored relations between parental emotionrelated socialization practices and children’s emotionality and emotionrelated regulation. One of our goals was to review the literature on relations with, and prediction of, children’s emotional outcomes from parents’ responses to children’s emotions, parents’ own emotionality, and parents’ discussion of emotions. We also offered additional considerations for future study, particularly with regard to potential moderators. Such work could contribute to the formulation and testing of existing and new intervention and prevention programs that specifically address parental emotion socialization.

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Taylor, Z. E., Eisenberg, N., Spinrad, T. L., & Widaman, K. F. (2013). Longitudinal relations of intrusive parenting and effortful control to egoresiliency during early childhood. Child Development, 84(4), 1145–1151. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12054 Valiente, C., Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., Shepard, S. A., Cumberland, A., & Losoya, S. H. (2004). Prediction of children’s empathy-related responding from their effortful control and parents’ expressivity. Developmental Psychology, 40(6), 911–926. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.40.6.911 Valiente, C., Eisenberg, N., Spinrad, T. L., Reiser, M., Cumberland, A., Losoya, S. H., & Liew, J. (2006). Relations among mothers’ expressivity, children’s effortful control, and their problem behaviors: A four-year longitudinal study. Emotion, 6(3), 459–472. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.6.3.459 Valiente, C., Lemery-Chalfant, K., & Reiser, M. (2007). Pathways to problem behaviors: Chaotic homes, parent and child effortful control, and parenting. Social Development 16(2), 249–267. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2007 .00383.x Valiente, C., Lemery-Chalfant, K., & Swanson, J. (2009). Children’s responses to daily social stressors: Relations with parenting, children’s effortful control, and adjustment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 50(6), 707–717. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.02019.x Valiente, C., Swanson, J., DeLay, D., Fraser, A. M., & Parker, J. H. (2020). Emotion-related socialization in the classroom: Considering the roles of teachers, peers, and the classroom context. Developmental Psychology, 56(3), 578–594. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000863 Van Lissa, C. J., Keizer, R., Van Lier, P. A. C., Meeus, W. H. J., & Branje, S. (2019). The role of fathers’ versus mothers’ parenting in emotion-regulation development from mid–late adolescence: Disentangling between-family differences from within-family effects. Developmental Psychology, 55(2), 377–389. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000612 Xu, X. (2022). A systematic review and meta-analysis of bidirectional relations between parenting and children’s effortful control [Doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University]. https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/systematicreview-meta-analysis-bidirectional/docview/2669613116/se-2 Xu, X., Spinrad, T. L., Cookston, J. T., & Matsumoto, D. (2019). The relations of parental emotion dysregulation and emotion socialization to young adults’ emotion dysregulation. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29(3), 725–737. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01619-x Yang, Y., Song, Q., Doan, S. N., & Wang, Q. (2020). Maternal reactions to children’s negative emotions: Relations to children’s socio-emotional development among European American and Chinese immigrant children. Transcultural Psychiatry, 57(3), 408–420. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461520905997 Yap, M. B., Allen, N. B., & Ladouceur, C. D. (2008). Maternal socialization of positive affect: The impact of invalidation on adolescent emotion regulation and depressive symptomatology. Child Development, 79(5), 1415–1431. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01196.x Yap, M. B., Allen, N. B., & Sheeber, L. (2007). Using an emotion regulation framework to understand the role of temperament and family processes in

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risk for adolescent depressive disorders. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 10(2), 180–196. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-006-0014-0 Yap, M. B., Schwartz, O. S., Byrne, M. L., Simmons, J. G., & Allen, N. B. (2010). Maternal positive and negative interaction behaviors and early adolescents’ depressive symptoms: Adolescent emotion regulation as a mediator. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 20(4), 1014–1043. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.15327795.2010.00665.x Zhang, N., Lee, S., Zhang, J., Piehler, T., & Gewirtz, A. (2020). Growth trajectories of parental emotion socialization and child adjustment following a military parenting intervention: A randomized controlled trial. Developmental Psychology, 56(3), 652–663. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000837 Zhang, X., Gatzke-Kopp, L. M., Cole, P. M., & Ram, N. (2022). A dynamic systems account of parental self-regulation processes in the context of challenging child behavior. Child Development, 93(5), e501–e514. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/cdev.13808 Zhang, X., Gatzke-Kopp, L. M., Fosco, G. M., & Bierman, K. L. (2020). Parental support of self-regulation among children at risk for externalizing symptoms: Developmental trajectories of physiological regulation and behavioral adjustment. Developmental Psychology, 56(3), 528–540. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000794 Zimmer-Gembeck, M.J., Rudolph, J., Kerin, J., & Bohadana-Brown, G. (2022). Parent emotional regulation: A meta-analytic review of its association with parenting and child adjustment. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 46(1), 63–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/01650254211051086 Zinsser, K. M., Gordon, R. A., & Jiang, X. (2021). Parents’ socialization of preschool-aged children’s emotion skills: A meta-analysis using an emotionfocused parenting practices framework. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 55, 377–390. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2021.02.001

PART IV

Current Trends

CHAPTER 10

Culture and the Challenges of Being a Good Parent Sara Harkness, Charles M. Super, Marjolijn J. M. Blom, Ughetta Moscardino, Sabrina Bonichini, Moises Rios Bermudez, Jong-Hay Rha, Barbara Welles, and Olaf Zylicz The young mother in Norman Rockwell’s famous portrayal sits bolt upright on a chair, hairbrush in her right hand, which also grasps the shirt of the little boy splayed across her lap, tummy down, waiting for his expected spanking. In her left hand, however, the mother is holding a book, Child Psychology, with an expression on her face that combines consternation with anger (Rockwell, 1933). She has plenty of reason to think her son deserves a punishment, as the broken objects strewn on the floor show – a vase, a tennis racquet, and a clock, along with a hammer. Yet she hesitates to carry out the punishment that is most familiar to her for such a transgression. “Child psychology,” a new kind of way to think about children’s behavior, has just begun to take hold in this young mother’s world. And the book in her hand is probably telling her that the old forms of discipline need to be replaced with new, more “scientific” guidance. Clearly, this mother wants to do the right thing. But what actually is the right thing? Ideas about how to be a good mother – or good father – have varied across historical time as well as across cultures, but they consistently play a major role in parents’ own sense of well-being and thus emotion regulation. Norman Rockwell’s picture was first published on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1933, just 5 years after John B. Watson’s slim but extraordinarily influential book Psychological Care of Infant and Child, in which he prescribed a business-like approach to child-rearing and pressed his case for reward-and-punishment behaviorism (Watson, 1928). In contrast to Watson’s views, however, other influential professionals such as Arnold Gesell (Gesell & Ilg, 1943), saw child development as a natural, maturational process. According to family historian Ann Hulbert, the dueling opposites set up at that time have endured to the present (Hulbert, 2004). In short, for present-day US parents, the question of how to be a good parent has yet to be answered satisfactorily.

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10.1 Mothers as Cross-Cultural Pioneers: The Experiences of Expatriate Journalists In recent years, however, American parents – as well as parents in other postindustrial societies – have begun to look beyond local sources of advice to what can be learned from other cultures, both within and beyond the middle-class Western world. Among the pioneers in this quest are mothers living in cultural places different from where they grew up, who have produced books written as participant observers of what they see as better ways to be a good parent. Perhaps the most widely read example of this new genre is Pamela Druckerman’s account of French parenting (Druckerman, 2014). In her book French Children Don’t Throw Food, first published in Great Britain and later republished in the United States under the title Bringing up Bebé, Druckerman describes her experiences as a new mother living in Paris, where (as noted in the book’s subtitle) she “discovers the wisdom of French parenting.” Druckerman presents herself as a confused American new mother, desperate for guidance but shocked by the parenting practices she observes when she goes home to visit. Her new discoveries include a range of topics, from establishing regular schedules of eating and sleeping in the opening months of the baby’s life, to teaching the baby to “wait” for a response from adults, to advantages of the infant crèche for full-day care whether the mother is employed or not. Two themes appear repeatedly in her French experience: one, that the task of parents and other caregivers is to “awaken” babies’ senses and encourage them to “discover” the world around them; the other, that babies need to understand from the beginning that they are not the center of the universe, their parents also have needs, and they must learn to be patient, entertain themselves, and not expect frequent expressions of praise. Notably absent are concerns about stimulating children’s schoolrelated skills; for example, the infant crèche has no apparent curriculum, though they do serve the children four-course lunches (purėed or cut in small pieces depending on the age of the child). Two other books – one about Danish parenting and the other about Dutch parents, both written by expatriate American or British mothers married to local citizens – offer further perspectives on how to raise children successfully with a lot less stress than they attribute to their home countries. The premise of both books is that residents of their respective countries have received top ratings from international organizations as being the “happiest” in the world, thus they must have something helpful to offer the rest of us. The main idea, or “parenting theory,” put forth by American author Jessica Alexander and her Danish coauthor Iben Sandahl in The Danish Way of Parenting (2016, p. 21) is

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straightforward: “Happy kids grow up to be happy adults who raise happy kids, and so on.” Invoking our work on “parental ethnotheories“ (Harkness & Super, 1996), they urge readers to pay attention to their own “default settings,” that is, the implicit, taken-for-granted ideas that guide the way they raise their children. The “Danish way of parenting” is contrasted to what they describe as the “epidemic of stress” in the United States, where parents compete with each other to raise the highest-achieving children but where prescription drugs – Ritalin for children, antidepressants for both adults and increasingly young sufferers – are used at much higher rates than in Europe. In Denmark, on the other hand, they describe an approach to parenting that emphasizes letting children learn on their own as much as possible, through play rather than direct instruction. Humility is valued, and praise for children’s accomplishments is given out sparingly. Paradoxically, they note, Danish movies often have sad endings (unlike typical American movies) – but they see this as an aspect of “authenticity,” another key feature of Danish parenting that should produce children who can recognize and accept their own emotions – and relatedly (as they see it), know their own limits. Last but not least, they describe the importance of “cozy” (hygge) family times that help everyone feel connected, an idea that they contrast to American “individualism.” Although Danish people have been ranked at the apex of happiness (according to a worldwide survey by the United Nations), Dutch children come out at the top in a UNICEF report (2012). These rankings may be taken with a grain of salt because they seem to vary a bit from one survey to the next (Norway edged out Denmark as the “happiest” country in 2017). Another caveat relates to the definition of “happiness” in such surveys, which includes measures of economic well-being, health, and educational achievement in addition to simply asking people how happy they feel. Not surprisingly, given their strong social benefit programs and low poverty rates, the northern European countries hover around the top of the scales. But is there more to actual “happiness” in Denmark and the Netherlands than just rankings of overall socioeconomic well-being? In The Happiest Kids in the World, American writer Rina Mae Acosta and her English colleague Michele Hutchison set out to explain just why Dutch children are given such high grades for happiness (Acosta & Hutchinson, 2017). Both authors are expatriates in the Netherlands, married to Dutch men and bringing up their children in a foreign environment that they find increasingly homelike. Some of the themes they invoke are familiar. In contrast to superstimulated American and British children, Dutch children have more time to play without an imposed educational agenda. Parenthood is not a competition about whose child achieves the most. In fact, a teacher urges

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one of the authors not to help her young son prepare for an important test, as it might create a “strain” on him. There’s more time for families to enjoy being together. The term gezellig (which the authors compare to the Danish hygge) captures the cozy, comfortable sociability that is the essence of a good life. In addition to these similarities, though, Acosta and Hutchison also discover a uniquely Dutch mainstay of parenting: the emphasis on rest and a regular schedule as key to children’s healthy development and – yes – happiness.

10.2 Academic Research on Parenting Academic research on parenting across cultures is generally consistent with the more journalistic accounts by expatriate mothers (it should be acknowledged that they too relied on scholarly sources). In our own research with Dutch families in the 1990s, for example, we found that Dutch mothers tended to rate their days more favorably than did mothers in six other Western cultures, especially in relation to their child’s sleeping patterns, the time and energy they had available for their child, and the balance of parenting with other tasks. The importance of the Dutch Three R’s – rest (Rust), regularity (Regelmaat), and cleanliness (Reinheid) – became obvious in our interviews with parents and observations of infant behavior: compared to same-aged US children, the Dutch babies in our study were sleeping two hours more per 24-hour day at 6 months of age. This difference continued to our oldest measurement point when the children were 7 or 8 years old, although it diminished over time (Super et al., 1996). A detailed analysis of how Dutch and US mothers of 2- and 6month-old infants talked about regularity revealed a fundamental difference in ideas about “getting the baby on a schedule”: whereas the US mothers “hoped” that their baby would settle into a regular schedule for the sake of the whole family, the Dutch mothers were confident that regularity in sleep, eating, and other activities was essential for the baby’s healthy development. In addition, the Dutch mothers evidently felt more entitled to take their own needs and the needs of the rest of the family into consideration than did the US mothers, who seemed convinced that being a “good mother” necessarily entailed prioritizing the baby’s perceived needs almost to the exclusion of their own (van Schaik et al., 2020). The emphasis on the importance of a regular schedule carried through to these Dutch mothers’ talk about their children’s daily routines at older ages. The mother of 7-year-old Willem described her son’s typical weekday, in the process incorporating her own day: Now, he gets up in the morning around 7:00 , and he sits in front of the TV watching “children’s TV.” At about 7:30 or quarter of 8:00, I get

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up, and he gets his orange juice and bread with butter and chocolate sprinkles, we drink coffee . . . then we go wash and get dressed, then he goes to school – nowadays, on his own. At 12:00 I pick him up at school, and we come home on our bikes, we eat something, he plays inside or outside. Then I bring him back to school, on our bikes. At 3:00 I usually pick him up. And then we come home, or he goes to swimming lessons, or tennis, or he plays outside or he brings a friend home, or he goes to a friend’s house. We eat dinner late – about 6:30 or 7:00. Then he watches TV, usually Sesame Street, or now, with good weather he might even go outside. At 7:30 we go upstairs again, pajamas, wash up, brush teeth . . . at about 8:00 he’s in bed. A normal day, right? (van Schaik et al., 2020)

Weekends are different, according to Willem’s father, although Willem still gets up at the same time. “We lie in bed longer, if possible. Then when he’s tired of watching TV, he often comes upstairs to see if we’re still in bed, and sometimes he climbs in with us.” The father continues, “So we get up at around 9:30, have coffee and bread (orange juice for him). Then, if I don’t have to work, the three of us go grocery shopping in town.” In the accounts of both Willem’s mother and father, the theme of regularity is expressed through frequent references to the times of day when certain activities take place, with eating and sleeping schedules, plus school, as guideposts for variability in other activities. Being a good parent, in this context, includes providing emotional security through a regular schedule that the child can rely on. As the father of a 5-year-old girl said, “Regularity is the most important . . . so much happens in her little world. It’s important that promised things are as promised, and that means some regularity. Go to bed on time, eat on time.” The mother agrees, “Yes, regularity and rest, I think.”

10.3 Parents’ Ideas in Action: The Power of Parental Ethnotheories As the stories of family life that we heard from Dutch parents illustrate, parenting practices in various cultural places are shaped by shared ideas about parenting. Parents’ ideas exist at many levels, from the most general and abstract to the specific and concrete. They also vary in how available they are for identification and explanation by the parents who hold them. The Three Rs of Dutch parenting are an example of a wellknown, historically grounded principle of child-rearing (Super et al., 2021); parents in our research were able to explain them to us as well as illustrate them with actual stories about daily life for their children and themselves. In anthropological terms, such constellations of beliefs are often referred to as “cultural models” that have strong motivational properties. They are not just mental representations of the way that things

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are but also of the way things should be (D’Andrade & Strauss, 1992). We refer to such cultural models, when related specifically to parenting, as “parental ethnotheories“ (Harkness & Super, 1996). Parental ethnotheories can be thought of as a cascade of ideas, constraints, practices, and outcomes (Harkness & Super, 2006, figure 1, p. 71). The cultural models at the top of the model are the most general, often implicit ideas about the nature of the child, parenting, and the family. Below this triad are ideas about specific domains, such as infant sleep or social development. These ideas are closely tied to ideas about appropriate practices (such as strict bedtimes), and further to imagined child or family outcomes. The ideas are translated into behavior but only as mediated by factors such as the child’s temperament characteristics, parents’ schedules, and competing cultural models and their related practices. The results can be seen in actual parental behaviors and ultimately in actual child and family outcomes. In the example of the Three Rs of Dutch child-rearing, the triad of rest, regularity, and cleanliness appears to be an implicit template for much of family – indeed, societal – life, and it flows easily into the second level, regarding specific beliefs, in this case about the importance of rest etc. The daily routines that these families described were instantiations of the Three Rs, and they were often accompanied by comments about their benefits. During our time living with and learning from these Dutch families, we were struck by the implicit emphasis on emotional regulation inherent in the Three Rs. For example, a typical comment from a parent in support of a regular and restful routine was, “If he doesn’t get enough sleep, he’s fussy the next day.” Likewise, parents alluded to their own need for adequate rest and some time for themselves after the children were in bed. For these families, it appeared, keeping daily practices consistent with the principles of the Three Rs did not seem to be a problem; but as any parent knows, one cannot assume that practices will always reflect principles. Thus the parental ethnotheories model includes space for things that interfere with parents’ ideas about being a good parent. The parental ethnotheories model ties together culturally shared ideas, practices, and outcomes. Thus, learning about one part of the model can lead the observer to explore how it functions in relation to other parts, as well as how it may vary across cultures. For example, learning about the Three Rs from Dutch parents aroused our curiosity about what parents in other cultures – even within Western Europe – might think about the importance of a regular and restful schedule for children. When we asked an Italian mother what she thought about feeding her baby on a regular schedule, her response was emphatic: No, absolutely not – no scheduling with this one. With the other one I did . . . Because with the bottle you give him 200 ml at two o’clock, so

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you can’t give him 100 ml at three. . . It’s completely different, in my opinion. When you breastfeed, you not only give your milk, but many more things so you can’t refuse it – it’s not that you don’t want to, it’s just unthinkable, it’s as if your child said, “Mummy, give me a kiss,” and you said, “Not now, Sweetie, at three o’clock!” (Harkness et al. 2007, p. 24)

In contrast to the Dutch mothers, the majority of mothers in our Italian sample did not expect their babies to self-regulate their state of rest and arousal; rather, they tended to accommodate to the infant’s inborn sleeping and feeding schedules without imposing any rules, because “babies learn to regulate themselves.” This idea in turn related to a more implicit principle that our Italian colleague, Vanna Axia, explained to us, that is the importance of emotional closeness, especially within the family. As with the Three Rs for the Dutch parents, the cultural model of emotional closeness for the Italian families could be related to various aspects of family life. For example, when we asked the Italian parents about whether children should have a regular bedtime, the general response was “yes . . . ” but then with numerous exceptions. The mother of one 4year-old girl stated firmly that “the rule is going to bed in the evening not after 9:00 – unless there are friends, parties, or we are out – then the rules are broken.” In this cultural scenario, emotion regulation for both children and their parents was a joint project, supported by a close and loving relationship.

10.4 The Importance of Context: Parenting across the Globe The Dutch and Italian parents whom we met through our research lived in somewhat similar circumstances. Thus, the differences we observed in parenting might be seen as dictated more by cultural traditions than by what John Whiting (1977) called “maintenance systems,” including economic structure, government, and the overall organization of society. A quick hop across the globe and across time to Kokwet, the rural African community where we carried out research with children and families in the 1970s, provides a contrasting example (Harkness & Super, 1985; Super & Harkness, 1986). Our images from those times include a photograph of Mrs Mitei (as our local research assistant always referred to her) seated on the ground outside her mud-and-wattle hut with the youngest three of her eight children as they work together peeling maize kernels off the dried cob. The photo catches her in an affectionate interchange with the toddler seated next to her, who is too young to participate but content to stay with his siblings and his mother. The maize kernels will be ground for making kimiet, a thick porridge that

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is the staple food in this community. Mrs Mitei’s day includes cooking kimiet, garnished with wild leafy vegetables that grow between the rows of maize on their plot of land. Kipsigis tea – a hearty beverage of milk and tea leaves boiled together and sweetened with a generous spoonful of sugar from the local store – accompanies every meal. Mrs Mitei and her children eat together, seated on the ground, while her husband, Arap (or “Mr” in our parlance) Mitei, eats off to the side, following Kipsigis etiquette. Mrs Mitei also goes down to the river to bring back a bucket of water, balanced on her head, for cooking and washing, and she spends several hours in her fields weeding, along with several neighborhood women who take turns helping in each other’s gardens, while older siblings take care of the younger ones at the edge of the field. At night, Mrs Mitei will sleep on the sculpted mud floor of her own hut, with her youngest child at her front and next-youngest at her back; the older children sleep in a separate hut across the compound, and Arap Mitei has his own. When the children are not with their mother, they are mostly busy helping out, for example, 4-year-old Kipkoech, captured in another photo, is posted by maize kernels spread out to dry on cow hides, where he drives away an errant calf from this tempting snack.

10.5 Cultural Typologies of Mothers What Mrs Mitei does as a “good mother” is quite different from the European mothers mentioned previously, even though their fundamental goals of raising healthy and productive children are no doubt the same. Mrs Mitei and mothers like her are described by anthropologist Beatrice Whiting as “training mothers,” whose communications with their children often revolve around assigning tasks that contribute to the whole family’s sustenance (unlike picking up one’s toys or even setting the table for dinner). Based on observations of mothers’ behavior with their children in 12 cultural places, Whiting and her colleague Carolyn Pope Edwards proposed three maternal profiles (Whiting & Edwards, 1988). The “training mother” profile was found in all their sub-Saharan research samples. In contrast to this profile was the “controlling mother,” whose interactions seemed more oriented to managing the child’s behavior. This profile was most prevalent in agricultural communities of the Philippines, Mexico, and north India, where – as Whiting theorized – children were not needed as much for household or farm work. The last profile, the “sociable mother,” was found only in the American community of “Orchard Town,” a western suburb of Boston. In fact, these mothers also used primarily “controlling” speech with their children; but unlike the other cultural places, sociable interactions were second most frequent in

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this place. Whiting and Edwards suggested that this maternal style was due in part to the social isolation of these mothers: in contrast to all the other cultural samples, the mothers of Orchard Town often had no one to talk with except their children. To this triad of mothers’ parenting styles, we might add another, the “educating mother” or father. This approach to parenting has long been recognized as important in East Asian cultures, and it has become increasingly prevalent among middle-class families in post-industrial Western societies, especially the United States (Harkness et al., 2007). A Korean mother interviewed about her 2-month-old infant expressed the Asian version of this theme: “My baby looks at new things very intensively for a long time. I think he recognizes things and he is thinking. I like it. It is his brain development. I would like to show him lots of things to help and encourage his brain development . . .. I put some pictures on the wall to show him things” (ibid., p. 30). Another Korean mother recounted, “I play music to her or I play tapes of stories so she could listen to them. The stories are recorded in Korean and in English. The earlier she starts the better” (Harkness, Super, and Mavridis, 2011, p. 84). The “educating mother” is well represented in studies of Asian parenting through adolescence and even into college. For example, Korean mothers of preschool children reported spending most of their time in educational activities with their children, even though in principle they claimed that raising children to have good socioemotional qualities was their highest priority. Many of these mothers expressed anxiety about the conflict between their beliefs and practices but explained that it was necessary to help their children meet academic expectations for children entering kindergarten (Park & Kwon, 2009). A further explanation for Asian mothers’ focus on their children’s academic achievement is that, as the title of one report quotes, “My child is my report card” (Ng et al., 2014). As the authors suggest, the higher rate of controlling behavior that they found among Chinese mothers, in contrast to American mothers, may well be due to differences in the extent to which mothers’ feelings of self-worth are contingent on their children’s academic success, with Chinese mothers rating higher on this association. A frequently noted aspect of the Asian “educating parent” style is the emphasis on criticism as a motivating force for both intellectual and moral development. Florrie Fei-Yin Ng, now a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, for example, recounted a childhood memory of coming home with a score of 95 (out of 100) on a school assignment (Center for the Study of Culture Health and Human Development, 2021). Although 95 was in fact an excellent grade, her mother’s response was to focus on the missing five points, that is, what went wrong, and how could she have done better? Professor Ng’s own research aligns closely with her

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personal experience. She and colleagues Eva Pomerantz and Shui-fong Lam, for example, note that Asian parents tend to emphasize failure and deemphasize success in their children’s academic performance. Explanations of this cultural pattern include the traditional Confucian focus on self-improvement, a belief that effort (rather than innate ability) is the most powerful influence on success, and the economic importance of academic achievement in Chinese society (Ng et al., 2007). Middle-class American mothers also exemplify the “educating mother” profile, but with a distinct focus on “stimulation” for growth rather than learning per se, and praise rather than criticism. In our research, American mothers of 2-month-old infants, like their Korean counterparts, talked about their babies in cognitive terms (Harkness et al., 2007). As one mother recounted: Somebody got us a video. It’s Baby Einstein. It works a lot with colors and music and just stimulating, so we play that for him. Not every day, but almost every day. Just, there’s a whole different range of things. One of them is colors. One is language. The other one is just, you know, shapes and . . . It’s stimulating to him. We try to stimulate him in some way. (Harkness et al. 2007, p. 18)

These US mothers’ attention to their babies’ cognitive development often seemed to refer to norms that they had learned about by reading books of advice for parents. One mother explained: I definitely try and do some introducing her to the toys and having her like, just in the past week and a half I brought out the little gym that goes above her so she can start batting at some rattles and she is starting to kind of figure out, but you know her hands are doing that . . . um, so yeah, making sure, I try and read up on you know what a 2-month-old should be doing, what a 3-month-old should be doing, so I can make sure that I do some activities that are helping her develop those skills and things that she needs to do . . . some stimulation where she can start focusing on things, but not overstimulation ‘cause I can see that really, you know, makes her crazy. (ibid., p. 19)

As these babies grow into early childhood, the American parents’ focus on teaching extends to getting their child ready for kindergarten or even preschool. In a comparative study of parents and preschools in the United States, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands, for example, almost 70% of the US parents said they thought that parents should teach their preschool child school-related skills. In contrast, parents in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands overwhelmingly rejected this idea. As one Spanish mother explained, “I think that is the job of teachers who have studied for this [teaching]. The teachers don’t know how to do my job, and I shouldn’t

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want to do theirs” (Harkness et al. 2020, p. 132). An Italian mother of a 4year-old concurred, drawing a contrast with her perception of US ideas about parenting: “We teach him sometimes, but in a ‘soft’ way, and only if he asks for it. For example, I show him things, explain, but I do not insist, because children have their own maturation rhythms . . . yes, not like the Americans who want their children to grow up becoming little geniuses . . . I prefer to respect his developmental timing, he needs a time to play, because at primary school things get much more demanding” (ibid., p. 132). The Dutch parents were unanimous in their opposition to teaching their young children school-related skills, but they allowed for the possibility of doing educational activities with their children, as long as it was not (as one father put it), “with an eye to the future or his career.” Another Dutch father commented on the approach to learning taken both at preschool and at home: “So, I don’t think she has to learn anything. As long as she’s doing things she enjoys . . . she’s only 5” (ibid., p. 133). The American parents’ focus on the importance of supporting the child’s self-esteem contrasts with not only the Asian parents but also the European parents in our research. We were prompted by the American parents’ frequent reference to this idea to explore it with parents in our five European samples. Interestingly, we found that the term “self-esteem” itself was almost impossible to translate; the closest that our European colleagues could suggest was more like “self-confidence.” A tabulation of themes in parent interviews across the six cultural samples showed a unique American emphasis on self-esteem, together with academic success and autonomy. These parents also talked about emotional closeness and a loving home, but less frequently than did all the European parents. The pairing of self-esteem with academic success in this analysis suggests why American parents seem to be so preoccupied with this theme. Namely, it is not easy to maintain a positive view of oneself in the highly competitive environment surrounding American children today. In this context, emotion regulation becomes a challenge of its own as parents attempt to maximize their child’s development while keeping some sense of their own selves as beings worthy of praise or at least appreciation. The title of Jennifer Senior’s (2014) popular book All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting captures the essence of this challenge.

10.6 Culture Change and the New Challenges of Being a Good Parent Traditional ethnographic portraits of faraway places that were the focus of anthropologists in the early years of the field often included a last chapter about culture change, implying a contrast with the ostensibly

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stable social organization that had prevailed for generations. In reality, of course, cultures have always experienced change due to migrations, climate change, war, and population health events. Recent years, however, have brought more rapid change affecting families and communities. For example, Tsamaase et al. (2020) describe traditional childrearing patterns in rural Botswana as involving the entire extended family and community, in which maternal grandmothers played a special role as overseers of care for both their daughters and their grandchildren. Recent economic changes, however, including the growth of the diamond mining sector, have opened new employment options for women as well as men. Many young women have migrated to cities for salaried jobs, far from their families of origin and thus deprived of the communal care that their children would have received. This demographic change has required newly isolated urban nuclear families to find paid help by women unrelated to their families, and often from different cultural backgrounds. Grandmothers, in the meantime, find themselves increasingly burdened with primary care of children whose parents are not available to participate. As we write the final pages of this chapter, we have just received news of the death of a dearly remembered man of the community where we lived and did research in the 1970s, and where our first child was born. Arap Mitei was born in the 1920s and lived through multiple culture changes that affected him directly, from serving as a housekeeper to British settlers during the colonial era, to becoming a farmer of his own property after Independence in 1963. Upon our arrival, he drew from his earlier training to take care of us, our house, our garden. Over the years, Arap Mitei became a respected boiyot, an elder in the community with a wife and many children and grandchildren. He raised his sons to become successful farmers, a manager of a safari company, a driver for a nongovernmental organization, and a security guard in a nearby town. His daughters are married and, like all mothers in Kokwet, farmers. In his last years, Arap Mitei suffered from dementia, but his family took loving and respectful care of him in his own home. His memory will be preserved through a new science lab for the local secondary school, a building originally constructed by the British settler who was given the land by the colonial government, and which became our home during our stay in the community before being changed into a school where none had been before, another bit of culture change in Arap Mitei’s community. Changes in European and other postindustrial societies, although perhaps less visible than the changes in rural Africa, also shift the challenges of being a good parent. All the fathers in our seven-culture study described being more emotionally close to their children than what they had experienced with their own fathers. Economic changes have altered

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the predominance of the traditional single-earner family, and demographic changes include a wider variety of family forms and roles. A general although not universal trend is the increasing isolation of the nuclear family in both Western and non-Western settings. All of these entail changes in parental roles, with their accompanying demands on emotion regulation.

10.7 Culture and Emotion Regulation The challenges of being a “good parent” are but one piece of the puzzle of culture (Harkness, 2023). Like a single jigsaw piece, they cannot be understood without some sense of the larger picture, for they necessarily reflect tradition and change, economics and psychology, and the experiences of individuals in families and community. Ideas about what makes a good parent are a core aspect of what it means to belong to a particular cultural place and time. Emotion regulation is a universal challenge of parenting (as well as successful functioning more generally), but its expression necessarily varies across cultures, even within the contemporary Western world, as captured by psychologist John Nash’s account of passengers disembarking from ships at an Australian port: I had occasion twice in one week to meet passengers from ships at the ocean terminal in Sydney. One ship was the Southern Cross, from Southampton, and the other was the Galileo Galilei from Milan. In the one case the dockside was crowded with a throng of people, babies and grandparents, laughing, weeping, shouting. Men embraced and kissed; women shrieked and rushed into passionate greetings. There was tumultuous confusion. From the other ship the passengers passed sedately down the gang-plank, in orderly groups; there were waves of hands and smiles, polite handshakes, and impassive greetings such as “How nice to see you again.” (Nash, 1970, p. 428)

Based on the contrast between the Italian and British passengers in this scene, we might ask which group evidenced better emotion regulation. The answer, of course, is neither. Passengers in both groups were expressing their emotions in a culturally appropriate and thus well-regulated manner. In contrast to the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 2015; see also Chapter 2), the passengers disembarking in Sydney may not have experienced any of the four stages of emotion regulation described by this model; rather, they arrived at the Sydney ocean terminal equipped with cultural models that directed their expression of emotion (and probably their inner experience of it) without any felt effort. Critically, they were met by other members of the same cultural places

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who knew how to interpret their expressions, whether cries of joy or calm and pleasant greetings. It is noteworthy that the contrasts observed by Nash were based on two cultural places that are rather similar in global perspective. Potthoff and colleagues (2016) have pointed to other differences in emotional display rules within the limited European context. In northern Europe, they found Germans and Dutch making less use of cognitive strategies such as rumination and other-blame, in regulating their emotional responses, compared to participants from Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Hungary. More widely, Matsumoto et al. (2008) have demonstrated large cross-national variation in emotional expressivity in general, as well as in the open display of specific emotions such as happiness. Developmental studies demonstrate that at least some of these “rules” are learned within the opening months of life (e.g. Lavelli et al., 2019). Observations of parents and children in various cultural contexts illustrate variation in the challenges of parenting, in contrast to simpler formulations based on the purported value of children in relation to economic development. Nevertheless, cross-cultural studies suggest some basic universals in parents’ ideas. In a recent survey of parents’ definitions of the “ideal parent” in 37 countries, the authors found that the theme of being “loving” was “the core of ideal-parent beliefs” in all the Western “culture zones,” whereas the African zone featured “responsibility” and “respect” and the Asian zone emphasized the themes of “family” plus “responsibility” (Lin et al., 2023). Although the cultural variability evident in these themes is evident, they all support a positive view of what it takes to be a good parent. Successfully meeting those challenges in their local manifestation is in turn the basis of parents’ own sense of well-being and thus of their ability to regulate their own emotions and those of their children.

References Acosta, R. M., & Hutchinson, M. (2017). The happiest kids in the world: How Dutch parents help their kids (and themselves) by doing less. The Experiment. Alexander, J. J., & Sandahl, I. (2016). The Danish way of parenting: What the happiest people in the world know about raising confident, capable kids. Tarcher Perigee. Center for the Study of Culture Health and Human Development (Producer). (2021). Avoiding ethnocentrism in behavioral science through studying culture and human development [Conversation round-table]. 2021 biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Botswana, Brazil, Ghana, and Hong Kong. The UConn Center for the Study of Culture Health and Human Development. https://chhd.uconn.edu/avoiding-ethnocentrism D’Andrade, R. G., & Strauss, C. (1992). Human motives and cultural models. Cambridge University Press.

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Druckerman, P. (2014). Bringing up bébé: One American mother discovers the wisdom of French parenting. Penguin. Gesell, A., & Ilg, F. L. (1943). Infant and child in the culture of today: The guidance of development in home and nursery school. Hamish Hamilton. Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 1-26. Harkness, S. (2023). Commentary for “Parenting culture (s): Ideal parent beliefs across 37 countries.” Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, 54(1), 25–29. Harkness, S., & Super, C. M. (1985). Child-environment transactions in the socialization of affect. In M. Lewis & C. Saarni (Eds.), The socialization of emotions (pp. 21–36). Plenum. Harkness, S., & Super, C. M. (1996). Introduction. In S. Harkness & C. M. Super (Eds.), Parents’ cultural belief systems: Their origins, expressions, and consequences (pp. 1–23). Guilford. Harkness, S., & Super, C. M. (2006). Themes and variations: Parental ethnotheories in western cultures. In K. H. Rubin & O.-B. Chung (Eds.), Parental beliefs, parenting, and child development in cross-cultural perspective (pp. 61–79). Psychology Press. Harkness, S., Super, C. M., Bonichini, S., Ríos Bermúdez, M., Mavridis, C., van Schaik, S. D. M., Tomkunas, A., & Palacios, J. (2020). Parents, preschools, and the developmental niches of young children: A study in four western cultures. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 170, 113–142. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cad.20343 Harkness, S., Super, C. M., & Mavridis, C. J. (2011). Parental ethnotheories about children’s socioemotional development. In X. Chen & K. H. Rubin (Eds.), Socioemotional development in cultural context, pp. 73–98. New York: Guilford Publications. Harkness, S., Super, C. M., Moscardino, U., Rha, J.-H., Blom, M. J. M., Huitrón, B., Johnston, C., Sutherland, M., Hyun, O.-K., Axia, G., & Palacios, J. (2007). Cultural models and developmental agendas: Implications for arousal and self-regulation in early infancy. Journal of Developmental Processes, 2(1), 5–39. Hulbert, A. (2004). Raising America: Experts, parents, and a century of advice about children. Vintage. Lavelli, M., Carra, C., Rossi, G., & Keller, H. (2019). Culture-specific development of early mother–infant emotional co-regulation: Italian, Cameroonian, and West African immigrant dyads. Developmental Psychology, 55(9), 1850–1867. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000696 Lin, G.-X., Mikolajczak, M., Keller, H., Akgun, E., Arikan, G., Aunola, K., Barham, E., Besson, E., Blanchard, M. A., Boujut, E., Brianda, M. E., Brytek-Matera, A., César, F., Chen, B.-B., Dorard, G., dos Santos Elias, L. C., Dunsmuir, S., Egorova, N., Escobar, M. J., . . . Roskam, I. (2023). Parenting culture(s): Ideal-Parent beliefs across 37 countries. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 54(1), 4–24. Matsumoto, D., Yoo, S. H., & Fontaine, J. (2008). Mapping expressive differences around the world: The relationship between emotional display rules and individualism versus collectivism. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 39 (1), 55–74. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022107311854

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Nash, J. (1970). Developmental psychology: A psychobiological approach. Prentice-Hall. Ng, F. F.-Y., Pomerantz, E. M., & Deng, C. (2014). Why are Chinese mothers more controlling than American mothers? “My child is my report card.” Child Development, 85(1), 355–369. Ng, F. F.-Y., Pomerantz, E. M., & Lam, S.-F. (2007). European American and Chinese parents’ responses to children’s success and failure: Implications for children’s responses. Developmental Psychology, 43(5), 1239–1255. Park, J.-H., & Kwon, Y. I. (2009). Parental goals and parenting practices of upper-middle-class Korean mothers with preschool children. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 7(1), 58–75. Potthoff, S., Garnefski, N., Miklósi, M., Ubbiali, A., Domínguez-Sánchez, F. J., Martins, E. C., Witthöft, M., & Kraaij, V. (2016). Cognitive emotion regulation and psychopathology across cultures: A comparison between six European countries. Personality and Individual Differences, 98, 218–224. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.paid.2016.04.022 Rockwell, N. (1933, November 5). Child psychology. Saturday Evening Post, cover. Senior, J. (2014). All joy and no fun: The paradox of modern parenthood. Harper Collins. Super, C. M., Blom, M. J. M., Harkness, S., Ranade, N., & Londhe, R. (2021). Culture and the organization of infant sleep: A study in the Netherlands and the USA. Infant Behavior and Development, 64, 101620. https://doi.org/10 .1016/j.infbeh.2021.101620 Super, C. M., & Harkness, S. (1986). The developmental niche: A conceptualization at the interface of child and culture. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 9, 545–569. Super, C. M., Harkness, S., van Tijen, N., van der Vlugt, E., Dykstra, J., & Fintelman, M. (1996). The three R’s of Dutch child rearing and the socialization of infant arousal. In S. Harkness & C. M. Super (Eds.), Parents’ cultural belief systems: Their origins, expressions, and consequences (pp. 447–466). Guilford Press. Tsamaase, M., Harkness, S., & Super, C. M. (2020). Grandmothers’ developmental expectations for early childhood in Botswana. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 170, 93–112. UNICEF. (2012). State of the world’s children 2012: Children in an urban world. United Nations Children’s Fund. van Schaik, S., Mavridis, C. J., De Looze, M., Blom, M. J. M., Super, C. M., & Harkness, S. (2020). Getting the baby on a schedule: Dutch and American mothers’ ethnotheories and the establishment of diurnal rhythms in early infancy. New Directions in Child and Adolescent Development, (170), 13–41. https://doi.org/10.1002/cad.20336 Watson, J. B. (1928). Psychological care of infant and child. Norton & Co. Whiting, B. B., & Edwards, C. P. (1988). Children of different worlds: The formation of social behavior. Harvard University Press. Whiting, J. W. M. (1977). A model for psychocultural research. In P. H. Leiderman, S. R. Tulkin, & A. Rosenfeld (Eds.), Culture and infancy: Variations in the human experience (pp. 29–48). Academic Press.

CHAPTER 11

Leveraging Parent–Youth Interactions to Measure and Analyze Emotion Regulation Sarah A. Thomas and Lauren Micalizzi

Dyadic parent–child emotion regulation is a bidirectional developmental process that occurs over the span of more than a decade. Accordingly, the measurement of these interactions and subsequent analysis poses challenges for researchers to translate the theory of complex processes into study design and statistical models capable of inferring directionality and causality. In this chapter, we explore the interplay between parent and child emotion regulation to facilitate a better understanding of opportunities and challenges for improved measurement of these dynamic processes. We begin with a brief review that introduces the corpus of theory regarding interpersonal emotion regulation, directions of effects, and intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation. Then, we cover conceptual, methodological and analytic considerations while providing useful strategies for designing and implementing cutting edge studies on the interactive effects of parent and child emotion regulation.

11.1 Developing a Theoretical Foundation to Study Interactive Dyadic Emotion Regulation 11.1.1 Interpersonal Processes The study of emotion regulation has historically focused on intrapersonal processes and strategies: how an individual influences what emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience or suppress them (Gross & John, 2003; see also Chapter 3). Much less research attention has been paid to interpersonal processes, but it is no less relevant to the study of parental emotion regulation. Interpersonal regulation refers to the social contexts in which an individual’s emotion is regulated by another’s (Hofmann, 2014). Emotion regulation is critical to human

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socialization and is a protracted developmental process that originates in early attachment relationships (Morris et al., 2017, 2018). Thus, the parent–child dyad is among the most salient interpersonal contexts of emotion regulation.

11.1.2 Capturing the Developmental Nature of Emotion Regulation Emotion regulation development begins in early infancy, continues through adolescence and beyond (Silvers et al., 2015; Thompson, 2011), and is entwined with parental processes (Morris et al., 2007, 2018). Children learn to regulate emotions to navigate their world, from tolerating frustration to forming friendships (Cole et al., 1994), often with the aid of parents. In adolescence, emotion regulation tasks involve achieving greater independence, including managing increasingly complex interpersonal relationships. Parents remain a critical influence on adolescent behavior and adjustment during this developmental period (Silk, 2011, 2019; Trucco et al., 2021). Although parents may provide active guidance as adolescents navigate these developmental tasks, parental influence on adolescent emotion regulation originates from a foundation of lessons and interactions earlier in development. Consequently, translating the dynamic, developmental nature of emotion regulation to the study and analysis of interactive parent–child emotion regulation is complex and measurement of dyadic emotion regulation at a single point in time provides only a snapshot of an extended developmental process.

11.1.3 Dyadic Emotion Regulation Zaki and Williams’ (2013) interpersonal emotion regulation model refers to multiperson episodes that occur in social contexts and serve to pursue regulatory goals. In this framework, classes of regulation are distinguished by whether they are (1) internal (“intrinsic”) or external (“extrinsic”) and (2) influenced by another. Extrinsic regulation involves regulating other people’s emotions, whereas intrinsic regulation involves regulating one’s own emotion with the help of others. Regarding influence, these processes are either response dependent (i.e. reliant on a response by the another) or response independent (i.e. not reliant on a response of another). For example, a child shares good news with their parent; the child’s positive affect can be enhanced if the parent responds enthusiastically (i.e. intrinsic, response-dependent; this scenario could be modeled with sequential analysis techniques referenced later in the chapter). As another example, a parent’s prosocial act, such as providing social support to reduce their child’s negative affect, can produce a form of positive affect for the parent (extrinsic response-independent; Zaki & Williams, 2013).

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11.1.4 Directions of Effects Investigating the interactive nature of parent–child dyadic emotion regulation requires an understanding of the unidirectional contributions of each dyadic member to interactive emotion regulation, as well as to bidirectional effects.

11.1.4.1 Parent-Driven Effects Most research on dyadic emotion regulation has focused on the effects of parental emotion regulation on child emotion regulation (i.e. parentdriven effects). The notion that parents can positively or negatively influence their children’s emotional responses and regulation dates back decades (Gottman et al., 1997). As was covered in Part II and Part III of this book, regulating emotions well is an essential faculty of parenting that influences child development through several avenues. The pathways of the effects of family socialization on emotion regulation are outlined in the Tripartite Model (Morris et al., 2007), which details influences that include observation (e.g. modeling), parenting practices (e.g. emotion coaching), and emotional climate of the family (e.g. marital relations). These pathways have been documented empirically since (for a review, see Morris et al., 2017). Parent characteristics such as their own attachment styles, levels of stress and social support, and mental health influence familial socialization of emotion regulation. Most relevant to this chapter, parent-driven effects on child emotion regulation could involve the transmission of emotion dysregulation from parent to child (see more on this in Section 11.1.5). Leveraging this directionality, interventions target parenting skills to improve child behavior/emotion regulation (e.g. Rothenberg et al., 2019). In sum, models with parent-driven effects view emotion dysregulation as originating from the parent and transmitting to the child through various mechanisms. 11.1.4.2 Child-Driven Effects Less well characterized is the role that children play in the dyadic nature of emotion regulation (i.e. child-driven effects), though research indicates that children can also modulate the flow of parent emotion and corresponding regulatory strategies. Short term, within a parent–child exchange, a distressed child can evoke an emotionally dysregulated state within the parent. Long term, attributes of the child (e.g. difficult temperament) can negatively affect parenting (Micalizzi et al., 2017), perhaps through emotion dysregulation. Patterson’s Coercion Theory (Patterson, 2016) captures early child emotion dysregulation as an evocative factor of negative parent behavior that cascades into a coercive dyadic cycle

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occurring over many years. Further, Sameroff’s transactional model (Sameroff, 2009) outlines both bidirectional and recursive effects to relations between caregivers and children that adds to the complex, dynamic multilevel processes involved in emotion regulation development (Olson & Sameroff, 2009).

11.1.4.3 Interactive Effects Since Bell’s (1968) reinterpretation of directions of effects in socialization processes, an accumulating research base indicates that there are mutually interactive dyadic influences observed between parent and child (e.g. Micalizzi et al., 2017; Thomas et al., 2022). Parent–child interactions can evoke intense and complex emotions from both members of the dyad (Hajal et al., 2019) that can result in proximal, reciprocal exchanges of emotions and regulatory strategies as well as future implementation of these strategies. To illustrate, because a child’s emotion regulation abilities result from continuous and reciprocal interactions between the child and their caregiver over time (Sameroff, 2010), a caregiver’s response to their child’s anger can alter the child’s perception of if/how the expression of anger is acceptable and their subsequent expression of anger. At the same time, the caregiver receives information about if/how they must change their regulatory strategies to influence their child’s regulatory capacity (Chan et al., 2022). To this end, increased research attention has been paid to the conceptualization of emotion regulation as a dynamic, dyadic process in recent years (Gates & Liu, 2016; Morris et al., 2018; Silk, 2019; Stone et al., 2019; Wright & Hopwood, 2016). 11.1.5 Intergenerational Transmission of Emotion Regulation Characterizing the origins of emotion regulation is critical to understand the interplay between parent and child emotion regulation. Emotion regulation is transmitted from parents to children through both genetic and environmental mechanisms (see Chapters 4, 9, and 10). Bridgett and colleagues (2015) proposed an intergenerational transmission model that examines the prenatal, social/contextual, and neurobiological mechanisms contributing to the intergenerational transmission of self-regulation (including emotion regulation). Genetic risk, for example, could emerge such that emotion dysregulation is a preexisting issue for the parent that is passed on to the child. Environmental transmission of risk may occur through parental modeling of emotion dysregulation. Although outside of the scope of this chapter, the study of dyadic processes of emotion regulation can be significantly enhanced by broadening the environmental focus to include siblings, co-parents, the family system (Paley & Hajal, 2022), peers, neighborhoods, and culture (Kiel & Kalomiris, 2015).

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11.2 Assessing Dyadic Interactions and Parent Emotion Regulation The preceding review outlined some of the complexity in the dynamic processes of parent–child emotion regulation interactions. We turn now to assessment strategies. Investigating dyadic emotion regulation begins with study design. Prior to data collection, researchers must consider the research question and what process that reflects, feasibility of methods, and analytic techniques. There have been compelling arguments for the implementation of innovative paradigms to capture dyadic emotion regulation and for employing context-sensitive studies of emotion regulation influences (Dixon-Gordon et al., 2015; Morris et al., 2018). In this section, we review (1) assessment methods to measure parent– child dyadic interactions related to emotion, including surveys, interactive tasks, and physiological methods; (2) challenges researchers encounter when investigating these processes; and (3) suggestions for overcoming these challenges.

11.2.1 Assessment Methods 11.2.1.1 Questionnaires The most accessible approach to studying interactive dyadic emotion regulation is to administer developmentally appropriate questionnaires to both parents and youth and to employ one of the analytic techniques outlined later in this chapter. If children are too young to self-report, researchers could obtain reports on child emotion regulation from teachers, parents, or researchers depending on the child’s age. Because methodological biases could be introduced if parents report on themselves and their children (Podsakoff et al., 2003), different raters for parent and child emotion regulation are preferable. Measures that assess interpersonal emotion regulation include the Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Hofmann et al., 2016), the Interpersonal Regulation Questionnaire (Williams et al., 2018), and the Emotion Regulation of Others and Self (Niven et al., 2011). Notably, the psychometric properties of these measures were evaluated among adult samples; administration to children would require further psychometric evaluation. Questionnaires of intrapersonal regulation are more widely implemented and include the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003) and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz & Roemer, 2004). Generally, questionnaire methods for emotion regulation are poised to tap trait, rather than state, emotion regulation (Silk, 2019). Assessing emotion regulation from parents and children over time would inform stability/change over time and/or how one member’s emotion

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regulation influences that of the other dyad member over time. Some limitations of self-report measures of emotion regulation include the ability of measures only to provide insight into explicit, conscious processes (i.e. processes for which the individual is aware), reliance on a high degree of the individual’s emotional awareness, retrospective recall, and global, rather than context-specific items. Next, we review other methods researchers use that attempt to assess parent–youth interactions and emotion regulation in vivo.

11.2.1.2 Ecological Momentary Assessment Ecological momentary assessment (EMA), a form of ambulatory assessment and experience sampling, overcomes some of the limitations of questionnaires. EMA involves the repeated assessment of behaviors and experiences in-the-moment to assess a domain of interest when it occurs in real-time in the natural environment (Bettis et al., 2022; Shiffman et al., 2008; Silk, 2019). Using EMA, one can assess the fluctuations of a domain over time and across contexts to minimize recall bias and maximize external validity (Shiffman et al., 2008; Silk, 2019). This enables researchers to make inferences into short-term dynamics of the parent–child dyad, yet it is an underused method for assessing parent–adolescent interactions (Keijsers et al., 2022). With respect to emotion regulation and parenting, EMA can enable parents and/or youth to report on some aspect of their interactions with each other, and/or their emotion regulation throughout the day, with the ability to indicate context (e.g. with peers; Stone et al., 2019). Several studies using EMA demonstrate the role that parents play in supporting adolescents‘ emotion regulation, based on adolescents’ EMA reports (Silk, 2019; Silk et al., 2011; Waller et al., 2014). For example, in adolescents with and without major depressive disorder, the use of EMA to measure daily social interactions after a negative event enabled researchers to determine that adolescents with depression coruminate with their parents, which adolescent participants without depression did not do (Waller et al., 2014). Limitations to EMA include potential burden on participants due to the repeated nature of assessments, reliance on self-report, and the potential for missing data (Bettis et al., 2022). Several recent reviews provide further detail on this method and its relevance to emotion regulation (e.g. Bettis et al., 2022; Keijsers et al., 2022; Silk, 2019). 11.2.1.3 Interaction Tasks Some parent–child interactions may occur less frequently, for only a short period of time (Keijsers et al., 2022), or are difficult to assess with a static survey report, and thus may be better suited to measurement while being induced and observed in a laboratory setting rather than via

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questionnaires or EMA (e.g. Thomas et al., 2017, 2019). Furthermore, if the process of how parents and children behave together is the focus, an interaction task is the optimal method to obtain such data. Moreover, behavior and psychophysiology are common facets of emotion regulation (Morris et al., 2018) and such a task enables measurement of both for dyad members. Accordingly, observational procedures for assessing emotion regulation provide some advantages beyond self-report (Girard & Cohn, 2016). Methodologically, it is beneficial to have an objective source of data on emotion regulation, separate from survey reports. Survey reports and behavioral observations are not highly correlated, indicating they do not measure the same things (e.g. parent behavior; Hendriks et al., 2018). Moreover, interaction tasks are often designed to be ecologically valid in order to observe behavior as it may naturally occur between dyads (rather than rely on retrospective recall or insight during survey reports). Highlighting their importance, even some interventions for childhood behavior problems involve parent–youth interaction tasks. Their inclusion is supported by the role of emotion dysregulation in the context of impairing psychiatric conditions requiring early intervention (Aldao et al., 2016; Sheppes et al., 2015), and the recognition that parents and youth evoke responses from one another that can become entrenched patterns (Patterson, 2016). These tasks enable clinicians to observe patterns of interaction that may elicit emotional reactions that escalate/exacerbate problem behaviors as part of the assessment process, subsequently informing a treatment plan and skill development. One example is Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), a treatment for disruptive child behavior in which clinicians coach parents in vivo how to respond to their children during activities. Child emotion dysregulation has been shown to decrease significantly from pre- to post-treatment (Rothenberg et al., 2019). In laboratory settings, many parent–youth interaction task designs salient to measuring emotion regulation and parenting involve a discussion task focused on problem-solving, planning, or conflict-resolution (Bodner et al., 2018; Cui et al., 2015; Donenberg & Weisz, 1997). In the latter situation, topics about which parent–youth dyads have conflict are introduced (e.g. Issues Checklist; Prinz et al., 1979), and dyads are asked to come to a resolution within a brief period (e.g. 5–10 minutes). The theoretical underpinnings that inform how researchers observe and code parent and child behavior are diverse (e.g. stress, attachment). One commonality of these phenotypes is that many involve facets of emotion regulation, particularly if the objective of the task is to induce stress or replicate an emotionally intense interaction that is typical for the dyad. In the context of the interaction task, researchers often measure emotional reaction or intensity, often along a spectrum of some variation of

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positive affect (warmth/validation) and negative affect (hostility/anger), the psychometric considerations of which are discussed thoroughly elsewhere (Girard & Cohn, 2016). Finally, interaction task measurement may occur from coding behavior such as body language, content of speech, and facial expressions; psychophysiological responding (e.g. heart rate variability during task; Cui et al., 2015; Thomas et al., 2019); and/or posttask ratings of emotions experienced during the task (Chaplin et al., 2012; Turpyn et al., 2015). In an example study including multiple domains to measure emotion, researchers assessed adolescents‘ psychophysiology (blood pressure, heart rate) during a 10-minute conflict discussion task with parents and asked them to report on their emotions pre- and post-task (Chaplin et al., 2012). Results indicated an inverse relationship between parenting behaviors during the task and adolescents’ emotions, such that lower parental involvement (e.g. offering solutions, setting/explaining rules) and parental support/warmth were associated with greater adolescent anger arousal and greater blood pressure. In another study using the same conflict discussion task, researchers created latent profiles of adolescent emotion regulation during the conflict discussion task, comprised of positive and negative emotional expressions during the conflict task (i.e. coded from observed behavior), self-reports of subjective experiences of anger and anxiety evoked from the task (completed immediately post task), and heart rate reactivity during the task (Turpyn et al., 2015). Parenting behaviors during the task were measured via an existing coding system by trained staff, with a focus on behaviors that were negative/critical (e.g. mocking, interrupting). Negative/critical parenting was associated with a greater likelihood of adolescents belonging to profiles indicative of less emotion regulation (Turpyn et al., 2015). It is important to note that although the two aforementioned studies are crosssectional, the predominant theoretical rationale, which also underpins the analyses and results, reflect parent-driven effects; however, both articles acknowledge that adolescents’ behaviors stemming from emotional reactivity may evoke certain parental responses (i.e. child-driven effects). In sum, parent–youth interaction tasks are a flexible means of assessment that enable derivation of behavior consistent with emotion (dys)regulation, which can then be related to parenting domains and/or youth risk behaviors and psychopathology.

11.2.1.4 Physiological Indices Although it is beyond the scope of what can be described in detail in this chapter, physiological measurements can be implemented during these interactions. Researchers use physiological measurements, such as of cardiovascular response and brain synchrony/connectivity, to index

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facets of emotion regulation (Cui et al., 2015; Ratliff et al., 2021; Reindl et al., 2018; Turpyn et al., 2015). These assessments facilitate investigations of processes like synchrony between parents and youth (Abney et al., 2021) that are theorized to be a mechanism by which parents help their offspring regulate their emotions (Morris et al., 2018). As an example, one study found parent–child brain synchrony during a cooperative interaction task that was not present during a competitive interaction task or when completing tasks with a stranger (Reindl et al., 2018).

11.2.2 Challenges and Solutions to Assessing Dyadic Interactions and Parent Emotion Regulation The methods described here advance the study of processes of emotion regulation in the context of parent–youth relationships. There are challenges to consider before planning an investigation of these dynamic processes, which we review next. With the proper study design, planning and training, it is possible to collect valid and informative data, the results of which can advance the field of emotion regulation.

11.2.2.1 Study Design The study research question(s) and how the measures, means, and schedule of administration will fulfill that objective should guide the selection, design, or modification of the measurement instrument and subsequent analysis of data. As a priority, researchers must determine how to define and subsequently assess emotion regulation in the context of parent– youth interactions (discussed next). Then, researchers must decide how to measure interaction, either with a task or statistical inference. In the former case, researchers could implement an existing task (e.g. Chaplin et al., 2012). However, if the research question involves contextual variation of emotion regulation, a sufficient task design is necessary to elicit the behaviors of interest and perhaps include a “control” condition to contrast the conditions under which they expect to observe the target behavior (Thomas et al., 2019). If the investigation involves ratings of observed behavior, sufficient numbers of research staff will be necessary, as well as a plan to monitor reliability of ratings (for a thorough review on considerations related to observational measurement, see Girard & Cohn, 2016). Carefully selecting study design can address the long-standing research question as to whether behaviors are stable across situations or depend on situational context (Donenberg & Weisz, 1997; Silk, 2019); therefore, depending on the researcher’s interest, study design and task selection should be adjusted accordingly.

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11.2.2.2 Defining Emotion Regulation and Its Level of Analysis Operationally defining “emotion regulation” is crucial. In the case of a task designed to measure emotion regulation, a primary question is how one observes what may be an internal process. Because some adaptive emotion regulation skills are idiosyncratic to the individual and may be unobservable (e.g. deep breathing, reappraisal; Gross & John, 2003), researchers may instead focus on indicators of lack of emotion regulation or dysregulation. Thus, in many cases of interaction tasks, it has been the manifestation of an emotion that may be excessive (i.e. not adaptive), thereby interfering with the goal of the task (Beauchaine, 2015). A related challenge is deciding what level of analysis emotion regulation will be recorded. Emotion dysregulation may be assessed at the level of behavior (e.g. yelling), or by measurement of physiological functioning, such as cardiovascular indices (e.g. heart rate) as a proxy for emotional reactivity/regulation that can be recorded continuously throughout the interaction and/or to measure synchrony between dyad members (Morris et al., 2018; Reindl et al., 2018). Moreover, it is also possible to include a parent–youth interaction task to capture a parenting behavior of interest and associate those behaviors with survey reports of emotion regulation. Finally, an emotion regulation latent variable could be derived from different levels (self-report, behavior, physiology; e.g. Turpyn et al., 2015). 11.2.2.3 Selecting a Coding Scheme/Emotion Regulation Metric Once emotion regulation has been defined, researchers must select an appropriate measurement instrument to facilitate inferences about interaction. Examples include survey, EMA, psychophysiology, or coding of observed behavior during an interaction task. Additional nontrivial considerations when coding behavior include having a laboratory audiovisual recording system so behaviors do not have to be coded live, and sufficient storage space and security for these recordings. For psychophysiological indices of emotion regulation, researchers could use wearables like heart rate watches or a BIOPAC system to record sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system response (Bettis et al., 2022). 11.2.2.4 Informants Even when assessing the same construct, parent and youth reports often do not agree, suggesting they may have different perspectives (De Los Reyes et al., 2013, 2015). Although it may complicate the study design, ideally both parents and youth will be included as informants in a study of parent–youth interactive effects of emotion regulation, particularly when investigating questions pertaining to synchrony or coregulation. As discussed previously, shared method variance is of concern if parents

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report on both themselves and their child. Relatedly, objective measures like observed behavior by trained raters also address informant issues. In some cases of prior research, adolescents have reported on facets of their own emotion regulation and reported on another domain that allowed inferences into parental role of emotion regulation (Silk, 2019; Stone et al., 2019; Waller et al., 2014). These investigations are informative; however, when possible, including both informants eliminates bias in relying solely on one informant’s perspective. An additional consideration is whether both parent and youth are providing data on the same construct, or whether one dyad member reports on one construct (e.g. parenting), and the other dyad member reports on another construct (e.g. adolescent emotion regulation). To use certain interactive analyses (described in Section 11.3.2.1 Actor– Partner Interdependence Model), data from both members of the dyad on both constructs are required. Relatedly, there may be developmental issues to consider if parents and youth will report on the same emotion regulation domain using different measures. For example, the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale Short Form (Kaufman et al., 2016) is appropriate for adolescents and adults, but if researchers wanted to measure the same emotion regulation domain in young children and their parents, determining which measures would enable inferences about the same domain across different developmental levels is key to avoiding invalid results due to measurement issues. Finally, studying family emotion regulation and interactive effects (i.e. including all members of a family unit) is exceptionally challenging due to translating the data into a consistent format needed for statistical models, and is therefore typically restricted to dyads ( for example, parent and child; for designs integrating mother, father, and child emotion regulation, see, e.g. Kerr et al., 2021; Li et al., 2019).

11.2.2.5 Timing Dyadic emotion regulation transactions occur within interaction as well as across time (Morris et al., 2018). Within brief interactions, conventional approaches to the study of dyadic emotion regulation aggregate data over time (i.e. take the arithmetic average), which fails to capture the rich and dynamic moment-to-moment fluctuations. To illustrate, by aggregating data, nuance is lost such that one cannot evaluate how parent–child emotion regulation exchanges manifest over time. For example, the effect of a maternal regulation strategy on the child’s subsequent emotional experience or the influence of a child’s emotional experience on parent’s emotion coaching. Furthermore, depending on the study design, researchers may prefer to sequentially code behavior on a micro level between parents and youth to infer how the sequence reveals the interaction process (e.g. sequential analysis; Bakeman & Gottman, 1997). For research questions involving synchrony or co-regulation for which psychophysiology serves as a proxy

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of emotion regulation indices, it is important to have accurate time stamps of the start and end of tasks, as well as any notable events to match dyadic processes for analysis. Finally, researchers should consider whether the interaction task will be used once with study participants or readministered at intervals (e.g. yearly). If the latter, it is important to consider youth developmental level and select a task that will enable multiple administrations over the time interval while still appropriate for the youth’s developmental level.

11.2.2.6 Causality A brief but important note on causality is warranted, given that many theories are premised on the idea of whose emotion (dys)regulation impacts whom. To infer causality, research studies need sufficient temporal ordering, and an ability to measure change, either within-person over time, or before and after an intervention. Furthermore, experimental manipulation via random assignment to conditions helps eliminate alternate explanations (e.g. Thomas et al., 2019). Although the data may fit a particular analytic method, the use of that method is not what enables researchers to infer causality but rather their research design. In sum, there are several design, staff, and implementation hurdles to overcome that explain why there are not as many studies on interactive effects of parent–youth emotion regulation as would be useful. Relatedly, it is often difficult to collect large sample sizes when interaction tasks are involved. By reducing complexity without compromising data quality (e.g. automated behavioral coding; Girard & Cohn, 2016) the likelihood is greater that researchers can scale up data collection and obtain a larger sample size.

11.3 Statistical Approaches for Analyzing Dyadic Interactions and Emotion Regulation in the Context of Parenting In the preceding sections, we described methods of assessing dyadic interactions in the context of emotion regulation and parenting and the associated challenges and opportunities. A potential barrier to conducting a study on this topic is lack of knowledge regarding analytic methods and potential inferences. In this section, we describe some considerations when analyzing dyadic data and provide brief overviews and examples of analytic methods that are appropriate for addressing research questions on emotion regulation and parenting while pointing to further resources.

11.3.1 Violations of Nonindependence Due to Dyadic and Temporal Measurements An important consideration when pursuing investigations of how parents’ and youth’s emotion regulation may be linked is the selection

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of data analytic strategy. One of the primary considerations when studying individuals who live intertwined lives is accounting for the inherent influence, or statistical nonindependence, that occurs due to their relationship. One of the assumptions of linear regression is that the observations are independent; thus, this assumption is violated when dyad members who are related genetically and/or share environments are studied. An additional nonindependence consideration is temporal (i.e. autocorrelation) for any data over time. Therefore, statistical techniques must be chosen that can account for this nonindependence; otherwise, regression estimates will not be accurate (Cook & Kenny, 2005).

11.3.2 Analytic Strategies 11.3.2.1 Actor–Partner Interdependence Model The application of the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model (APIM; Kenny et al., 2006) permits evaluation of bidirectional effects in the context of interpersonal relationships (Cook & Kenny, 2005). The APIM tests the effect of one individual’s predictor on their own outcome, as well as on the outcome of their dyadic partner (and vice versa), all within one model (Stas et al., 2018). To use the APIM, both dyad members must have data on a predictor and an outcome variable. APIM derives both actor and partner effects, enabling a test of interpersonal and intrapersonal processes. In other words, one can investigate the association between a characteristic (e.g. emotion regulation ability) and an outcome (e.g. depression symptoms) for both dyad members, controlling for the influence of the other. A significant actor effect indicates one’s own characteristics are related to one’s own outcome, whereas a significant partner effect indicates one dyad member’s characteristics are related to another’s outcome. If both partner effects are significant, it suggests bidirectional influence, but one significant partner effect indicates interdependence (Cook & Kenny, 2005). APIM models can be implemented using structural equation modeling (SEM) or multilevel modeling (MLM). To assist with analysis and interpretation, several R Shiny apps have been made available by David Kenny and colleagues that allow the investigator to upload a data set and derive output of results, including tables, figures, text summarizing the analysis and results, and code (DyadR)1. Briefly, APIM using SEM is recommended for dyads who are distinguishable, meaning dyad members differ according to an attribute like sex or gender, or family role (e.g. parent, child; Ledermann & Kenny, 2017). Should researchers select this method, there is an R Shiny app (APIM-SEM)2 that executes the 1 2

http://davidakenny.net/DyadR/DyadRweb.htm https://apimsem.ugent.be/shiny/apim_sem/

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analysis, provides text interpretation of the findings, along with tables, figures, and R code, although it is not necessary that researchers know R programming to use this resource (Stas et al., 2018). MLM APIM is recommended when dyad members are not distinguishable (same-sex roommates; Ledermann & Kenny, 2017), which may be less relevant in the study of parent–youth emotion regulation. Best practices for APIM have been reviewed elsewhere (Ledermann & Kenny, 2017; Stas et al., 2018). Versions of this model have been adapted for longitudinal data as well (Bolger & Laurenceau, 2013; Savord et al., 2022), one of which includes a Shiny app (L-APIM3; Gistelinck & Loeys, 2019). Longitudinal APIM has recently been applied to parent–child emotion regulation (Boeve et al., 2019). This approach stands to enhance our understanding of the unfolding of dyadic parent–child emotion regulation over time. There are several examples of the APIM implemented to investigate parent–youth emotion regulation. First, given that psychopathology can be a manifestation of persistent emotional dysregulation (Aldao et al., 2016; Sheppes et al., 2015), in a study of adolescents hospitalized for treatment of acute psychiatric symptoms and their parents, researchers used the APIM to probe the association between self-reports on one’s own difficulty with emotion regulation and depression symptoms (Wolff et al., 2020). There were significant actor effects between difficulty accessing emotion regulation strategies and depression symptoms. Further, there was a significant negative partner effect for parental impulsive emotion regulation and adolescent depressive symptoms, demonstrating interdependence between parents and adolescents. Second, a study investigated the associations between parents’ and adolescents’ reports of sources of parental knowledge with observed parent and adolescent behavior during a conflict discussion task, based on the rationale that how parents and adolescents interact and manage their emotions when resolving conflict (i.e. a goal-directed activity) will be associated with processes of parental monitoring (Thomas et al., 2022). Behavioral codes came from attachment domains representing behavioral categories that either helps or hurts the dyad’s goal of resolving the conflict topic. Hostile behavior (e.g. mocking) and an attachment domain known as Secure Base Use (adolescent) or Secure Base Provision (parent) (e.g. validation, smiling) were coded by trained staff for each dyad member. Adolescent reports of greater adolescent disclosure about their activities and whereabouts were associated with more secure base behavior exhibited by both adolescents (actor effects) and parents (partner effect), as well as less hostile behavior exhibited by both adolescents (actor effects) and parents

3

https://fgisteli.shinyapps.io/Shiny_LDD/

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(partner effect; Thomas et al., 2022). These findings support the interdependence of sources of parental knowledge that are related to monitoring, and manifestations of emotion regulation processes during a conflict discussion task (see Figure 11.1, for example APIM figure).

a

Parent Disclosure

-0.03 (0.07)

Parent Secure Base Provision

E1

0.14 (0.05)*

6.64***

1.83***

0.07 (0.07)

Adolescent Disclosure

0.13 (0.05)*

Adolescent Secure Base Use

E2

Parent Hostile Behavior

E1

b

Parent Disclosure

0.01 (0.08) -0.15 (0.05)**

6.64**

1.88***

-0.03 (0.07)

Adolescent Disclosure

-0.12 (0.05)*

Adolescent Hostile Behavior

E2

Figure 11.1 Illustration of cross-sectional Actor–Partner Interdependence Models Note. (a) Unstandardized parameter estimates of actor and partner effects for adolescent- and parent-reports of Adolescent Disclosure in relation to Secure Base behavior, controlling for the effects of age, sex, and sample source (covariate parameters not included in figure). (b) Unstandardized parameter estimates of actor and partner effects for adolescent- and parent-reports of Adolescent Disclosure in relation to Hostile behavior, controlling for the effects of age, sex, and sample source (covariate parameters not included in the figure). Standard errors are presented in parentheses. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001. CC BY 4.0 SARAH THOMAS

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11.3.2.2 Other Strategies The APIM is not appropriate for all dyadic data, such as with only a youth outcome. In those situations, it is important to use an analytic strategy that will account for the nonindependent nature of the data. Options include generalized estimating equations (Hanley et al., 2003), MLM (Page-Gould, 2017), latent growth models for longitudinal data (Muniz-Terrera et al., 2017), and SEM. SEM permits evaluation of multivariate causal relations and these methods have significantly enhanced our understanding of the bidirectional nature of parent–child interactive effects (e.g. Micalizzi et al., 2016, 2017). A specific model that is widely used is the cross-lagged panel model, a discrete-time structural equation model that can be used to analyze panel data where variables are assessed at least twice over time. The goal of these models is to examine the effect of one variable on the other variable (and vice versa) over time. Furthermore, SEM could be used if a researcher wished to analyze data from two parents and one youth (Kerr et al., 2021; Li et al., 2019). Detailed options for analytic strategies have been reviewed elsewhere (e.g. Gates & Liu, 2016; Thorson et al., 2018). 11.3.2.3 Latent Growth Curve To measure a behavior over time, latent growth curve models enable assessment of slope and intercept, which can be used to assess the average rate of change in a construct, like emotion regulation. Further, by adding time-varying covariates, one can determine if another variable covaries with the behavior of interest. Consequently, it is also possible to evaluate parent–youth associations related to emotion regulation with growth curve models. To illustrate, researchers used growth curve analyses in a sample of mother–child dyads (half of the mothers were randomized to emotion regulation skills treatment) to investigate how change in maternal emotion regulation over 12 months was related to both the starting point and change in youth emotion regulation (Byrd et al., 2021). In another example, in the context of an intervention for comorbid adolescent psychiatric disorders and substance use, when assessing past 7-day cannabis use over time during and after an intervention, a time-varying covariate of parental frustration was used to determine how cannabis and parental frustration were related over time (Thomas et al., 2020). This analytic technique has important implications for considering how the emotional facets of parent–adolescent relationships can be integral to the fluctuation of target behavior of an intervention over time. Despite the intervention, weekly cannabis use increased across the 1-year follow-up time, and parental ratings of frustration that were higher than their average were associated with greater adolescent cannabis use at baseline, 3-, and 6-month follow-up. This analytic strategy

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could be used to understand influence over time in parent–youth relationships and emotion regulation.

11.4 Future Directions Future directions to advance the study of dynamic parent–youth interactions pertaining to emotion regulation involve thoughtfully selected study designs, the integration of complex technology, and collection of longitudinal data on both short- and long-term time scales. First, with the advent of wearable technology and passive sensing that can detect geolocation, study designs that prompt parents and youth to respond on EMA measures of emotion regulation when they are in the same location can also provide valuable insight into these interactions in the real world (Bettis et al., 2022; Silk, 2019). Second, incorporating parental role into design and measurement will enable inferences about maternal versus paternal or primary versus secondary caregiver role on emotion regulation dynamics, which has been undertaken by few researchers (Kerr et al., 2021; Li et al., 2019). Finally, to adequately capture the protracted, bidirectional development process of emotion regulation, studies are needed that can measure these dynamics from infancy through adulthood. This will be a large undertaking, and will benefit from support from funding agency stakeholders, as well as harnessing the potential of existing large, longitudinal studies (e.g. Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study [ABCD] and HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study). Although the ABCD Study includes measures of emotion regulation, data have not been released that capture continuous assessment of parent and child emotion regulation that would allow inference of individual’s abilities and how these covary over time. However, because the sample is so large (e.g. 11,875 youth at baseline) and assessments include numerous domains, it may be possible to derive a latent factor representing emotion regulation that could be investigated over time as youth develop. In conclusion, measuring the dynamic processes supporting parent and youth emotion regulation requires careful consideration and a range of skill, and so research teams that bring a variety of skill sets supporting the measurement and analysis of these processes will be well-equipped to address the challenges necessary to advance this field.

11.5 Conclusions In this chapter, we reviewed the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of dynamic parent–youth emotion regulation processes, their measurement, and analysis. The very type of research designs and analyses that

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could advance the field of parent–youth dynamics of emotion regulation are still underused (Keijsers et al., 2022; Silk, 2019). These research gaps represent promising opportunities for innovative study designs, and with technological advancements (Bettis et al., 2022; Girard & Cohn, 2016; Silk, 2019; Stas et al., 2018), conducting these types of studies may be more accessible to researchers than ever before.

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CHAPTER 12

Neurobiology of Parenting and Implications for Emotion Regulation Helena J. V. Rutherford

The transition to parenthood is a time of psychological change that serves to support parent and child development. While a breadth of research in animal studies of the neurobiology of maternal behavior exists (Pawluski et al., 2021), efforts to identify the neurobiology of parenthood in humans is a more recent endeavor (Mayes et al., 2012). Investigating the neurobiology of parenting has theoretical value in understanding periods of adult development but has important clinical implications when considering contexts where parents may struggle in their caregiving role, with consequences for their own and their child’s wellbeing (Squire & Stein, 2003). Critically, a common challenge for all new parents is the capacity to regulate their own and their child’s emotions, especially during infancy and early childhood. In particular, it has been hypothesized that one outcome of the neural and psychological reorganization during the transition to parenthood is to support the unique demands of parental emotion regulation (Rutherford, Wallace, et al., 2015). In this chapter, the neurobiology of human parenting is examined and implications for emotion regulation considered. Specifically, studies documenting maternal brain structure and function are reviewed. In advancing this area of inquiry, several studies will also be described that have examined maternal neural responses to negative stimuli (infant and noninfant) following distraction and cognitive reappraisal instructions to examine the neurobiological basis of parental emotion regulation more directly. Importantly, most parental brain research focuses on mothers, representing an inherent limitation to our understanding of this critical transitional period for nonbirthing parents, including fathers. While the studies discussed here focus on the maternal brain, where fathers are included this is noted, and the importance of understanding the paternal and nonbirthing parent brain is revisited when considering the next steps for this body of work.

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12.1 Maternal Brain Structure Only a handful of studies have examined the impact of pregnancy and the postpartum period on maternal brain structure, with a specific focus on gray matter (GM) volume measured using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Specifically, these studies of GM volume indicate both growth and decline in GM during the perinatal period. In the first investigation of changing GM volume across the postpartum period, mothers completed an MRI scan at 2–4 weeks postpartum and again at 3–4 months postpartum (Kim, Leckman, Mayes, Feldman, et al., 2010). GM volume increases over time were observed in the parietal lobes, prefrontal cortex, and the midbrain (including the hypothalamus, amygdala, and substantia nigra). Critically, GM growth in the midbrain areas was associated with mothers’ positive perceptions of their child, linking maternal brain structure to real-world parenting. Luders et al. (2020) also found widespread GM increases from 1–2 days post delivery to 4–6 weeks following delivery in recent mothers, including in the pre- and postcentral gyrus, middle and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), insula, parietal and temporal lobes, and the thalamus. Including a control group of nulliparous women, Lisofsky et al. (2019) also showed maternal GM volume increases from 2 months to 4–5 months postpartum in numerous regions, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, middle frontal gyrus, cerebellum, and nucleus accumbens. Taken together, these studies suggest significant growth of the maternal brain during the postpartum period as indexed by GM volume. Although the majority of structural MRI studies have focused on the maternal brain postpartum, one study has examined GM volume in nulliparous women prior to conception and then again in the postpartum period to examine the impact of pregnancy on the maternal brain. In this study, Hoekzema et al. (2017) reported decreased GM volume in multiple brain areas from pregnancy to approximately 2 months postpartum, including across the anterior and posterior midline, and the lateral prefrontal and temporal cortex. Notably, fathers and a control group of men without children were scanned following the same timeline as the nulliparous women to examine whether the experience of becoming a parent, versus the biological experience of pregnancy, would lead to structural GM changes. Importantly, no difference in GM volume over time was observed between fathers and the men without children. Hoekzema et al. (2017) concluded that it was the biological experience of pregnancy underscoring the GM volume changes observed in nulliparous women, rather than the transition to parenthood alone. These findings by Hoekzema et al. (2017) build on prior work evidencing reduced brain volume in women scanned during pregnancy and

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again in the postpartum period (Oatridge et al., 2002). While the widespread reductions in GM volume were the primary focus of the Hoekzema et al. (2017) study, GM growth within the hippocampus from preconception to the postpartum period was also reported. Although GM volume decline may have negative connotations, decreased GM volume may reflect neural reorganization of the maternal brain conferring a benefit through “fine tuning” the brain to support mother and child well-being (Pawluski et al., 2021). In sum, the maternal brain undergoes significant structural reorganization during pregnancy and the postpartum period, evidenced by GM growth and decline. Of note, these structural brain changes in response to motherhood do not appear transitory; GM volume reductions reported by Hoekzema et al. (2017) were still apparent at 2 years postpartum, with a follow-up study evidencing the persistence of GM volume reductions 6 years later in a subset of women from the original sample (MartínezGarcía et al., 2021). Critically, many of the brain regions identified in structural GM studies of the maternal brain overlap with those implicated in emotion regulation (Etkin et al., 2015), suggesting the structural plasticity of the perinatal period (and beyond) may be important in our understanding of maternal emotion regulation, and parenting more generally.

12.2 Maternal Brain Function The majority of maternal brain research has used functional MRI (fMRI) and event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine neural responses to infant stimuli (infant faces and vocalizations) as an index of maternal brain function (Maupin et al., 2015; Parsons et al., 2017; Swain, 2011). Both these neuroimaging approaches provide insight into the detection and processing of salient infant signals (or cues) within and across samples of parents and nonparents. Importantly, neural responses to infant signals may reflect both reactivity and regulatory responding in the maternal brain. For instance, when presented with infant distress signals, neurobiological markers of reactivity to infant cry may be modulated by maternal regulatory function. Thus, reactivity and regulatory responding to infant signals may be interwoven, presenting a potential limitation when interpreting maternal neural responses to infant signals to inform the neurobiology of emotion regulation and parenting. Nevertheless, converging lines of research have identified several “parental brain networks” responsive to infant cues that include brain areas implicated in mentalization, empathy, and emotion regulation (Feldman, 2015). This latter emotion regulation network includes the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), middle frontal gyrus

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(MFG), and the frontopolar cortex. The identification of these parental brain networks has been driven by research that presents infant face and cry stimuli, including stimuli from mother’s own child. Infant faces are hypothesized to be particularly salient cues motivating caregiving, activating brain regions implicated in reward processing in parents and nonparents (Glocker et al., 2009; Kringelbach et al., 2016; Lorenz, 1943). Given the breadth of work in this area, an increasing number of meta-analyses have been conducted to refine understanding on maternal brain function. In meta-analytic fMRI maternal brain research, heightened reactivity to own as compared to unfamiliar infant faces (only positive and neutral expressions) is reported as prominent in the midbrain (substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area), amygdala, striatum, insula, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC; Rigo et al., 2019; see also Paul et al., 2019). Across parents and nonparents, meta-analytic maternal (and nonparent) ERP work has evidenced increased neural responding to infant distress as compared to positive and neutral infant faces (Kuzava et al., 2020). Although maternal brain function can be studied in isolation by examining neural patterns of responding to infant cues, to understand the functional significance of these neural responses, an increasing number of studies are incorporating measures of both maternal brain and behavior. For instance, ERP responses to infant faces in mothers have been associated with sensitive and intrusive maternal behavior observed during interaction tasks (Bernard et al., 2015; Endendijk et al., 2018; Kuzava et al., 2019). Notably, one study measured ERP responses to infant faces in the third trimester of pregnancy and again at 3–5 months postpartum, finding that changing neural responses to infant faces was associated with postpartum maternal bonding (Dudek et al., 2020). Understanding the sources of variability in maternal processing of infant faces has also been explored, recognizing that while parental brain networks exist, each person transitions to parenthood differently, reflected in the uniqueness of their current or previous life experiences. Indeed, maternal early experiences as indexed by attachment security has also been associated with maternal neural responses to infant faces in fMRI and ERP studies (e.g. Groh & Haydon, 2018; Lowell et al., 2021; Strathearn et al., 2009). Concurrently, studies of maternal infant face processing have been informative in beginning to understand where challenges related to emotion regulation may emerge and affect caregiving. Specifically, a number of studies have examined how symptoms of emotion dysregulation may contribute to neural reactivity to infant face stimuli. Specifically, neural responses to infant faces may be modulated by depression (Bjertrup et al., 2019), anxiety (Yatziv et al., 2021), and maternal substance use (Rutherford et al., 2021). Taken together, these studies evidence that maternal brain function can be captured by neural responses to infant facial cues

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and may have important implications for maternal behavior, including emotion regulation and sensitive caregiving. Infant cries have also been employed to probe maternal brain function. Behavioral and neuroimaging data suggest parental responding to infant cries may be consistent across cultures (Bornstein et al., 2017). Notably too, several neuroimaging studies indicate that parents (mothers and fathers) respond to infant signals differently to nonparents, particularly when infants express distress (e.g. Proverbio et al., 2006; Purhonen et al., 2001; Seifritz et al., 2003). In particular, the latter studies suggest a heightened response to infant distress cues in parents as compared to nonparents. Heightened responding to infant distress may confer an adaptive advantage for the developing child in eliciting caregiving behavior. Consistent with this hypothesis, infant cries have been shown to activate midbrain dopaminergic regions implicated in reward neural circuity, presumably motivating approach to elicit caregiving behavior in some maternal brain studies (Rilling, 2013). However, infant cries may also be dysregulating for parents. Indeed, one of the earliest challenges many parents face is regulating their own emotional response to their crying child, while also trying to help their child become more regulated (Rutherford, Wallace, et al., 2015). Although there is variability in mothers’ capacity to tolerate infant distress (Rutherford, Booth, et al., 2015; Rutherford et al., 2013), inconsolable infant crying has been linked with harsh and abusive parenting during the postpartum period (Barr, 2014). Given associations between increased reactivity to infant cries and negative parenting behaviors, interventions have been designed to help parents regulate during bouts of infant crying during the early postpartum months (e.g. Bechtel et al., 2020). Given the importance of parental responding to infant cries, a number of studies have examined neural responses to varying types of infant cry stimuli in maternal samples (Witteman et al., 2019). Converging evidence supports the notion that neural responding to infant cries is associated with caregiving behavior. Musser et al. (2012) found that maternal sensitive behavior measured at 18 months postpartum was associated with neural responses to infant cries, including in the IFG and right frontal pole. Similarly, neural responding to infant cries in the superior frontal gyrus (SFG) and amygdala measured at 2–4 weeks postpartum was associated with maternal sensitivity measured at 3–4 months postpartum (Kim et al., 2011). Activity in the right frontal insula cortex, rolandic operculum, and subcortical regions (e.g. amygdala, hippocampus) in response to mothers listening to own infant cries has also been associated with maternal mental state talk during an interaction with their child (Hipwell et al., 2015). While maternal sensitive behavior and use of mental state language are believed important antecedents for child development, Laurent and Ablow (2012) advanced this area of work by

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evidencing that mothers’ brain responses to own infant cry predicted their child’s attachment security – evidencing for the first time a link between maternal neurobiology and child developmental outcomes. A number of other factors have been associated with maternal brain responses to infant cries. Clinically, maternal substance use has also been associated with decreased and delayed neural responses to unfamiliar infant cries (Rutherford et al., 2021), whereas maternal depression has been associated with altered responding to own and unfamiliar infant cries (Bjertrup et al., 2019). Poverty and maternal distress have been associated with decreased responses to infant cries, including in the medial prefrontal gyrus, middle prefrontal gyrus, and superior temporal gyrus (STG; Kim et al., 2016). Building on this work, increased exposure to a variety of stressors has also been associated with decreased cry responses in the right insula/IFG and STG, activity which was also linked with maternal sensitivity (Kim et al., 2020). Finally, it is worth noting that there are preliminary data to suggest that both mode of delivery (vaginal versus cesarean section; Swain et al., 2008) and feeding (exclusive breastfeeding versus exclusive formula feeding; Kim et al., 2011) may also shape maternal brain responding to their own infant’s cries. Taken together, employing infant face and cry stimuli in experimental tasks may be particularly valuable to probe reactivity and regulation in the maternal brain and how this may be associated with caregiving behavior. Notably, some studies have also linked maternal brain structure with functional brain responses to these salient infant stimuli. Hoekzema et al. (2017) reported that the regions evidencing GM volume reductions from pregnancy to postpartum were those regions that were activated when mothers viewed images of their infants during the postpartum MRI scan. Moreover, individual differences in perceived maternal care may shape both brain structure and function: mothers reporting higher level of maternal care in their own childhood, relative to those with lower levels of maternal care, evidenced greater GM volume and increased reactivity to infant cries in overlapping areas, including the MFG, STG, and fusiform gyrus (Kim, Leckman, Mayes, Newman, et al., 2010). Therefore, it is important to consider both structural and functional brain changes during the transition to parenthood wherever possible to bridge these two methodological approaches, incorporating maternal characteristics too.

12.3 Empirical Studies of the Neurobiology of Maternal Emotion Regulation In the research reviewed thus far, the focus has been on brain structure and functional response to infant cues in mothers. Although informative in

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understanding the neurobiology of parenting, as described earlier, reactivity and regulatory responding to these infant cues may be confounded and caution is warranted with interpreting these findings within an emotion regulation framework. Critically, an emerging body of research has begun to address this issue by focusing specifically on the neurobiological basis of regulatory responding to affective stimuli in maternal samples. Firk et al. (2018) investigated whether self-distraction would modulate neural responses to infant crying in primiparous mothers 5–8 months postpartum. In this context, self-distraction refers to the emotion regulation strategy of orienting attention away from an affective experience. Mothers in this sample evidenced a decreased response to infant cries in the amygdala, as well as the parahippocampal gyrus, insula, OFC, STG/MTG, precuneus, and cerebellum, when completing a counting task while infant cries were played, relative to when they were instructed only to listen to infant cries. Critically, this downregulation of the amygdala during self-distraction was associated with observed parenting behavior, such that higher levels of maternal sensitivity and nonhostility were correlated with less reactivity to infant cries during the self-distraction task. These findings evidenced for the first-time that an emotion regulation strategy can modulate the maternal brain but also that the neural correlates of maternal emotion regulation observed in this study may have downstream implications for caregiving behavior. Two additional studies have examined cognitive reappraisal to negative affective (noninfant) stimuli in primiparous women at approximately 4 months postpartum. Grande et al. (2021) reported that mothers with higher levels of perceived stress evidenced greater activation to negative images in the DLPFC during cognitive reappraisal (as well as decreased activity in the caudate) relative to a condition where mothers were instructed to maintain their emotional response. The authors interpreted this heightened reactivity of the DLPFC to suggest that in highly stressed mothers, emotion regulation may be more effortful or inefficient, or that these mothers may be more reactive to negative emotional stimuli more generally. Interestingly, exploratory analyses in this sample showed that the heightened DLPFC activation in response to negative stimuli during the regulation (versus maintain) condition was also associated with selfreported perceived parenting-specific stress. Although exploratory, this latter finding suggests DLPFC reactivity during emotion regulation tasks may be associated with real-world experiences of parenting. Building on this prior work, Capistrano et al. (2022) examined whether socioeconomic disadvantage (measured by income to needs ratio) would also be associated with cognitive reappraisal in recently postpartum primiparous women viewing negative affective stimuli. Consistent with their work on perceived stress, they found that mothers with greater

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socioeconomic disadvantage also evidenced decreased activity in prefrontal cortical regions, including in the SFG (including DLPFC), IFG (including VLPFC), precentral gyrus, MTG, as well as the caudate during the cognitive reappraisal condition. Consequently, heightened stress and socioeconomic disadvantage may shape the neural correlates of maternal emotion regulation by affecting prefrontal cortical function. It is also important to note that Capistrano et al. found lower behaviorally observed maternal sensitivity was associated with decreased responding in the precentral gyrus during cognitive reappraisal. Again, evidencing task-based regulatory responses may have implications for caregiving behavior beyond the MRI scanner.

12.4 Limitations and Future Directions In this chapter, studies relevant to the neurobiology of parenting have been reviewed and their implications for emotion regulation considered. While informative, these studies should be considered in the context of their limitations and directions for future research. Indeed, it is important to note that the studies reviewed here focus on the maternal brain, with overlap as well as divergence reported in the few studies of the paternal brain and responding to infant cues (Feldman, 2015). Indeed, paternal brain changes may be driven more by the experience of caregiving following the arrival of a child (Abraham et al., 2014). Nevertheless, a clear path forward requires greater consideration of paternal reactivity and regulation toward infant signals and extending this approach to all birthing and nonbirthing parents. In addition to understanding how different parenting experiences shape the brain, a critical advance in this area is recognizing the need for larger and more diverse samples of parents with respect to race and ethnicity in parental brain research (Penner et al., 2023). Understanding the transition to parenthood inherently requires more longitudinal studies, ideally beginning before conception with repeat assessments during pregnancy (or an equivalent timeframe) and the postpartum period. Hoekzema et al. (2017) have evidenced the value of such a longitudinal approach but more work is needed in this area. Critically, this would be true for both structural and functional neuroimaging research. In particular, there may be value to understanding changes in the maternal brain unfolding prior to birth in pregnant people, which may prompt the identification of risk and protective factors during the transition to parenthood. Indeed the challenges related to maternal emotion regulation may unfold before birth (Penner & Rutherford, 2022). For example, how maternal anxiety shapes neural processing of infant faces

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postpartum is comparable to how maternal anxiety is associated with processing infant faces during pregnancy (Rutherford, Byrne, et al., 2017). The current chapter has focused on studies of maternal structure and function. As this work continues it will be important to incorporate our understanding of the changing levels of hormones during the transition to parenthood and their implications for the neurobiology of parenting. Oxytocin has been widely implicated in parenting behavior (Feldman & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2017), with peripheral levels of oxytocin increasing across the postpartum period in mothers and fathers (e.g. Gordon et al., 2010). A number of studies have examined how administration of oxytocin modulates neural responses to infant cues in parents and nonparents (e.g. Peltola et al., 2018; Riem et al., 2011; Rutherford, Guo, et al., 2017) as well as how variation in the oxytocin receptor gene is associated with neural responses to infant stimuli (Peltola et al., 2014). Of course, oxytocin is not the only hormone that may shape maternal brain responding during the transition to parenthood (Brunton & Russell, 2008), requiring further extension of this approach to other hormones, including estrogen and progesterone. Although the literature regarding the neural correlates of maternal emotion regulation is in its own infancy, the initial fMRI studies described here are promising in evidencing that explicit emotion regulation strategies modulate reactivity of the maternal brain and that this reactivity is associated with different aspects of caregiving. As this work continues, it will be important to consider the nature of the affective stimuli employed during emotion regulation tasks (i.e. infant versus noninfant stimuli), as well as the generalizability of these tasks to parenting experiences outside of the experimental setting. It may be valuable to include self-report assessments of how parents use different emotion regulation strategies (e.g. Gross & John, 2003), as well as adapting such measures to parentingspecific contexts. Understanding how regulatory functioning changes throughout the perinatal period would also be valuable, in particular in identifying periods of heightened risk and vulnerability for parents. This would allow a unique opportunity for parental brain researchers to partner with clinicians to both refine therapeutic approaches related to parental emotion regulation and to optimize the timing of these interventions for parents.

12.5 Conclusion In the current chapter, structural and functional neuroimaging data has been presented that supports the notion that the transition to parenthood may be accompanied by neural reorganization, which may have

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important implications for caregiving. Meta-analytic work highlights that heightened reactivity to infant cues is particularly evident when parents view photographs of their own infant as well as when infants are expressing distress. Critically, increasing studies are evidencing important associations between maternal brain structure and function and different aspects of parenting to ensure the functional significance of this work is clear. An exciting development in this field are those studies specifically targeting maternal emotion regulation, moving beyond the combined reactivity and regulatory approach typically used. While there has been a strong foundation for studies of the neurobiological basis of the transition to parenthood, advancements are needed in relation to the extension of this work to birthing and nonbirthing parents, incorporating more longitudinal designs, and understanding the role of changing hormonal profiles to neural reorganization. Given only a paucity of research has been conducted to date in the neural correlates of maternal emotion regulation, there is significant space for the growth and development of this work, including partnerships with clinicians supporting parents during this transitional period.

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CHAPTER 13

Emotional Labor in Parenting Gao-Xian Lin and Dorota Szczygieł In her groundbreaking book, The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feelings, Arlie Russell Hochschild (1983) described the phenomenon of an organization delineating a set of emotion display rules and pressuring employees to hide their identity in order to comply with them. As Goffman (1959) had discussed earlier, people play their social roles just like in a drama; and employees, Hochschild noted, follow emotional display rules, showing “appropriate” emotions and refraining from expressing “inappropriate” emotions to control the impression they make on others, maintain relationships, and achieve personal goals (Thoits, 2004; von Scheve, 2012; Wharton & Erickson, 1993). Lin and colleagues (2021) suggested that a similar phenomenon occurs in modern parenting, given the recent culture change in parenting (see Hays, 1996): society defines a set of rules for emotion management in parenting and pressures parents to hide their identity in order to conform to these rules and expectations. In this chapter, our goal is to review the literature that supports Lin and colleagues’ study on emotional labor in parenting.

13.1 Modern Parenting 13.1.1 From Common Sense to Science Parenting has undergone a major shift in recent decades. This can be traced back to the late twentieth century, when enormous economic and political changes occurred that were directly or indirectly caused by the two world wars (Overy, 2009): the triumph of capitalism (Habib, 1995), the generalization of the democratic spirit (Kettenacker & Riotte, 2011), United Nations General Assembly, 1948), and the emergence of globalization (Barkawi, 2006). These factors have intersected, eliminating authority and prompting people to doubt their own traditions (Giddens, 1999; Hobsbawm, 1995). In parallel, science has acquired a higher status and it is to science (instead of traditions) that many people now turn to know how they should run their lives (Giddens, 1994), including parenting. Science can check whether the evidence supports traditional behavior, for example, the “common sense” practices that

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parents used to feel obliged to follow in parenting. Based on its findings, science can suggest that a specific traditional practice be abolished or preserved. Alternatively, science can advocate innovative parenting strategies. In any case, recent decades have witnessed science playing a more critical role in instructing parents on child-rearing (Furedi, 2002; Pursell, 2007). Science relating to the parenting domain has flourished for decades. Since the mid-nineteenth century, scientists have come to view children not only as unique and important, but also as fragile beings who require extra protective effort (Hoghughi, 2004). This ideology became more widespread after the Second World War. Many scholars, such as John Bowlby and Donald Winnicott, began to emphasize the importance of high-quality child-rearing and a sound mother–child relationship, contending that they create a supportive and warm family and thus ensure the harmonious development of children (Hendrick, 2016). Such an emphasis – along with empirical research on the effects of parenting on children – has attributed to parenting a key, if not a decisive role in children’s development (Bornstein, 2015). This ideology has been intensified to the point where some even believe that parents’ actions and choices with regard to their children irreversibly influence children’s development (for a critical discussion, see Furedi, 2002). Belief in the importance of parenting in child development has thus reached unprecedented levels and continues to grow (Lee, 2014b).

13.1.2 From Science to Prescribed Rules in Parenting Given the importance of parenting, many people believe that parents should implement “correct parenting,” namely the practices approved by science and society (for related discussion; see Furedi, 2002; Lee, 2014a). Parenting has gradually become prescribed. The prescriptions concern what parents should do (e.g. provide their children with an emotionally secure environment, give them five helpings of fruit and vegetables a day); and what they should not do (e.g. use corporal or disproportionate punishment, put their very young children in front of screens). Along with these prescriptions there are expectations in terms of results: for instance, children should be physically healthy, emotionally secure, etc. If parents fail to meet some of these expectations, the authorities may punish them and remove their children from their custody. Some parents are terrified that they may be assessed as failing in their role (e.g. being judged as neglectful parents) and that they could receive a dire sanction: loss of custody of the child (Nomaguchi & Milkie, 2020, p. 200). The fulfilment of the parental role is now more or less controlled by implicit or explicit prescriptions.

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13.1.3 Emotional Display Rules in Parenting Among these prescriptions, particular attention is paid to parental emotions. This is not surprising if we consider the current scientific evidence concerning parental emotions. First, parenting occurs in a social context conducive to spontaneous emotional feelings. For example, research has shown that mothers report a greater variety of discrete emotions when they care for their children than when they do not (Kerr et al., 2021). These emotions may be self-oriented, such as anger at themselves for not giving the child enough time and attention, or child oriented, such as anger at the child for not keeping their room tidy (Dix et al., 2004). Often, parenting activities evoke more negative emotions than other activities (Kahneman et al., 2004), causing parents to experience more worry, stress, and anger than non-parents (Deaton & Stone, 2014). Parents’ negative emotions undermine parenting strategies, making them less supportive/positive and harsher (for a metaanalysis, see Rueger et al., 2011), predicting poorer adjustment of children later on (e.g. more school aggression; Chang et al., 2003). Second, how parents express and regulate emotions plays a crucial role in children’s social emotional development (Duncombe et al., 2012). On the one hand, how parents handle their own emotions acts as a model that provides children with important information about how to appropriately recognize, express, and regulate emotions in specific situations, which in turn socializes children’s emotion regulation (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Morris et al., 2017). Research has shown that parents’ capacity for adaptive emotion regulation is associated with better emotion regulation and social adjustment in children (for a meta-analysis, see ZimmerGembeck et al., 2022). On the other hand, how parents respond to their children’s emotions is also crucial. Research has demonstrated that a warm and supportive parental response to children’s emotions facilitates children’s acquisition of emotional knowledge and social competence, whereas harsh and unsupportive responses are detrimental to children’s social-emotional development (Eisenberg et al., 1996, 1998, 1999; Hajal & Paley, 2020; see also Chapter 10). This scientific evidence converges and shapes emotional display rules that revolve around parental emotions. Parents are now expected to feel and express the “right” emotions, with the “right” intensity and in the “right” situations. To this end, parents are increasingly encouraged to manage their emotion expression during their interactions with their children. They should refrain from expressing too many negative emotions, such as fear (which can make their relationship with their children insecure; e.g. Manassis et al., 1994) or anger; and they should also express more positive emotions such as warmth and affection, to sustain their children’s emotional safety (e.g. Bai et al., 2016). Such prescriptions have spread and prevailed to

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the point where they now constitute a crucial aspect of parenting culture. A survey in 37 countries of more than 10,000 parents showed that Western parents believe that to be an ideal parent, they should show positive emotions and control their negative emotions (Lin et al., 2023). Based on these observations, one may want to ask the following questions. What are the possible results of regulating parental emotion? Should parents simply follow these prescriptions and carry them out? Is compliance with them costly? Aiming to answer these questions, Lin et al. (2021) came up with a pioneering adaptation to the parenting context of the emotional labor framework initially developed in the context of work (e.g. Grandey et al., 2013). They borrowed this framework in order to describe the impact of display rules governing parents’ emotions and to summarize the consequences of complying with those rules. Before describing their adaptation, we first introduce the emotional labor framework in the work context below.

13.2 Emotional Labor Framework 13.2.1 The Origin of the Concept of Emotional Labor The emotional labor concept dates from the 1980s, when Arlie Russell Hochschild, an American sociologist, published her foundational book, The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feelings (Hochschild, 1983). Hochschild described in detail the job requirements of Delta Airlines flight attendants. What drew her attention was that to ensure that passengers felt comfortable, the flight attendants were expected to express appropriate emotions regardless of how they felt and how the passengers behaved. They were expected to possess traits such as emotional stability, interpersonal warmth, concern for others, and a collective orientation. These qualities allowed them to employ what Hochschild termed “emotional management,” that is, cognitive, behavioral, and expressive strategies that enable them to align their emotional experiences and expressions with the feelings and rules of expression required by the organization. Based on this observation, Hochschild concluded that certain jobs are not only defined by the physical or cognitive work performed but also involve emotional management. Hochschild termed such emotional management – regulating and expressing the “right” emotions to satisfy the emotional requirements of the job in exchange for a wage – as “emotional labor.”

13.2.2 The Definition of Emotional Labor Hochschild (1983, p. 7) described emotional labor as “the management of feelings to create a publicly observable facial and bodily manifestation.”

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Organization

Emotional display

Prescribes expectation

Emotional display rule

Emotional dissonance

Emotional labor Surface acting Deep acting

Consequence Job performance Job satisfaction Job burnout

Figure 13.1 Emotional labor framework in the job context

Three main characteristics of jobs involving emotional labor were also enumerated: (1) they involve a high level of direct contact with customers (“voice to voice” or “face to face”) in terms of duration, frequency, or intensity of interaction (Morris & Feldman, 1996); (2) they require the use of specific emotional displays (either explicitly or implicitly specified) to elicit the desired affective responses from customers; and (3) the organization directly or indirectly controls employees’ emotional displays.

13.2.3 The Emotional Labor Framework in the Work Context Hochschild’s (1983) pioneering work has inspired a great deal of research and theoretical work, resulting in several detailed emotional labor models (Grandey, 2000; Grandey & Melloy, 2017; Morris & Feldman, 1997; Rubin et al., 2005; Totterdell & Holman, 2003). Despite the differences in these theoretical models, researchers have concurred that emotional labor is a form of emotional management requiring effort from employees and should be positioned within a broader integrative framework. This framework includes (1) emotional demands of work (e.g. Morris & Feldman, 1996) as an antecedent to emotional dissonance experienced when perceived emotions do not match the demands of the job (e.g. Abraham, 1999; Zerbe, 2000), causing (2) the employee to make an effort to engage in emotion regulation through deep and surface acting (Bono & Vey, 2005; Scott & Barnes, 2011),1 and to produce the desired emotional displays, ultimately leading to (3) consequences for the employee (see Figure 13.1).

1

Deep acting refers to changing felt emotions to achieve the desired emotional display. Surface acting refers to changing emotional displays without changing internal feelings. Both concepts are discussed in detail later in this chapter.

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13.2.3.1 Emotional Demands of Work: Emotional Display Rules The cornerstone of all emotional labor models is the view that organizations set emotional display rules that specify which emotions are appropriate and how and when they should be expressed during interactions with customers (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Cropanzano et al., 2003; Diefendorff et al., 2006; Grandey, 2000; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1990). Emotional display rules are imposed on employees as early as the recruitment process and are later reinforced by activities such as training, performance appraisal, and supervision (Kruml & Geddes, 2000; Sutton & Rafaeli, 1988). These rules have both a positive aspect, requiring employees to show certain emotions (e.g. “Put a smile on your face!” or “Show interest and excitement!”) and a negative aspect, prohibiting employees from showing certain emotions (e.g. “Don’t raise your voice!” or “Don’t show boredom!”). Such emotional display rules – requiring employees to conceal negative emotions and express positive emotions – is especially common in customer service work (Wharton & Erickson, 1993). The organization sets out these rules based on the assumption that employee behavior influences customer satisfaction and interest in the products or services offered (Grandey et al., 2005), and studies have in fact shown this to be true. When employees directly follow the rules and perform the emotional behavior expected by their customers such as greeting, thanking, speaking in a rhythmic voice, smiling, and maintaining eye contact (Grandey, 2003; Tsai, 2001), customers are in a better mood (Luong, 2005), buy more, rate the service better, and are more loyal to the organization (Korczynski, 2005; Pugh, 2001; Tsai, 2001). 13.2.3.2 Emotional Labor and Its Implication for Employee Well-Being However, what happens when the emotions employees experience are not the same as those they are required to display? Researchers argue that incongruence between the emotions experienced and the expressions expected by the organization induces a negatively affect-laden state of emotional dissonance in employees (Holman et al., 2008; Zapf & Holz, 2006). Jansz and Timmers (2002) point out that the concept of emotional dissonance underlines both the negative nature of this state and its motivational implications. When they experience a feeling of dissonance, employees are motivated to take action to reduce this feeling, which has implications for regulating the emotional process. Undertaking a regulatory effort is vital because emotional dissonance, if prolonged, threatens employees’ mental and physical well-being (Dijk & Brown, 2006; Hartel et al., 2002; Schaubroeck & Jones, 2000). However, the impact of this regulatory effort may depend on how it is made. Hochschild (1983) followed Goffman’s (1959) metaphor of different ways of acting in a drama, describing two ways in which employees work to

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regulate their emotions, that is, two emotional labor strategies: surface acting and deep acting. Surface acting refers to modifying emotional expressions without changing internal feelings. It involves suppressing the display of felt emotions and faking the emotion required by the organization. Deep acting, on the other hand, refers to modifying actual feelings so that they are consistent with the employer’s emotional display rules. It entails an effort to change the felt emotion in order to elicit the appropriate emotional display. As discussed later, the distinction between surface and depth acting is critical in demonstrating and explaining the varying impact of emotional labor on employees’ well-being (see also Grandey, 2000; Grandey & Gabriel, 2015; Grandey & Melloy, 2017; Scott & Barnes, 2011). Following Hochschild’s (1983) description of emotional labor strategies, studies have accumulated evidence that the two forms differ in their effects on employees’ well-being. Most studies have found that surface acting reliably and consistently predicts unfavorable consequences such as worse job performance, less job satisfaction, more psychological stress, more psychosomatic complaints, and more burnout symptoms (Bono & Vey, 2005; Grandey & Gabriel, 2015; Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011; Huppertz et al., 2020; KammeyerMueller et al., 2013); however, the findings regarding the effect of deep acting are not as consistent across studies (Grandey, 2000; Grandey & Sayre, 2019). Although some studies have shown a damaging effect of deep acting (although it is still thought to be less harmful than surface acting; Mikolajczak et al., 2007), most studies have found that deep acting is neither beneficial nor detrimental (e.g. Brotheridge & Lee, 2002; Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011). The concept of “regulatory effort “ further explains the different consequences of surface and deep acting (Huppertz et al., 2020). Although surface and deep acting are both effortful, the amount of regulatory effort they require differs. In particular, if individuals rely more on surface acting to meet the organization’s rules, their effort and cognitive resources are more strained due to the need to monitor emotional expression constantly. The constant depletion of resources eventually causes tension and strain; if it becomes chronic, it can result in burnout (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002). Deep acting also requires cognitive resources to manage emotions, but these efforts are only needed at the beginning; this explains the weaker predictive relationship of deep acting with poor adaptation (see Grandey & Sayre, 2019).

13.3 Extending the Emotional Labor Framework to Parenting 13.3.1 Rationale Does emotional labor also occur in parenting? Hochschild (1983) had already foreseen this possibility in her seminal book. She suggested that

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Society

Emotional display

Prescribes expectation

Emotional display rule

Emotional dissonance

Emotional labor Surface acting Deep acting

Consequence Child development Parent–child relationship Parental burnout

Figure 13.2 Emotional labor framework in the parenting context

emotional labor may occur in the professional context and in private life, such as in the family. Hochschild pointed out that of all relationships in the family, emotional labor may be most pronounced in the parent–child relationship, given the strong bond between parents and their children (therefore, more contacts). However, for decades the idea remained at the stage of Hochschild’s early reflections and some pioneering work (see Wharton & Erickson, 1993, 1995 for how emotional labor may be performed within the family). Research on emotional labor has so far mainly focused on the professional sphere, and the assumption seems fairly widespread that emotional labor is only performed in return for salary, bonuses, or rewards (Grandey & Melloy, 2017; Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011; Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2013; von Scheve, 2012). However, with recent developments in parenting, this picture is changing (see Section 13.1, Modern Parenting); emotional labor in parenting may have been a long-standing phenomenon that has been ignored because it is a taboo subject. In a pioneering study, however, Lin and colleagues (2021) extended the emotional labor framework to the parenting context (see Figure 13.2). Lin and colleagues (2021) point out that features of contemporary parenting present characteristics of emotional labor. First, the parent– child relationship is one of the closest social relationships (it includes “voice-to-voice,” “face-to-face,” and even “body-to-body” interaction; Bornstein, 2015). Second, as also briefly summarized in Section 13.1, Modern Parenting, modern parents are now increasingly expected to regulate their emotions during interaction with children. This phenomenon is particularly evident in Western countries, where mothers and fathers are supposed to show positive emotions (e.g. being loving) and maintain patience to be considered ideal parents (Lin et al., 2023). Third, such emotional display rules have been explicitly expressed in government policies such as the Council of Europe’s policy on positive parenting

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(Rodrigo, 2010) or the positive parenting tips recommended by the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (2020), etc. The implementation of these rules is therefore institutionally monitored and controlled. As we have seen, these characteristics are consistent with Hochschild’s (1983) observation on the characteristics/determinants of emotional labor in the work context, confirming that the concept is eligible to be applied in parenting. Given such eligibility, Lin and colleagues (2021) proposed their framework model of “emotional labor in parenting.” As they describe in this framework, society, like an employer, sets explicit rules on emotional expression. And just as employees need to follow emotional display rules to meet organizational expectations and to be recognized as good employees, parents need to follow emotional display rules to meet societal and institutional expectations and to be recognized as parents who are at least good enough (and preferably ideal). As in the work context, these efforts may lead to an immediate beneficial outcome, that is, children may feel positive just as customers do when they observe positive emotional expressions from employees; yet these efforts may eventually jeopardize parental well-being, for example by leading to parental burnout. Together with other studies, the research by Lin and colleagues provides support for their proposal, as described next.

13.3.1.1 Emotional Demands of Parenting: Emotional Display Rules To begin with, as we saw in Section 13.1, Modern Parenting, social institutions such as governments (e.g. Rodrigo, 2010) and media (see Douglas & Michaels, 2004) have presented parents with a specific set of emotional display rules. As we might expect, Lin and colleagues (2021) have shown that some parents internalize these rules to the extent that, as shown in a later study, parents think they need to show positive emotions and control their negative emotions in order to be perceived as an ideal parent (Lin et al., 2023). It is true that parents may make efforts to align their expressed emotions with the rules, and that this may indeed result in better parenting strategies (Minnotte et al., 2010). Such strategies may eventually benefit children in terms of improving their emotional state (Olszanowski et al., 2020) and subsequent social functioning (e.g. Chen et al., 2019). However, this is only one side of the coin. As discussed next, there is disturbing evidence that parents’ regulatory efforts can also be detrimental to their children’s well-being. 13.3.1.2 Emotional Labor and Its Implication for Parents’ Well-Being Parental regulatory efforts may be costly for parents, just as emotional labor is costly for employees. Le and Impett’s (2016) pioneering daily diary study found evidence that parents’ efforts to control emotional

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expression can have a negative impact on their emotional well-being and the parent–child relationship (see also Karnilowicz et al., 2019; Waters et al., 2020). Lin and colleagues (2021) went a step further by demonstrating that such efforts (to satisfy emotional display rules) may be so demanding that they put parents at risk of parental burnout, although this depends on how parents make their efforts. Parents are at greater risk of burnout when they prefer surface acting (or expressive suppression; see Lin & Szczygieł, 2022) but are at lower risk when they prefer deep acting (or cognitive reappraisal; Lin et al., 2022). Either way, research has shown that when parental burnout occurs, some parents may become neglectful or violent toward their children (Brianda et al., 2020; Mikolajczak et al., 2018, 2019), and that this maltreatment may eventually compromise children’s development (Cicchetti, 2016). It is, therefore, plausible that well-intentioned parental regulatory efforts may have a paradoxical, undesirable effect and work against the child.

13.4 Future Research Directions As discussed in this chapter, Lin and colleagues (2021), together with other pioneering researchers, provided convincing evidence to support their proposal to adapt the emotional labor framework identified in the work context (see Figure 13.1) to the parenting context (see Figure 13.2). Parents perceive the existence of emotional display rules and put effort into aligning their emotions with those rules through different emotional labor strategies, which ultimately have different consequences (such as different vulnerability to parental burnout). The strengths of this framework are that it provides a backbone connecting society and individuals. It specifically delineates the interplay between society’s rules for emotional expression and parents’ regulatory efforts, emotional responses, and well-being. For this framework to be useful, it should not only contribute to theoretical understanding but also provide direction for future studies. As we will see next, this backbone framework has the potential to open many future research directions in the study of parenting, just as it has contributed to organizational literature.

13.4.1 Within the Emotional Labor Framework Most obviously, parenting researchers can examine the components of this backbone framework in detail. First, Hochschild (1983), in her conceptualization of emotional labor, emphasized the importance of culture in shaping emotional display rules. Following this reasoning, we can expect that rules on parental emotional display, such as which emotions can be expressed and which should be hidden, may differ across cultures

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(see Matsumoto & Hwang, 2012). Cultural differences in emotional display rules may further influence how parents follow the rules and thus their effect on their well-being; however, future research is needed to verify and investigate this. Second, in this chapter we have followed Hochschild’s (1983) original approach, focusing on only two emotional labor strategies. In real-world parenting, parents use a broader range of emotion regulation strategies to comply with the emotional display rules (see Part II of this book), and these affect their well-being differently. In fact, researchers have already suggested that deep and surface acting are not the only ways to tune emotions to emotional display rules (see Diefendorff et al., 2008; Mikolajczak et al., 2009). Pursuing the investigation of the impact of parents’ emotion regulation in their parental role and its impact on their well-being through a wider range of emotion regulation strategies will prove fruitful.

13.4.2 Beyond the Emotional Labor Framework Researchers may also find it promising to include exogenous moderators in this backbone framework. First, there may be factors influencing parents’ propensity to choose specific emotional labor strategies, resulting in different consequences for parental well-being. In organizational literature, service employees’ personality traits have been shown to be a key variable affecting the type of emotional labor they perform (Austin et al., 2005). For example, research findings indicate that individuals with high negative affectivity are more likely to use surface than deep acting (Bono & Vey, 2005; Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011; Kammeyer-Mueller et al., 2013; MesmerMagnus et al., 2012). This may be because, for people who have a dispositional tendency to experience negative emotions and are therefore inclined to process information in a way that directs them towards negative affective states (Larsen & Ketelaar, 1991), using deep acting to evoke positive emotions can be a real challenge. Thus, feigning positive emotions becomes the only way to meet their role expectations. On this basis, we can expect that negative affectivity may moderate parents’ adoption of emotional labor strategies. Lin and Szczygieł (2022) provided preliminary evidence by showing that parents who place more emphasis on their mistakes in parenting have a higher propensity for expressive suppression. In addition to employees’ personality traits, research on emotional labor also points to the importance of the circumstances – customer behavior such as mistreatment – in predicting the use of emotional labor strategies. These studies have found that employees who experience rudeness and mistreatment from customers find it easier and more convenient to use surface acting than deep acting and are therefore more likely to do so (Adams & Webster, 2013; Sliter et al., 2010; Szczygieł &

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Bazińska, 2021). In view of such evidence, we predict that in the parenting context, children’s challenging behaviors (like those of customers in the organizational context) may act as a crucial factor predisposing parents to use surface acting more often than deep acting and thus put them at risk of ill-being. In a recently published study, Zhang et al. (2023) demonstrated that mothers whose children exhibited more challenging behaviors experienced more negative emotions, which was associated with using multiple emotion regulation strategies. Although children’s challenging behavior was not directly significantly related to mothers’ emotion regulation strategies, the associations found between it and suppression and cognitive reappraisal support our reasoning here. Specifically, children’s challenging behavior was positively, albeit insignificantly, related to mothers’ expressive suppression and negatively, albeit insignificantly, related to cognitive reappraisal. Finally, moderating factors may mitigate or exacerbate emotional labor’s consequences for parents’ well-being. When employees have no choice but to use emotional labor, their personality traits can mitigate the potential harm it causes. As a personality trait, emotional intelligence seems to be a promising moderator of this kind. Emotional intelligence (also known as emotional competence) refers to individuals’ ability to identify, express, understand, regulate and use their own and others’ emotions (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). Mikolajczak et al. (2007) showed that when employees have higher emotional intelligence, their regulatory efforts to perform emotional labor are reduced, which in turn predicts a lower risk of job burnout. Based on this line of research, it can be expected that parents’ high emotional intelligence can reduce the regulatory efforts inherent to emotional labor and, consequently, its negative impact on their well-being. Lin and Szczygieł (2022) provided initial evidence for this. They showed that parents’ emotional intelligence moderates the effects of expressive suppression on parental burnout such that the effects are reduced (although they remain significant) when parents have higher emotional intelligence. To sum up, after our introduction to the emotional labor framework in the work context, in this section we have summarized the reasons for extending the emotional labor framework to the parenting context, described current evidence in favor of this proposal, and finally suggested a few fascinating areas that future studies may find it fruitful to explore further. Taken together, this demonstrates what a promising approach this is.

13.5 Conclusion The goal of this chapter was to introduce Lin and colleagues’ (2021) attempt to adapt emotional labor, originally intended for work, to the

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parenting context. As they themselves also noted, equating parenting with labor activity is controversial, as parenting does not meet the fundamental characteristic of “labor”: being financially rewarded. With this in mind, Lin and colleagues (p. 2703) pointed out that their import of emotional labor to the parenting context “does not amount to reducing parenting to a job”; rather, it should be seen as a metaphor to describe the situation faced by today’s parents, who are expected to adhere to rules regarding emotions when raising their children. As we have seen in this chapter, Lin and colleagues’ (2021) emotional labor framework offers a compelling theoretical lens to explain the mechanism by which desirable goals – to show more positive and demonstrate fewer negative emotions while interacting with children – can be so demanding in terms of emotional labor that they lead to poorer parent– child relationships or even severe costs such as burnout. The emotional labor framework emerged from the need to understand the service industry’s new labor form (Hochschild, 1983). It has subsequently generated hundreds of studies about the cost of emotion management in service jobs. Although a handful of studies exploring emotional labor in a family context have already emerged (e.g. Wharton & Erickson, 1993), there has been little investigation of parents’ regulatory efforts (the main exceptions being Le & Impett, 2016 and Lin et al., 2021). Yet these regulatory efforts probably resemble the emotional labor concept very closely in that modern parenting culture places external pressure on parents by prescribing emotional display rules (Lin et al., 2021). In this sense, this framework contributes to a better understanding of the emotional experience of modern parents.

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CHAPTER 14

Enhancing Parental Emotion Regulation Skills Sophie Havighurst and Christiane Kehoe

Managing one’s own emotional reactions when parenting can be one of the most challenging aspects of being a parent. Many parents are depleted, overwhelmed, and triggered by their children’s emotions and may have limited patience and capacity to regulate their reactions in these interactions. The way parents regulate their own emotions influences the emotional climate of the home and determines whether (or not) they will be able to meet their child’s emotional needs in a supportive way. Evidence shows that when parents are not able to regulate their own emotions, it can hinder healthy emotional development in their children (Hajal & Paley, 2020). Assisting parents to understand and manage their own emotions has been a central focus of our Tuning in to Kids® (TIK) parenting programs. TIK recognizes that children’s healthy emotional development is partly shaped by how parents manage and express their own emotions (i.e. role modeling, impact on the family emotional climate), how parents react to children’s emotions (validation/invalidation, approval/disapproval and the messages that such reactions provide about emotion expression), and whether they discuss and teach their children about emotions (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Morris et al., 2007). When parents engage in practices of selfcare that reduce their own stress and can use emotion regulation (ER) strategies to help remain calm when faced with their children’s emotions, they can more accurately identify children’s emotions and respond in ways that validate the child’s emotional experience. This in turn has been linked to skills in children’s emotion knowledge and regulation. Our studies (e.g. Havighurst et al., 2010, 2013, 2015; Kehoe et al., 2020) show that the program improves parent emotion socialization, parent ER and children’s emotional and behavioral functioning in families from community and clinical populations with children ranging in age from toddlers through to teens (for reviews, see Havighurst & Kehoe, 2017; Havighurst et al., 2020).

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In this chapter we begin with relevant definitions and theoretical explanations of ER and briefly describe how adult therapeutic interventions generally target it. We then review parenting interventions and how these enhance parent ER. We unpack different ER strategies and examine how these work, with a focus on comparing “top-down ER” strategies (i.e. cognitive strategies that require a parent to be calmer) with bottomup strategies (i.e. using the body or senses to regulate emotions that may be more effective when a parent is emotionally activated and has less access to executive functions). We also highlight the importance of selfcare in facilitating “proactive ER” and healthy processing of emotions. Following this, we outline how our TIK parenting programs target parent ER.

14.1 Top-Down versus Bottom-Up Emotion Generation and Impact on Emotion Regulation A variety of interventions exist that promote ER and are usually underpinned by theoretical models about how emotions and ER are conceptualized. We use a definition of emotions as “episodic, relatively short-term, biologically based patterns of perception, experience, physiology, action, and communication that occur in response to specific physical and social challenges and opportunities” (Keltner & Gross, 1999, p. 467). We distinguish emotions from “mood,” which comprises more prolonged emotional states. We align with a functionalist perspective in which emotions and behaviors are seen to serve a function to promote survival, including social affiliative purposes (e.g. Campos et al., 1994; Frijda, 1986). When emotions occur, they involve changes in body state (e.g. facial expression, posture, muscle tension, heart rate, respiration, etc) and changes in cognitive functioning (e.g. motivation, attention, memory, perception, decision making; Kahneman, 2011; Smith & Lane, 2015, 2016). Emotions can be elicited in a way that is fast, automatic, and experienced in a very physical way engaging “bottom-up” processes in the brain, like those ranging from unexpected encounters with threat or pain (e.g. seeing a child run toward the road or being kicked by one’s toddler; Kahnemann, 2011; LeDoux, 1992). Bottom-up generated emotions are important as they help us to respond quickly and accurately to emotion-relevant aspects of our environment. Top-down elicited emotions can be slower, occurring as a result of cognitive appraisal in a social interaction (e.g. children’s whining can elicit irritation when it is seen as attention seeking or it can elicit curiosity or care when it is seen as connection or help seeking). Whether emotions are elicited via bottomup or top-down processes has important implications for parenting as

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well as for determining effective interventions that will appropriately assist parents to regulate their emotions when parenting. The most common definition of ER is “processes individuals use to influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express emotions” (Gross, 1998). ER can “involve generating, maintaining, increasing, or decreasing either positive or negative emotions” (p. 275). Gross suggests a “situation-attention-appraisalresponse” sequence of emotion experience, whereby emotions may be generated and regulated at various stages along a timeline of unfolding emotional responding. The model distinguishes between antecedentfocused ER strategies (which include reappraisal, acceptance, problemsolving) and response-focused ER strategies (which include suppression, distraction, rumination, avoidance) (Gross, 1998). With the exception of distraction and avoidance, these ER strategies involve cognition, and can therefore be viewed as top-down ER strategies (Kehoe & Havighurst, 2018). Among these strategies, each can be adaptive or maladaptive depending on the context (English et al., 2017), the goals people have (e.g. to self-regulate, help others, get on with work, keep up appearances) and who is present (e.g. friend or a stranger; English et al., 2017). Typically, parent ER requires a combination of bottom-up processing of encounters with emotional experience (e.g. child pushes their sibling or shouts at a parent) along with top-down conceptual knowledge, memories and linguistic representations that guide regulation and behavior (see also Hajal & Paley, 2020). In any given moment, emotional encounters can be characterized by relatively stronger bottom-up (reactive) or top-down (considered) emotions, which influence both the speed and the intensity of the emotion. This in turn, influences the type of ER strategies (either top-down or bottom-up) that may successfully help parents in such emotional moments. Often, especially at high emotion intensity, ER is automatic and habitual, which means that more practiced strategies (adaptive or maladaptive) are more likely to be used (e.g. Campbell-Sills & Barlow, 2007; Porges, 2009; Thompson, 1990; Wylie et al., 2022). For emotions that were generated in a faster, more bottom-up way, strategies that require breathing or sensory regulation may be more effective than cognitive strategies at lowering arousal (Sheppes & Meiran, 2007; Sheppes et al., 2011; Wylie et al., 2022). We discuss these strategies in more detail later in this chapter.

14.2 Emotion Regulation and Parenting: Under- and Overregulation Problems Parenting evokes a variety of emotions, which may be regulated (e.g. healthy emotion expression or masked/unobservable affect) or

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dysregulated (e.g. excessive emotion expression), and affect parenting behavior (Hajal & Paley, 2020). Additionally, although parental positive affect is associated with sensitive, supportive parenting (Rueger et al., 2011), parental anger places parents at greater risk of harsh, hostile, or reactive responses to children’s emotions (Ateah & Durrant, 2005; Leung & Slep, 2006); parents’ anxiety and worry has been found to be related to more controlling, overprotective, and restrictive parenting (Dix et al., 2004; Kaitz & Maytal, 2005); and parental sadness, especially when experienced for prolonged periods of time, can result in parents being more self-focused and detached from children’s goals and needs (Dix et al., 2004). When a parent experiences high intensity emotions such as anger, anxiety, fear, or sadness, these emotional states can be consuming and overwhelming. Although some of these emotions can be adaptive in times of danger or adversity so that parents can act quickly to keep themselves or their children safe, for many these emotions are strongly activated even in more minor situations (e.g. toddler throwing food; child not doing as asked). In part, the fast bottom-up emotion generation may occur due to appraisal of a situation (e.g. “toddler is throwing food to annoy me and won’t listen” versus “throwing food is something most toddlers will do and s/he is still learning”), highlighting the adaptive function that antecedent ER strategies, such as reappraisal hold for parenting (Kehoe & Havighurst, 2018). When emotions are very intense, however, the resulting physiological aspects of emotion dysregulation can lead to a sense of being flooded with emotions and make it difficult to process information and inhibit maladaptive behaviors and actions (Farb et al., 2015; LeDoux, 1998). Thus for many parents emotions come on so quickly that it compromises their ability to use cognitive strategies, emotion acceptance or coping statements (e.g. McRae et al., 2012), and increases the likelihood of emotional dysregulation, harsh and ineffective parenting. In these situations, parents require strategies that do not require cognitive regulatory processes but rather employ ER strategies such as breathing, walking, or sensory regulation “in the moment” to prevent them from responding in an unsupportive way (Porges, 1995). Problems with ER are not just about being underregulated with emotions. For parents to be able to respond in a sensitive and attuned way to their children’s emotions, being overregulated or disconnected from emotions can also impair their ability to respond to children in a sensitive way (Baylin, 2017; Hughes & Baylin, 2012). There are a variety of reasons why this might occur, including temperament (high inhibition); neurodiversity (e.g. autistic spectrum); that their socialization, culture, and family background has accentuated high levels of control or suppression; or that life experiences have included prolonged periods of stress or trauma where

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emotional detachment has been a learned pattern of coping (Hughes & Baylin, 2012). Thus, overregulation or detachment from emotions affects both parents’ ability to be in touch with their own emotions and also their ability to reflect on their child’s internal world and successfully identify and empathize with child’s emotions. There are, however, times when suppression (if used momentarily and not exclusively) is necessary and adaptive when parenting (Wylie et al., 2022). Managing anger when one’s children are fighting by breathing slowly or use of self-talk to inhibit sharing one’s fears when a child is giving a musical performance can suppress expression in order to achieve one’s goals (help the children resolve conflict or support the child to manage performance anxiety). Parenting interventions that target ER may be most effective when they incorporate a range of different strategies that address parents unique challenges with ER. We now review some of the dominant therapy models that target adult ER.

14.3 Therapeutic Approaches that Target Emotion Regulation: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Strategies Many therapies targeting ER or dysregulation work from a “top-down” model, where cognitions are used to change emotions and behaviors. Although some incorporate breathing and relaxation as central components (considered a more “bottom-up strategy”), primarily top-down models use cognitive strategies for ER such as reappraisal, reframing, distancing, and distraction, or behavioral strategies such as exposure with response prevention to achieve extinction. Here we briefly review well known therapies and how these work. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), one of the most commonly used therapies, focuses on teaching skills to reduce aversive emotional states through behavioral techniques (e.g. breathing and relaxation strategies, scheduling pleasant events, encouraging use of behavioral hierarchies to face feared situations, and use of breathing/relaxation), and cognitive strategies (e.g. self-monitoring, cognitive restructuring, reframing, reattribution, coping skills). Mindfulness interventions also target ER using both top-down (targeting thinking) and bottom-up (focusing on breathing or the senses) strategies. A core assumption of mindfulness therapies is that psychological problems occur when people become overly caught up in thinking about the past or the future, both of which interfere with effective responding in the present (Kabat-Zinn, 2003; Segal et al., 2002). Shifting attention to the present and remaining nonjudgmental through use of topdown and bottom-up strategies improves insight and adaptive ER (Chambers et al., 2009; Kabat-Zinn, 1982; Segal et al., 2002).

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More recent “third-wave” behavioral and cognitive therapies also target ER. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT; Hayes & Wilson, 1994), combines mindfulness techniques with CBT skills to alter patterns of dysfunctional behavior. ACT helps clients accept and tolerate negative emotions rather than avoid or extinguish them as in traditional CBT. Emotion-focused therapy (EFT; Paivio & Greenberg, 2001) specifically addresses aspects of emotional processing in therapy, namely, to be aware of, accept, express, and regulate emotions and to differentiate adaptive from maladaptive emotional reactions. Therapists guide clients toward emotions, exploring early experience, memories, and images that shape “emotional schemes.” Emotional schemes contribute to automatic emotional responses in a similar way that core maladaptive schemas determine dysfunctional patterns of thinking or behaving. Additionally, EFT recognizes two different pathways for producing emotions, one fast and automated, involving brainstem and gut responses, and the other slow, involving the neocortex in appraisal (Cozolino, 2010; LeDoux, 1998). Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT; Linehan, 1993) views dysregulated emotional responses as driven by distorted perception and dysfunctional thinking and also by automatic unconscious responses, such as biochemical changes, physiological changes, and action tendencies that can occur prior to distorted cognitions (see Neacsiu et al., 2015). Four primary skill sets are taught in DBT that assist in reducing emotion dysregulation: mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, ER, and distress tolerance. DBT focuses on proactive ER whereby clients learn skills in how to engage in self-care and actions that are self-soothing (such as paying attention to the senses). Distress tolerance skills are taught to assist in high-risk emotional situations which include sitting with emotions until they lessen, using mindfulness techniques, using STOP skills (Stop, Take a step back, Observe the situation, and Proceed effectively), and using bottom-up ER TIP skills (change body temperature, engage in intense physical exercise, and progressive muscle relaxation). Learning to tolerate emotions using these skills also assists the individual in working through their emotions rather than suppression, which often has less adaptive outcomes. Bottom-up therapies work more specifically with somatic and emotional processes to change emotions, behaviors, and cognitions. Sensorimotor psychotherapy (Ogden et al., 2006) is a body-oriented therapy based on attachment theory, using techniques drawn from CBT and psychodynamic psychotherapy to assist (1) becoming aware of automatic maladaptive action tendencies, (2) learning to inhibit initial impulses, (3) experimenting with alternative actions in order to complete the “frozen actions” (e.g. fight or flight response) that were unable to be used during the trauma experience, and (4) practicing alternative and effective actions

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(Ogden et al., 2006). Treatment integrates top-down strategies including psychoeducation about trauma, mindfulness, and concentration practice with bottom-up therapies including development of somatic resources for regulating arousal. Yoga therapy is another body-oriented approach to help with physiological self-regulation that may alleviate distress through an integration of top-down and bottom-up processes that facilitate bidirectional communication between the mind and the body (Sullivan et al., 2018). Reviews of studies find that yoga breathing, physical postures that require building distress tolerance, and meditation, lower posttraumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder symptoms in clinical participants including survivors of child abuse and interpersonal violence (Longacre et al., 2012; Telles et al., 2012). Yoga may be used in combination with exposure therapy, mindfulness, medication, or psychotherapy to achieve greater symptom reduction than those therapies alone (da Silva et al., 2009; Telles et al., 2012). Yoga adds a bottom-up approach to managing emotions that is often missing in other therapies, perhaps because body-oriented therapies are not a part of the professional training or clinical expertise of psychologists.

14.4 Parent Emotion Regulation Interventions Many of the therapies described here and their underpinning theories have influenced parenting programs that help parents to understand and manage emotions and respond sensitively and supportively with their children. Increasingly there is a focus on parenting interventions underpinned by emotion socialization, attachment, reflective functioning, and mindfulness theories that also include a focus on parent ER. Recent reviews of emotionfocused parenting interventions have highlighted the efficacy of such programs in improving parent emotional functioning, parenting, parent–child relationships, and child outcomes (Hajal & Paley, 2020; Havighurst et al., 2020; Jugovac et al., 2022). Research has highlighted that emotion-focused programs may be especially important for families in which parents or children struggle with impulse control, mental health difficulties, or attachment problems (see Maliken & Katz, 2013; Scott & Dadds, 2009). Additionally, emotion dysregulation has been related to lower attendance and higher dropout in evaluation trials of parenting programs and to interfere with skill acquisition as well as skill implementation (Maliken & Katz, 2013; Zubrick et al., 2005). We briefly describe some of the key parenting frameworks here that focus on parent ER, before describing our work with TIK. There are now a number of programs that focus specifically on helping parents manage emotions in the context of parenting. Katz and colleagues (2020) designed a parenting intervention for mothers who had

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experienced intimate partner violence. A considerable portion of the early part of their 12-session program focused on building mothers’ emotion awareness and ER skills. This was viewed as essential for learning emotion coaching and to work through the memories and sequala of trauma. Similarly, the Let’s Connect program teaches caregivers’ social and emotional skills as a way of improving connection with the child, in a program working with families who have experienced trauma (Shaffer et al., 2019). Tuning Relationships with Music (TRM; Colegrove et al., 2018), a music therapy program delivered individually to parent– adolescent dyads, was designed to address the cognitive, emotional, neurobiological (autonomic), and relational challenges for parents with a childhood interpersonal trauma history and their adolescent children. TRM provides resources and teaches skills to improve cognitive functioning (e.g. psychoeducation about beliefs and attributions that support emotional competence), ER (e.g. musical exercises to support emotion awareness and responsiveness for parent and adolescent; emotion coaching to assist the parent in helping their adolescent regulate emotions), autonomic regulation (e.g. music that supports diaphragmatic breathing) and relational functioning (e.g. musical exercises that teach parents to turn toward and connect with their adolescent) in order to support responsive and non-reactive communication during conflict. Programs based on attachment theory often include helping a parent to understand their own emotional reactions to their child to facilitate sensitive and responsive caregiving. Circle of Security, a widely disseminated parenting program, uses the analogy of “shark music” to help parents recognize uncomfortable feelings about their past that influence the way they respond to their child (Hoffman et al., 2006). This awareness results in providing parents with the capacity to alter their emotional reactions, which is an important prerequisite for being able to regulate emotions. Although the program does not overtly teach ER skills, it promotes topdown ER strategies, because it results in greater insight, emotion acceptance and self-awareness that results in lowered emotion reactivity. Reflective functioning and mentalization are also increasingly used in working with parents where there are attachment difficulties with the child. Reflective functioning refers to a parent’s ability to reflect on their own as well as their child’s internal states and is regarded as a central component contributing to secure attachment in children (Ensink et al., 2013; Fonagy et al., 2002). Interventions that focus on enhancing parental reflective functioning teach parents to understand their child’s motivations and needs rather than just responding to their behavior (Slade, 2007). They help parents to become aware of their own internal motivations, thoughts, and feelings and how these are separate from their child’s. This awareness (using different therapeutic approaches) helps

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parents to regulate their reactions and learn new ways of responding to their child. A range of programs exist that focus on reflective functioning and mentalization (for a review, see Havighurst et al., 2020). Finally, mindfulness parenting interventions have been found to be successful in improving parent ER and facilitating more sensitive caregiving (e.g. Bögels et al., 2010; Duncan et al., 2009; Lippold et al., 2015). Duncan et al. (2009) proposed a number of key components of mindfulness parenting programs that benefit parenting via how they affect parent’s own ER. These include nonjudgmental acceptance of oneself and the child, emotion awareness of self and child, self-regulation to reduce overreactiveness, and compassion. Decentering includes pausing before reacting and shifting judgment by using self-talk such as “feelings are just feelings.” Mindfulness parenting programs use bottom-up strategies that include paying attention to the breath and bodily sensations, as well as topdown cognitive processes where beliefs are shifted to reduce reactiveness.

14.5 How Does Tuning in to Kids Focus on Emotion Regulation with Parents In this section we outline the ways in which the TIK programs (including a version for parents of toddlers, parents of teens, and fathers) target parent ER. Although the primary focus of the programs is on developing parents’ capacity to emotion coach their children (with helping the child usually the main motivation for program attendance), TIK also focuses on parent ER because it is so central to parents’ ability to use emotion coaching and because it affects many other aspects of parent, family, and child functioning. We use four main approaches for improving parents’ abilities to regulate emotions: (1) teaching skills in emotion awareness and understanding; (2) exploring factors that contribute to parent emotion competence (including social and cultural influences, family-of-origin effects on emotion competence and meta-emotion philosophy, that is, understanding one’s own beliefs and automatic reactions to emotions); (3) teaching skills in ER, including proactive strategies to reduce stress and emotional arousal, bottom-up strategies for “in the moment” activation, and top-down strategies that include shifting beliefs about emotions; and (4) teaching parents emotion coaching to reduce parent and child emotion dysregulation.

14.6 Teaching Skills in Emotion Awareness and Understanding Emotion awareness includes the capacity to notice and accurately identify one’s own and other’s emotions (Saarni, 1999). From early in life, children are primed to notice emotions and develop emotional literacy, being able

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to recognize, name, and understand their own and other’s emotions. Depending on the child’s own capacities and their experiences as they grow, children will vary in the development of these skills (Saarni, 1999). Emotional understanding plays an important role in social-emotional well-being and influences how emotions are regulated. In parents, there are substantial differences in these skills because of their childhood socialization experiences with emotions as well as their own temperament. Many parents have limited emotion awareness or emotion literacy and this can make it more difficult for them to teach their children about emotions and use emotion coaching (Havighurst & Kehoe, 2017). Learning skills in emotion awareness are threaded throughout the TIK program, beginning with helping parents with awareness of their own emotions, while also helping parents to recognize emotions underpinning children’s verbal statements, behaviors, and reactions to different situations. Specifically, TIK helps parents identify their children’s emotions by attending to facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice or by thinking of similar adult equivalent situations and reflecting on how they might feel (e.g. starting preschool may be like starting a new job). At the end of the first TIK session, parents are encouraged to begin noticing emotions more in their lives, including in themselves, their child and others. In session 2, parents begin the session with an activity about emotion awareness (the Bears exercise) where they choose a picture from a set of bears showing different emotional expressions that represent an emotion the parent has experienced during the last week. This is followed by answering a set of questions (i.e. What is the emotion? What was the situation? Where did you feel this emotion in your body? What thoughts went through your head? How did you feel about having this emotion?). These questions are designed to provide parents with ways to identify, name, and express how they felt, including linking an emotion experience to bodily sensations and thoughts as well as becoming aware of how one feels about having this feeling (i.e. identifying a meta-emotion belief about that emotion). Parents are encouraged to use these questions throughout day-to-day life when they experience emotions. There are a number of other ways that TIK builds parents’ skills in emotion awareness. For example, through discussions after watching video examples or by engaging in role plays of parent–child interactions where parents are encouraged to identify and name the emotions of the parent and child. Parents are also taught to recognize feelings behind their child’s emotions and behavior using the “iceberg” metaphor to differentiate surface (irritability or withdrawal) versus deeper levels of emotional experience (e.g. disappointment, rejection, powerlessness, fear). Emotion word lists help parents to build greater complexity in language to differentiate and express emotions and feeling faces posters

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(that are ostensibly for children but often useful for parents) assist them to link emotion identification, facial expressions, and experiences to facilitate emotional competence. This process connects cognition and language to help with processing emotions, consistent with the mechanisms by which emotion-focused therapy works where putting words to felt experiences allows emotion to be processed rather than remaining unresolved (Greenberg & Pascual-Leone, 2006; Johnson & Lee, 2000). In TIK we also recognize that helping parents to become aware of and name children’s emotions (Steps 1 and 4 of emotion coaching) provides them with an anchor for present-moment-awareness, not unlike focusing the breath in mindfulness (Hill & Updegraff, 2012). This enables parents to modify dysfunctional processes of suppressing emotions or becoming emotionally reactive and increases awareness of how they and their child are feeling. Parents’ report being calmer when attempting to identify emotions, being more present with their children when they are emotional and feeling more empathy for their children. This also assists parents to manage their automatic unsupportive reactions to children’s emotions thereby enabling alternative responses to be enacted (Bargh & Ferguson, 2000; Dumas, 2005).

14.7 Exploring Factors that Contribute to Parent Emotion Regulation Gottman et al. (1996) outlined a theory of meta-emotion philosophy (MEP; thoughts and feelings about emotions) that determined parents’ responses to their children’s emotions. MEP is influenced by a range of factors including social, cultural, and family of origin experiences surrounding emotions (the messages received, verbally and nonverbally about expression) that shape socially proscribed ways of reacting to emotions (such as how grief is expressed at a funeral; whether anger is expressed overtly when another person has infringed an individual’s rights). In TIK we focus on shifting parents’ attitudes about emotions toward acceptance, noting that all emotions are acceptable and serve important functions of survival. This is differentiated from behavior, where not all behaviors (i.e. yelling at and hitting a child when angry) are acceptable or constructive in relationships and parenting. This distinction is also an example of the third wave of CBT, where emotions are accepted and validated as a mechanism for change, rather than altering thinking or behavior to alter emotions. This is often a challenging idea for parents who may hold strong negative attitudes about emotions and their expression (e.g. it is not okay to hate; jealousy is bad; anxiety is debilitating). Emotion acceptance and learning ways to manage the discomfort that intense emotional arousal brings involves developing awareness of meta-

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emotions and automatic reactions. Parental automatic reactions occur often seemingly instantaneously, without conscious awareness in response to triggers (either memories, experiences or events), a bottomup emotion generation. These might be when the individual is faced with an immediate threat to safety (or the safety of others), in specific situations (e.g. bedtimes or mealtimes if these were stressful when the parent was a child), with specific emotions (e.g. child or friend is sobbing unconsolably), or when their child engages in behaviors that the parent may have history with (e.g. lashes out at their sibling hurting them, or when their child reports they were not picked for a team at school). Automatic reactions are linked to the situational context (including memories of these from childhood), the type of emotion and their valence and often result in emotionally dysregulated responses that may have been adaptive during childhood but do not match or are no longer appropriate in the current context. For parents, for example, automatic reactions can show up as excessive anger in response to a child’s misbehavior, defensive retaliation in response to a child’s accusations of being unfair, disapproval and withdrawal in response to a child being jealous and harsh with a sibling, or embarrassment and criticalness when the child has a tantrum in front of grandparents. Automatic reactions can also include automatically dismissing the child’s emotions with the aim of regaining control or wanting the emotion to go away (e.g. use of disapproving or minimising, or laisse faire parental responses to the child). In this context, teaching parents’ ER skills is often ineffective because when activated in this way, they do not have access to optimal executive functioning and ER responses are less likely to occur. Helping parents develop an awareness of their MEP, the influence of their family of origin experiences, and understanding their automatic reactions to emotions are critical in altering habitual, dysfunctional patterns of responding to emotions. This process is similar to schema-focused or emotion-focused psychotherapy in which changes occur by accessing past experiences and evoking emotions consistent with these memories in order to work through and alter automatic dysfunctional patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving, and interacting (Greenberg & Safran, 1989). Intense automatic reactions are reduced because emotions no longer activate (often unconsciously) remembered past emotional experiences (Greenberg & Pascual-Leone, 2006; Lane et al., 2015). Further, reflecting on the effect of dysfunctional family of origin experiences, while also learning new skills in parenting, has been found necessary for altering intergenerational patterns of neglectful parenting (Leerkes & Crockenberg, 2006). Across the program, automatic reactions and family of origin (FOO) experiences are progressively explored so that defenses, retraumatizing or withdrawal responses are less likely to occur. Session 1 introduces

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parents to the basic premise of meta-emotion and that it is shaped by FOO, culture, and experiences. Session 2 builds on this by exploring the messages about emotion expression received from the wider culture. Session 3 explores family of origin experiences with sadness (how did your mother/father respond to you when you were sad; how did they show sadness; what were the messages that others gave you about sadness and expressing it, etc.). Session 4 explores FOO with fears and worries. Session 5 focuses on anger and session 6, on how conflict was responded to or is used as an opportunity for each parent to summarize what they have learned about their automatic reactions. In clinical settings the program is delivered over a longer duration enabling these issues to be explored gradually and sensitively, depending on parents’ capacity for reflection and self-disclosure, and accounting for difficult FOO experiences, past trauma, and current mental health. The graduated exploration of FOO and automatic reactions has resulted in many parents reporting shifts when they made the “light-bulb”-like connections between how their own mother or father responded with anger to them as a child and their automatic reactions as an adult to anger in close relationships or parenting. In turn, they will often report that they can now identify their own emotion dysregulation patterns, and this enables them to engage in and use skills taught in emotion regulation.

14.8 Teaching Emotion Regulation Skills: Proactive, Top-Down, and Bottom-Up Strategies In TIK we teach three ways of regulating emotions: pausing, calming, and releasing. We also teach strategies parents can use proactively (i.e. self-care) and “in the moment,” with a specific focus on regulating anger, anxiety, and stress. We highlight that bottom-up ER strategies may work better in the moment, when emotions are generated automatically, fast and are high in intensity with the most frequently used skill to “build in a pause.” Building in a pause includes slow deep breaths, a cold drink of water, stepping outside or going to the bathroom, stretching, shifting the weight from one foot to the other, holding a necklace or keys to connect or ground to the senses and the present moment, counting to 10 in one’s head, or moving around. These activities require 10–30 seconds to reduce a parent’s arousal and inhibit their automatic reactions, instead enabling selection of more optional ER and parenting responses. Bottom-up strategies do not require cognitive ER skills such as attention-shifting or reframing that are often inaccessible to parents at times of heightened emotion. Strategies to build in a pause that are not cognitive are also more effective for parents who can be abusive when they are emotionally dysregulated.

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Building in a pause allows parents to widen the gap between the emotionally activating situation and their response, reducing the likelihood of dysfunctional, unsupportive parenting. This also enables the parent to be more child centered, to engage their capacity for reflective functioning by considering the child’s internal world (Fonagy et al., 2002), and then to use emotion coaching skills. Although in some respects building in a pause may entail momentary emotion suppression (e.g. telling yourself to stop) or distraction (e.g. counting, or focusing on one’s senses) we believe that this remains adaptive in the context of parenting, especially if followed by other strategies. For regulating emotion in advance, we encourage proactive “emotional refueling” using both top-down (e.g. reflection) as well as bottom-up strategies to process emotions and prepare for future emotional moments. In contrast to avoidance or distraction behaviors, proactive ER includes “things one does before the emotion response tendencies have become fully activated and have changed one’s behaviour and one’s peripheral physiological responding” (Gross & Thompson, 2007, p. 15). Proactive skills assist with emotion arousal reduction and include teaching breathing techniques (a range of options are taught or links to different resources that enable parents to find preferable methods), meditation, self-care activities that are calming (a hot bath, a walk in nature, taking off one’s shoes to walk on the grass and feel the texture under one’s feet) as well as physical activity to “let off steam” and reduce the physiological arousal that comes with emotion activation and stress (e.g. going for a run, walk or bike ride, kicking a ball, or weeding the garden). Parents are taught about the flight, flight, and freeze response and encouraged to find ways to manage these reactions and the activation that often ensues. Stress-reduction activities such as tense and release are also an effective component of CBT (Beck et al., 1979; Hawton et al., 1989). TIK does not directly teach cognitive or top-down strategies that are often the main components of adult-focused ER programs; however, many of the exercises, discussions and skills result in new experiences that can shift parents’ beliefs about emotions. For example, through exploring the function of emotions and meta-emotion, and gaining a more accurate understanding of children’s emotional development, change can occur in parents’ beliefs about emotions and help them to be less judgmental. Parents learn to reappraise emotional situations as emotion coaching opportunities, times for connection and teaching, which often reflects a change in beliefs about emotions. Individual tailoring of program delivery based on parents’ challenges enables a targeted focus on areas of parent ER difficulties. Sometimes there is the need to introduce self-care earlier for very stressed or overwhelmed parents; sometimes parents dislike the focus on meditation and alternative

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exercises are needed; at other times when parents are more reactive, techniques to build in a pause are required earlier; or FOO is playing a very dominant role in preventing a parent from being able to take their child’s perspective, and so more work on this is needed in the later sessions. Lastly, the program normalizes ER difficulties, with the message that parenting is often a very challenging experience for many parents. Facilitators often share in a planned and limited way, personal experiences that illustrate their own challenges and learning surrounding ER. This process reduces again the “power” of expert/learner that can often result in parents feeling deskilled and devalued as a person and as a parent.

14.9 Teaching Parents Emotion Coaching to Assist with Emotion Regulation The parenting skills taught in TIK for parents to use with their children also often assist parents in ER. Although emotion coaching is a way of responding that allows parents to coregulate their child, teaching the five steps of emotion coaching can act as an ER strategy for parents because it provides them with a model of how to work through emotional experiences. This alters their automatic reactions and shifts the attributions parents make when their children are emotional. Emotion coaching involves five main steps: (1) noticing the child’s emotion (which assists parents to be present in the moment); (2) seeing this as an opportunity to connect and guide/teach the child (a reappraisal of the situation); (3) communicating understanding and empathy; (4) helping the child to understand and name the emotion; and (5) if necessary, assist the child with problem-solving and/or setting limits around their behavior. By increasing parents’ awareness of their emotionally dismissive responses that create less optimal emotional competence, parents instead learn skills in how to use the emotion coaching steps with their children when emotions occur. For example, rather than viewing the child as being attention seeking, manipulative, or weak, use of the five steps helps the parent see their child’s emotions as an opportunity to connect with them and support them with emotions. Where the former reactions might activate a parent to irritability, anger, and an emotionally dismissive parenting response, the latter (where emotion coaching is used) results in increased empathy and less emotional reactivity in the parent. Further, using the analogy of “the iceberg” parents are encouraged to notice (step 1) and explore emotions that underlie surface emotions (e.g. jealousy or fear behind anger) and behaviors (sadness, loneliness, or fear behind whining or oppositionality) and rather than withdrawing attention at these times, connection is encouraged and guidance is provided to

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the child to understand and regulate their emotions (step 2). Exploring deeper emotion (such as fears of separation, abandonment, rejection, failure, loss) that often drive surface level emotions and behaviors, significantly assists the child but also acts as a regulation strategy for the parent. Some parents will report that the act of enquiry when using the five steps shifts their focus and helps them to calm their own arousal levels as well. Building parents capacity to communicate empathy (step 3) with their children is a key component of TIK. Empathy requires a parent to be regulated. In order to take the perspective of another (cognitive aspects of empathy) and “feel with” that person (the emotional aspects of empathy), a parent needs to shift their focus to their child’s mental and emotional state. We teach a stepped strategy called “The Emotion Detective” for helping parents to empathize, where parents ask themselves some reflective questions when their child experiences emotions (such as not being picked for a team; the birth of a sibling; being made to eat a least favorite food) and to (1) consider an adult equivalent situation (e.g. not getting a desired job; one’s partner bringing home a new girl/boyfriend to be part of the family; being made to do something at work that one disagrees with); then (2) imagine the emotions the parent might feel in that “adult equivalent” situation; and lastly (3) communicating understanding and acceptance by practicing an empathic response (e.g. how disappointing; I’d feel jealous and left out too; that’s annoying when you are made to do things you don’t like). The skills learned in this exercise are then promoted for use by the parent whenever their child becomes emotional. This gives parents a strategy that also helps them regulate their reactions and shifts their perspective from being adult centered to child centered. The theory of mentalization and reflective functioning is useful to understand this process where the parent is able to consider their child’s internal emotional world (Fonagy et al., 2002). This functions as a regulation strategy for the parent and is usually helpful in calming the child. It also builds connection and closeness that reinforces the parents’ efforts, validating their actions and strengthening their confidence that they are able to support and guide their child. This results in shifts in their beliefs from being overwhelmed (I can’t cope with my child’s emotions; this child is so difficult) to having greater competence in parenting about emotions (I can manage my reactions; I can guide my child), and in turn contributes to parents being better able to regulate their own emotions. The fourth step of naming emotions with children (step 4) also assists parents in their emotion awareness and regulation. Finally, a number of strategies are taught that provide parents with ways of assisting their child to regulate emotions (e.g. slow breathing, tense and release exercises, bringing attention to the senses, use of a special object to hold and

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feel the texture). These same skills are often useful for parents to assist them in their own ER.

14.10 Conclusion Assisting parents to develop skills in regulating their emotions in the context of parenting, especially in ways that are supportive of the child’s emotion socialization, is central to emotion-focused parent work. Parenting has a significant emotional load and parents are often limited in what they have left for managing their own emotions. Part of parent work is finding ways to overcome the barriers to parents investing time and energy into efforts to address their own wellbeing. From our experiences with TIK programs and over 20 years of delivery of this suite of programs, we have refined ways of supporting parents to learn ER strategies as interwoven components in the parenting program so that defensiveness and barriers can be overcome. We combine a focus on increasing parent emotion awareness, exploration of factors that contribute to parent meta-emotion philosophy, proactive, bottom-up and topdown ER strategies and teaching emotion coaching skills for parents to use with their children that anchor them to a more child-centered approach to parenting and have benefits for parents as well. What works for parents depends on their own temperament, their family history with emotions and past experiences, as well as the context in which emotions occur and the intensity of the emotion. Parents also vary in what they find useful and effective, and a range of strategies enables individual preference and choice, ensuring parents feel more empowered to determine how they will parent and the choices they make. Many of the methods that we use are consistent with other theoretical approaches to adult ER interventions as well as parenting programs that have an emotionfocused or mindfulness approach. Although TIK programs often result in shifts in parent cognitive processes that aid in ER, this is not the primary approach used. Greater integration of bottom-up or bodyfocused strategies that assist in regulating emotions have been effective for many parents when responding to emotions in themselves and their children and illustrate the shifting theoretical and empirical state of knowledge about how to promote ER in the context of parenting.

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Conclusions and Perspectives Isabelle Roskam, James J. Gross, and Moïra Mikolajczak Our goal in this book has been to highlight the importance of emotion regulation in the context of parenting. This book, the first on emotion regulation and parenting, both highlights the importance of emotion regulation in the specific context of parenting and shows how promising research at the intersection of these two fields is. With the help of the many wonderful experts who contributed to the chapters, this book allows us to (1) take stock of findings and trends in the field, (2) identify the main challenges to be addressed, and (3) pinpoint exciting directions and methods for future research. We address each of these in turn.

C.1 Emotion Regulation and Parenting Research at the intersection of emotion regulation and parenting often seems to be studying different facets of this complex phenomenon. Some researchers focus on the parent’s emotion regulation, others on the parent’s regulation of the child’s emotions, and still others on the role played by the parent’s and/or the child’s emotion regulation in the child’s development. One of the first challenges is to bring these different perspectives together. At the outset of the book, the author of Chapter 1 offers an overview of the complexity of the field of research devoted to parenting cognitions and behaviors in relation to child development. Then, the authors of Chapter 2 point out the different facets of emotion regulation, the complexity of the process, and especially the fact that all its facets are worth studying in the field of parenting. It is clear from these two chapters that these two fields have developed independently, with their own complexity and issues. It will be of great interest and value to link them together. So how can we summarize what emotion regulation in parenting is? First, emotion regulation in parenting is concerned with how parents regulate their own emotions as individuals. As highlighted in several chapters of the book, there is considerable interindividual variability in this respect due to genetic, hormonal, and neural factors (see Chapter 12), sociodemographic factors such as age or gender, primiparity, the

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developmental history of the individual including history of maltreatment (see Chapter 4), internal working models, personality, etc. The way in which parents regulate their own emotions as individuals is a key factor in parents’ well-being, stress, and behavior in general. In part, this is because the way in which parents regulate their emotions as individuals is an explanatory factor in the child’s emotional development via modeling (i.e. observation and imitation) (see Chapters 2, 7, and 9). Second, emotion regulation in parenting concerns how parents regulate their own emotions within the specific context of parenting. On the one hand, parents must regulate the emotions that parenting brings in general. For example, they may feel fulfillment or pride in the role of mother or father or disappointment and disinterest. On the other hand, parents must also regulate the emotions they feel when interacting with the child. These emotions are specific to each interaction and fluctuate from moment to moment and from one context to another. For example, the parent may want to reduce the expression of anxiety on the teen’s first night out. The way in which the parent regulates their own emotions in the specific context of parenting is an explanatory factor in the parent’s well-being, stress, and burnout (see Chapter 6) and in their behavior as a parent (see Chapters 3 and 5). Third, emotion regulation in parenting concerns how parents regulate the child’s emotions (i.e. reactions to child emotions, conversations and teaching about emotions) during parent–child interactions (see Chapters 7 and 8). Here too there is considerable interindividual variability. The way in which parents regulate the child’s emotions is the result of the two previous points, that is, the parent’s regulation of their own emotions in general, and the parent’s regulation of their own emotions in the specific context of parenting. It also results from the parent’s metaemotion philosophy (see Chapter 8). This is the parent effect. To this effect is added the child effect. The way the parent regulates the child’s emotions is influenced by the child’s temperament, behavior in specific situations, age, and other characteristics such as a disability. There also may be interaction effects, meaning that the impact of the parent effects depends on the characteristics of the child. As an additional complexity, there is also an effect of the context in which the interaction occurs. For example, the parent’s regulation of the child’s emotions may differ depending on whether regulation occurs in the family or in a public setting (see Chapter 1). A parent’s regulation of the child’s emotions also differs according to culture (see Chapter 10). The way in which the parent regulates the child’s emotions through their practices and reactions matters, as it influences the child’s social and emotional development (see Chapters 2, 7, and 9).

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C.2 Challenges to Be Addressed Without diminishing the work already accomplished by researchers in the field, it is clear that there are still many unexplored areas and that the field is struggling to progress in a coherent manner in all three directions (i.e. the parent’s regulation of their own emotions in general, the parent’s regulation of their own emotions in the specific context of parenting, and the parent’s regulation of the child’s emotions). Taken together, the chapters that make up this book suggest that our field needs to address several main challenges. One challenge is that there is a great imbalance between the three elements that the field of emotion regulation in parenting entails. Of the three, the parent’s regulation of the child’s emotions, and more specifically its effect on the child’s development, has been documented the most (see Part III). There are proportionately very few studies in which the parent’s emotion regulation is studied for its own sake, without the objective of understanding its effects on the child’s development. In other words, researchers are interested in parents because they influence child development, not because the emotion regulation of the parent as a person is of interest in itself or because there is a concern to increase parental well-being and mental health (see Chapters 6 and 11). It follows from this that parent-driven effects are much more widely considered than child-driven effects. Yet, the parent’s regulation of their own emotions and the parent’s regulation of the child’s emotions occur in a dyadic context of mutual adaptation, based on reciprocal and transactional effects (see Chapters 9 and 11). Despite the bidirectional nature of emotion regulation in parenting, the vast majority of studies document how the parent’s emotion regulation influences the child’s emotion regulation. Few focus on how the child’s emotion regulation influences the parent’s emotion regulation. Most of these studies are based on correlational analyses that provide no indication of the direction of the effects, but their results are repeatedly interpreted in the direction of parent to child and rarely in the opposite direction. The child’s evocative effect, however, may be a key factor in explaining both interindividual (i.e. from one parent to another) and intraindividual (i.e. from moment to moment or from one context to another) variation in emotion regulation and parenting. Another challenge stemming from the predominance of correlational studies is the urgent need to go beyond a linear and homogeneous view of the relationships between emotion regulation, parenting, and child development (see Chapter 1). According to this view, the better parents regulate their own emotions, the better they regulate their emotions in the specific context of parenting; the better parents regulate their emotions in

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the specific context of parenting, the better they regulate the child’s emotions; and the better parents regulate the child’s emotions, the more optimally the child develops (e.g. fewer behavioral symptoms and better peer relationships), and the better the child regulates their own emotions. This linear and homogeneous view of the relationships between emotion regulation, parenting, and child development may be overly simple. In this book, the authors have drawn attention to the fact that (1) the size of the correlations between these variables is only small to modest at best (see Chapters 1 and 9); (2) the correlations were mostly obtained in samples of normative nuclear families from WEIRD (i.e. Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) countries (see Chapters 1 and 10); (3) there are shared third factors such as genetic factors or extrafamilial factors like shared ethnicity (see Chapter 10) explaining both the parent’s and the child’s emotion regulation (see Chapter 6); and (4) the relationships between emotion regulation, parenting, and child development are not limited to bivariate relationships but involve processes of mediation (see Chapters 1 and 6) and moderation by the child’s age, temperament, and behavior (see Chapter 1), and the parent’s gender (see Chapter 5) and culture (see Chapters 3, 9, and 10). Beyond being overly simple, a linear and homogeneous view of relationships between emotion regulation, parenting, and child development reinforces the belief in parental determinism, that is, the belief that child development in general, and child emotion regulation in particular, are largely or exclusively the result of parenting. Although the influence of parenting on child development is not negligible, it is clear that child development is the result of a complex equation which, in addition to parental factors, includes factors beyond the control of the parent (e.g. the child’s own agency, genetic, physiological and contextual factors). The belief in parental determinism is all the more problematic as it seems to contribute to increasing the cultural pressure to be a good parent (see Chapter 10), parental stress, and burnout (see Chapters 6 and 13). And, ironically, by increasing parental stress and burnout, it also potentially increases the risk of parental neglect and violence (see Chapters 5 and 6). Another oversimplification is the binary vision according to which there are “good” and “bad” strategies in emotion regulation, “good” and “bad” practices in parenting, and children with “good” and “bad” development. Despite the authors’ desire to use less prescriptive terms, our book exemplifies this simplifying binary vision: functional, adaptive, well-suited, better, correct, right, sensitive, optimal, supportive, against dysfunctional, maladaptive, ill-suited, negative, at risk, nonoptimal, and unsupportive. This is entirely understandable. However, the reality is much more complex. As we saw for example in Chapter 3, so-called positive emotions do not always have positive consequences, and negative emotions should not always be minimized. We saw in Chapter 6 that the best is sometimes the

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enemy of the good, because too much parental emotion regulation increases stress and burnout. And we know that in the context of moderations, the effect of a variable (e.g. parental emotion regulation) on another variable (e.g. child emotion regulation) is not true for all parents, for all children, and/or in all contexts (see Chapters 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, and 10). The result of all this is the risk of delivering unhelpful take-home messages to researchers, professionals, and parents themselves. One example of such a take-home message is the promotion of emotion regulation in general and of this or that specific strategy (for instance, always encouraging reappraisal and always discouraging suppression) to ensure optimal child development. However, it has been shown in other domains that it is flexibility in the use of emotion regulation strategies that seems to be most predictive of good outcomes (Aldao et al., 2015; Bonanno & Burton, 2013; Bonanno et al., 2004). Another example of a potentially unhelpful take-home message is the requirement that parents achieve the desired affective state that corresponds to the model of good parenting relevant in the WEIRD countries (see Chapters 10 and 13). Yet another challenge pertains to the need for a common language. Authors frequently use different terms to talk about the same things. In particular, we noted the following equivalences or proxies: (1) selffocused and intrinsic versus other-focused and extrinsic emotion regulation (see Chapters 2 and 6); (2) parent’s parenting of children’s emotions, children’s emotional socialization (practices), and parental socialization of child emotions (see Chapters 1, 2, and 9); (3) supportive socialization practices and emotion coaching (see Chapter 9); (4) supportive practices, coaching practices, and adaptive parental extrinsic emotion regulation versus unsupportive, dismissing practices, and maladaptive parental extrinsic emotion regulation (see Chapter 6); (5) “coregulation of and then by child’s emotion” and extrinsic emotion regulation (see Chapter 7); and (6) top-down emotion regulation and emotional labor (see Chapters 12 and 13). A dialogue between experts would undoubtedly contribute to greater conceptual clarity. Such a dialogue would make it possible to know whether the proxies are really synonyms, in which case a common language should be favored, or whether these proxies do not refer to exactly the same thing, in which case their specificity and the limits of their overlap should be more explicitly fixed.

C.3 Future Directions In addition to these challenges, each of the contributors of this book identified in the conclusions of their chapters one or more directions for future research. We summarize and organize these future directions next, distinguishing content from methods.

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C.3.1 Content Issues One future direction is to document the dimensions of emotion regulation in parenting that have received the least attention, that is, the parent’s regulation of their own emotions vis-à-vis parenting in general, and the parent’s regulation of their own emotions in the specific context of parenting. If we want to understand emotion regulation in parenting, we can no longer focus in most studies on the parent’s regulation of the child’s emotions and its effects on the child’s development (see Chapter 3). Rather, we must accord the same importance to the parent as we give to the child, as has been emphasized by the authors of several chapters (see Chapters 6, 11, and 12). Greater attention to the parent should lead us to develop and promote interventions that emotionally care for the child and the parent as well. Currently, interventions are very often driven by a strong focus on the best interests of the child and a strong belief in parental determinism. Interventions can therefore increase the demands for emotion regulation on the part of the parent, and thus emotional labor (see Chapters 13 and 14). It is necessary to rethink these interventions with the benefit of both the child and the parent in mind, as the two form an inseparable dyad (i.e. the emotional well-being of one depends on the emotional well-being of the other), and to systematically test the effects of the interventions not only on the child’s development, well-being, and emotion regulation but also on the parent’s well-being, emotions, and emotion regulation. Second, given the specificity of the context (i.e. parenting), the contributors to this book draw our attention to four important elements. First, we need to move from the regulation of emotions in general to the regulation of specific emotions (see Chapter 3). Second, we need to focus on the emotion regulation strategies that are relevant to the specific context of parenting, as not all strategies necessarily apply to parent–child interactions (see Chapter 3). In so doing, we need to study all relevant emotion regulation strategies in the context of the parent–child relationship, not just reappraisal or suppression (for a list of relevant emotion regulation strategies, see Chapter 8). Third, we must recognize that parents do not use emotion regulation strategies in isolation. Rather, they use several of them during the same interaction with the child and combine them sequentially. Cluster analysis (see Chapter 7) or ecological momentary assessment (see Chapters 8 and 11) are particularly interesting methods for studying how interpersonal regulatory interactions vary across and within interactions. Fourth, we would benefit from complementing the study of the regulation of negative emotions with studies on the regulation of the parent’s and child’s positive emotions (see Chapters 3 and 9).

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C.3.2 Methodological Issues This book has highlighted the complexity of emotion regulation in parenting. In order to account for this complexity, we must rely on methods other than correlational analyses. Although correlational approaches constitute an important and entirely legitimate first step, it is essential to go further in order to (1) disentangle the directions of causality between the variables (see Chapters 7, 8, and 11); (2) integrate into the models the processes of mediation and/or moderation (see Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8); (3) take into account the normative and nonnormative developmental dimension (see Chapters 2, 7, and 11); (4) integrate the specificity of the context and be ecologically valid (see Chapters 10 and 11); (5) consider that the relations between variables may not be linear but curvilinear (see Chapter 6); and (6) take into account the dependence between child and parent data (see Chapter 11). We also need to remember that there is no single gold-standard method (for an excellent synthesis of recommendations for future research, see Chapter 11). The different methods must be seen as complementary because none of them, however sophisticated, can alone capture the whole complexity of emotion regulation in parenting. The methods employed must also allow us to model the dyadic and bidirectional character and the process of mutual adaptation in the parent– child relationship (see Chapters 1 and 11). Moreover, they should allow us to integrate the asymmetric character of this relationship (i.e. the contribution of the child and the parent in terms of emotion regulation is different because of the different levels of maturity, see Chapters 1 and 7). Finally, because of the large interindividual differences in emotion regulation and parenting, these methods must be able to integrate the singularity of the parent and the child, as well as the singularity of each dyad (see Chapters 1 and 8). The dyadic and bidirectional nature of the parent–child relationship makes the systemic approach particularly well suited to study emotion regulation in the parenting context. This type of approach has the additional advantage of making it possible to consider more than two interacting partners (see Chapters 2 and 11). It also draws our attention to the importance of going beyond the exclusive focus on the mother-child dyad to include fathers in the system, as well as other important socializing agents such as grandparents, siblings, peers, or teachers (see Chapter 9).

C.4 Concluding Comment Much important work has been done at the intersection of emotion regulation and parenting. However, it is clear that there is still much to do and to discover. It is our hope that this book will stimulate research in this area, benefiting both parents and children.

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References Aldao, A., Sheppes, G., & Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation flexibility. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 39, 263–278. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10608-014-9662-4 Bonanno, G. A., & Burton, C. L. (2013). Regulatory flexibility: An individual differences perspective on coping and emotion regulation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(6), 591–612. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691613504116 Bonanno, G. A., Papa, A., Lalande, K., Westphal, M., & Coifman, K. (2004). The importance of being flexible: The ability to both enhance and suppress emotional expression predicts long-term adjustment. Psychological Science, 15(7), 482–487. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00705.x

Index

abuse, 15, 19, 82–92, 109, 270 Actor–Partner Interdependence Model, 215, 217 adolescence, see also adolescents adulthood, 21, 50–51, 83, 90, 149, 221 affect mirroring, see mirroring APIM, see Actor–Partner Interdependence Model appraisal, 35, 36, 63, 66, 103, 130–131, 138, 140, 249, 265, 267, 269 assistance, regulatory, 43 attachment, 4, 7, 13, 15, 20–21, 50, 60, 66, 87–88, 92, 102, 104, 151, 156, 168, 176–177, 206–207, 211, 218, 232–234, 269–271 awareness, 15, 50–51, 59, 65, 67, 105–106, 108, 129, 131–132, 137, 141–142, 151, 153–155, 176, 210, 271–275, 278–280 beliefs, parental, see also ethnotheories buffering, 154 burnout, 117, 119, 121–122, 248, 250–253, 255–256, 288, 290–291

child-rearing, 7–8, 10, 19–21, 102, 135, 189, 193–194, 245 closeness, see also relationships, close coaching, emotion, 20, 108, 119–121, 142, 171, 175–177, 207, 215, 271–274, 277–278, 280, 291 competence, emotional, 169, 174, 178, 255, 271, 274, 278 components, emotional, 102, 103, 177 coregulation see also regulation corticolimbic circuitry, 150–153, 159 culture, 3, 59, 92, 172–174, 197, 199–201, 208, 244, 247, 253, 256, 267, 276, 288, 290 culture, Western, 134, 135, 141, 143, 192 curve, developmental, see also trajectories, developmental; time course, developmental; curve latent growth curve, latent growth, see also trajectories, developmental; time course, developmental; curve, developmental

capacity, 13, 47, 61, 89, 90, 92, 107, 118, 119, 121, 134, 149, 151, 153–154, 229, 233, 246, 264, 271–272, 276–277, 279 capacity, regulatory, 208 caregivers, 17, 47–49, 87, 132, 134–135, 139–141, 149–151, 153, 157, 166, 168–170, 173, 190, 208, 271 child development, 4, 8–11, 13, 16, 21, 139, 153, 155, 158, 160, 189, 207, 221, 229, 233–234, 245, 251, 287, 289–291 child maltreatment see maltreatment

design, study, 10, 71, 205, 209, 213–215, 221–222 discipline, 13, 16, 18, 64, 88–90, 92, 102, 106–107, 75, 189 display rules, 202, 244, 246–247, 249–254, 256 distraction, 65, 16, 138–141, 151, 157, 229, 235, 266, 268, 277 dyad, 13, 39, 67, 175, 206, 208, 210–211, 214–215, 217–218, 292–293 dysregulation see also regulation

295

296

Index

effect size, 6, 63, 168–170 effect, partner, 217–219 effects, interactive, 158, 177, 205, 208, 214–216, 220 effortful control, 10, 154, 168–172, 175 emotional development, 90, 131, 136–137, 149–151, 246, 264, 277, 288 emotionality, 4, 11, 14, 16–17, 166, 168–170, 175, 177–178 emotions discussion of, 171–172 expression of, 132, 168, 170 positive, 4, 10, 12–13, 15, 17–20, 47, 59, 69, 70–72, 85, 103, 116–117, 120, 246–247, 249, 251–252, 254, 290, 292 regulation of, 16, 105, 129, 136, 192 responses to, 62, 168–169, 173, 175, 177–178, 274 ERP see event-related potential ethnotheories, see also beliefs, parental event-related potential (ERP), 231 factors contextual, 61, 290 demographic, 14, 15, 92, 287 genetic, 290 hormonal, 287 neural, 287 parental, 290 situational, 102, 166 family, 4, 9, 15, 18–21, 47–50, 60, 64, 70, 72–73, 91, 101, 104, 151, 158, 167–168, 171, 176–178, 189, 191–196, 200–202, 207–208, 215, 217, 245, 251, 256, 264, 267, 272, 274–276, 279–280, 288 fathers good see parent, good feeling, 14–15, 36, 38–39, 41, 44, 57–59, 70, 72, 84, 86, 88–89, 94, 101–102, 106, 107, 129–130, 132–135, 138, 140–142, 156, 169–171, 197, 244, 246–250, 271–275, 278 fMRI, 231–232, 237 functioning, reflective, 134–136, 270–272, 277, 279

grandparents, 178, 201, 275, 293 guidance, scientific, 189 health community, 60 mental, 18, 58, 63, 83–84, 90–93, 207, 270, 276, 289 physical, 8, 154 influence bidirectional, 217 interactive, 208 interaction, social, 139, 141, 265 interactions, parent–child, 15–16, 18, 58–59, 62–68, 70, 72–73, 86, 92, 101, 137, 176–177, 208–211, 273, 288, 292 intervention, see also therapy labeling, 133, 137, 141–142, 171 maltreatment see also neglect mediation, 4–6, 10, 12, 17, 20, 118–119, 121, 290, 293 mentalization, 91, 94, 134, 231, 271–272, 279 meta-emotion beliefs, 273 meta-emotion philosophy, 143, 151, 153–155, 158, 272–274, 280 mindfulness, 20, 108, 177, 268–270, 272, 274, 280 mirroring, 134–137, 139, 141–143 modeling, 9, 48, 136, 141, 170, 207–208, 217, 264, 288 moderation, 9, 11, 21, 172, 290, 293 moderators, see also moderation modulation, response, 42, 44, 138, 141 monitoring, 41–42, 45, 59, 102, 130, 136, 218–219, 268 mothers good see parent, good neglect see also maltreatment neurobiology, 229, 231, 234–238 ontogenesis, 129, 137 other-focused, 43

Index outcomes, developmental, 14, 150, 153, 156, 166, 234 overregulation see also regulation parent, good, 189–190, 193–194, 199–202, 290 parenthood, 8, 14, 19, 21, 82–86, 89, 94, 101, 105, 191, 229–230, 232, 234, 236–238 parenting intrusive, 15, 106, 168 positive, 5, 10, 12, 20, 61, 63, 65, 72, 171, 251–252 supportive, 12, 168, 267 parenting behavior, 58–62, 66, 68, 70–73, 106, 118, 137, 168, 214, 235, 237, 267 parenting cognition, 4–10, 12, 17–18, 20, 287 parenting stress, 88, 101–106, 109, 117–123 peers, 5, 92, 174, 178, 208, 210, 293 physiology, 6, 36, 74, 214, 265 process dynamic, 159, 205, 209, 213, 221 maturational, 189 programs, see also intervention parenting, 19–20, 120, 264–265, 270–272, 280 parental training, 143 punishment, 61, 85, 93, 155, 189, 245 reappraisal, 5, 47, 49, 63–64, 108, 117–118, 138, 141, 143, 155–158, 214, 229, 235–236, 253, 255, 266–268, 278, 291–292 regulation see also coregulation, dysregulation, overregulation, selfregulation action, 139 dyadic, 131, 132 extrinsic, 151, 206 intrinsic, 206

297 low, 171 reflective, 137, 139–141, 143 regulation by, 45, 131–132, 136–137, 139, 143, 169, 236 regulation of, 129, 131–132, 139, 141, 291 regulatory effort, 49–51, 249–250, 252–253, 255–256 relations, bidirectional, 109, 171–172 relationships close, see also closeness social, 16, 251 repertoire, 49, 129, 138, 140–141 reward, 3, 19, 189, 232–233, 251 rumination, 49, 85–86, 93, 155–158, 202, 266 self-focused, 38–43, 46–47, 51, 116–118, 267 self-regulation see also regulation socialization, see also socializer emotion, 4, 18, 60, 62, 64, 71, 119–121, 149, 166, 168, 173, 175–178, 264, 270, 280 socializer, see also socialization soothing, 138–141, 269 strategies active, 138 bottom-up, 265, 268, 272, 276–277 corrective, 174, 177 emotion regulation, 42, 44, 49–50, 62, 71, 73, 93, 117, 133, 136–139, 154–159, 212, 235, 237, 254–255, 291–292 parental, 135 passive, 138 punitive, 64, 169 regulation, 42, 44, 49–50, 71, 73, 93, 117, 133, 136–141, 143, 153, 155–160, 218, 237, 254–255, 291–292 top-down, 265–266, 268, 270, 272, 276, 277, 291 support, social, 92, 138, 156–158, 206–207

298

Index

system, 8–9, 13–14, 18, 21, 38–39, 47, 66–67, 91, 104, 129, 131, 150, 177, 195, 208, 212, 214, 292–293 task behavioral, 61–62 challenging, 173 developmental, 134, 206 discussion, 62, 71, 211–212, 218–219 interaction, 67, 71, 73, 210–214, 216, 232 teaching, 72 temperament, 28, 166–167, 172, 174, 194, 207, 267, 273, 280, 288, 290 therapy, see also intervention TIK, see Tuning in to Kids time course, developmental, see also trajectories, developmental; curves, developmental; curve latent growth

trajectories, developmental, see also time course, developmental; curves, developmental; curve latent growth transgression, 44, 189 transmission, intergenerational, 89, 109, 205, 208 trauma, 62, 86, 89, 91, 154, 176, 267, 269–271, 276 Tuning in to Kids, 137, 264, 272 violence, 15, 84, 104, 176, 270–271, 290 well-being, 4, 14, 18, 64, 84, 86, 94, 116, 189, 191, 202, 231, 249–250, 252–256, 273, 288–289, 292 Western culture, see culture, Western youth, see also adolescents

STUDIES IN EMOTION AND SOCIAL INTERACTION Titles Published in the Second Series (continued from page ii) Speaking from the Heart: Gender and the Social Meaning of Emotion, by Stephanie A. Shields The Hidden Genius of Emotion: Lifespan Transformations of Personality, by Carol Magai and Jeannette Haviland-Jones The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion, by Patrick Colm Hogan Feelings and Emotions: The Amsterdam Symposium, edited by Antony S. R. Manstead, Nico H. Frijda, and Agneta H. Fischer Collective Guilt: International Perspectives, edited by Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje The Social Life of Emotions, edited by Larissa Z. Tiedens and Colin Wayne Leach Emotions and Multilingualism, by Aneta Pavlenko Group Dynamics and Emotional Expression, edited by Ursula Hess and Pierre Philippot Stigmatization, Tolerance and Repair: An Integrative Psychological Analysis of Responses to Deviance, by Anton J. M. Dijker and Willem Koomen The Self and Its Emotions, by Kristján Kristjánsson Face-to-Face Communication over the Internet: Emotions in a Web of Culture, Language and Technology, edited by Arvid Kappas and Nicole C. Krämer What Literature Teaches Us about Emotion, by Patrick Colm Hogan Emotion: A Biosocial Synthesis, by Ross Buck Emotional Mimicry in Social Context, edited by Ursula Hess and Agneta Fischer The Interpersonal Dynamics of Emotion: Towards an Integrative Theory of Emotions as Social Information, by Gerban A. van Kleef From Self to Social Relationships: An Essentially Relational Perspective on Social Motivation, by Martijn van Zomeren The Aesthetics of Emotion: Up the Down Staircase of the Mind-Body, by Gerald C. Cupchik The Expression of Emotion: Philosophical, Psychological and Legal Perspectives, edited by Catharine Abell and Joel Smith

Emotional Lives: Dramas of Identity in an Age of Mass Media, by E. Doyle McCarthy Interpersonal Emotion Dynamics in Close Relationships, edited by Ashley K. Randall and Dominik Schoebi Emotion and Narrative: Perspectives in Autobiographical Storytelling, by Tilmann Habermas Foundations of Affective Social Learning: Conceptualizing the Social Transmission of Value, edited by Daniel Dukes and Fabrice Clément Heart to Heart: How Your Emotions Affect Other People, by Brian Parkinson Beyond Virtue: The Politics of Educating Emotions, by Liz Jackson Literature and Moral Feeling: A Cognitive Poetics of Ethics, Narrative, and Empathy, by Patrick Colm Hogan Demystifying Emotions: A Typology of Theories in Psychology and Philosophy, by Agnes Moors Emotion Communication by the Aging Face and Body: A Multidisciplinary View, by Ursula Hess, Reginald B. Adams, Jr. and Robert E. Kleck