Poster #148 - Parental Problem Drinking and Parent Emotion Socialization: Implications for Child Emotion Regulation

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Parental problem drinking (PPD) is associated with numerous child adjustment problems, including internalizing and externalizing symptoms (Rossow, Keating, Felix, & McCambridge, 2016). Many of the adjustment problems may reflect an underlying deficit in emotion regulation (Berking & Wupperman, 2012). Although numerous studies have linked PPD with harsh and inconsistent parenting (e.g., Eiden, Edwards, & Leonard, 2007), there are no known studies of how parents with alcohol problems socialize their children’s emotions and promote or undermine the development of emotion regulation. The reactions that parents have to their children’s expressions of negative emotions play an important role in such emotion socialization. The purpose of the current study is to therefore examine associations between PPD and parent reactions to child negative emotions.
An online survey was distributed through Amazon Mechanical Turk to parents of children ages 5 – 18 residing in the United States. Parents completed the Parental Alcohol Experiences Scale (Windle, 1995), the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES; Fabes, Eisenberg, & Bernzweig, 1990), and the Emotion Regulation Checklist (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997). The CCNES includes subscale measures for punitive reactions, distress reactions, minimization reactions, encouragement of expression, emotion focused reactions, and problem focused reactions. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling, and missing data were handled with FIML. An initial model examined associations between PPD and each of these subscales, controlling for child age, child sex, parent sex, and family financial status. A multigroup model explored potential parent sex differences in these associations. A final model used latent variables for positive and negative emotion socialization as mediators of associations between PPD and child emotion regulation.
As shown in Figure 1, greater PPD was associated with greater parent distress reactions, punitive reactions, and minimization reactions, and lower parent emotion focused reactions and problem focused reactions. The multigroup model indicated that only one association differed between mothers and fathers: Mother problem drinking was more strongly related to lower emotion focused reactions than father problem drinking was. Figure 2 shows the results of the model examining emotion socialization as a mediator of associations between PPD and child emotion regulation. PPD was related to greater negative emotion socialization and lower positive emotion socialization. In turn, positive emotion socialization was related to better child emotion regulation, and negative emotion socialization was related to worse child emotion regulation. There was also a direct association between PPD and child emotion regulation. Sobel (1982) tests indicated that both indirect effects were significant, ZSOBEL = 3.75, p < .001 for positive emotion socialization as a mediator and ZSOBEL = 6.41 p < .001 for negative emotion socialization as a mediator.
Results indicate that problem drinking may compromise parents’ abilities to promote their children’s emotion regulation, placing them at risk for the development of mental health problems over the lifespan. Mother and father problem drinking had similar associations with parent reactions to child negative emotions. However, data are based on a cross-sectional survey and causality of associations cannot be inferred. Future research including observations of parent-child interactions are also important.

Authors

• Peggy Keller, University of Kentucky
  Presenting Author

• Belle Faith Scott, Wofford College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Haley Michlitsch, University of Kentucky
  Non-Presenting Author