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Poster #144 - Role of Household Chaos on the Association Between Supportive Parenting and Child Emotion Regulation

Sat, March 23, 8:00 to 9:15am, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Introduction: For young children, a significant amount of emotion regulation (ER) development occurs through the interactions and actions of others, such as parents and peers. In particular, how parents cope with their own child’s negative emotions relates to the quality of the child’s developing ER skills (Fabes et al., 2002). Parents who are warm and responsive are more aware of children’s emotions and assist in helping the child learn to regulate or express their emotions (Morris et al., 2007). Further, the environmental context that children experience daily significantly impacts overall emotional development and emotion regulation. When children live in a consistent and responsive environment where they are nurtured and accepted, they feel free to express emotions and feel emotionally secure. However, chaos in the home (characterized by lack of routines and chronic uncertainty) is linked to less effective parental discipline, higher behavior problems, and lower ability to understand social cues in children (Dumas et al., 2005). Household chaos likely interferes with the proximal processes occurring between and within the family and environment throughout child development (Evan et al., 2005), including processes such as ER and parenting.

Hypothesis: We hypothesize that household chaos will moderate the association between supportive parenting and child emotion regulation, such that the relation between parenting and emotion regulation is stronger in low compared to high chaos households.

Methods: Participants were 6-year-old children (N = 277) in a socioeconomically diverse sample. Parents completed questionnaires: Chaos, Order, and Hubbub Scale (CHAOS; Matheny et al., 1995); Coping with Child Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES; Fabes, Eisenberg, & Bernzweig, 1990); and Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC; Shields & Cicchetti, 1997). Scores from the CHAOS scale, the supportive parenting scale from the CCNES, and the emotion regulation scale from the ERC, were used in analysis.

Results: Supportive parenting was correlated with child emotion regulation (r = .168, p = .005). Household chaos was found to moderate the association between supportive parenting and child emotion regulation (B = -.136, p = .020). Analysis of simple slopes revealed that this was only true for low and mean levels of household chaos (Figure 1). In higher chaos households, there was no significant association between supportive parenting and child emotion regulation. This suggests that chaos may interfere with the child’s ability to learn appropriate emotion regulation skills that come from supportive parenting, or that supportive parenting behaviors are less influenced by the level of emotion regulation of the child. The influence of household chaos on the association between additional aspects of parenting and child self-regulation will be discussed.

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