Poster #61 - Maternal Drug Use and Child Emotion Regulation and Psychopathology: The Mediating Role of Parent Emotion Socialization

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Children of substance-dependent parents are a particularly vulnerable, high-risk group who are at increased risk for difficulties with emotion regulation and psychopathology (Solis, Shadur, Burns, & Hussong, 2012). The current study examined parent emotion socialization as a risk mechanism underlying child emotion regulation deficits and child psychopathology outcomes among young children of substance-dependent mothers. We focused on supportive, non-supportive, and degree of consistency in parental reactions to children’s negative emotions during periods of maternal drug use. We hypothesized that more severe maternal substance use would be associated with less supportive and less consistent emotion socialization behaviors, above and beyond general parenting style and additional covariates that are known to impact parenting behaviors. Finally, we hypothesized that maternal emotion socialization would mediate relations between maternal substance use and child emotion regulation and psychopathology, controlling for the co-mediating effect of general parenting style. We employed a multisite cross-sectional design and conducted parent-reported interviews with N=74 mothers in substance abuse treatment and who had a child between 3-8 years of age. Primary measures included portions of the Addiction Severity Index (McLellan et al., 1992) and the substance use module of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (First & Gibbon, 2004), the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (Fabes et al., 2002), the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire – Preschool Revision (Clerkin et al., 2007), the Falling Reactivity & Soothability subscale from the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire (Rothbart et al., 2001), and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997). We first tested parent emotion socialization as a mediator of the relation between maternal substance use and child emotion regulation. Findings supported a mediated risk mechanism such that more severe impairment related to maternal substance use predicted higher levels of non-supportive reactions to children’s negative emotions which, in turn, predicted poorer child emotion regulation. General parenting style did not mediate this relationship. Next, we tested parent emotion socialization as a mediator of the relationship between maternal substance use and child psychopathology. Parent emotion socialization did not mediate the relationship between maternal substance use and child psychopathology. However, we found a marginally significant mediated effect through general parenting style; specifically, greater impairment related to maternal drug use predicted more negative parenting style behaviors which, in turn, predicted greater child psychopathology. Implications for prevention and treatment within contexts of maternal substance use suggest that non-supportive emotion socialization behaviors may serve as a high-impact target for supporting children’s emotion regulation, and general parenting style behaviors may serve as a target for minimizing risk of child psychopathology. Future work should explore the transactional nature of the effects found in the current study. Processes involving maternal drug use, emotion socialization, emotion regulation, and child psychopathology are likely bidirectional in nature within child-parent dyads. Finally, early predictors of compromised emotion regulation and psychopathology in young children of substance-dependent parents are likely to have important implications for developmental outcomes related to addiction, and point to both non-supportive emotion socialization behaviors and negative parenting style behaviors within the context of maternal substance use as early risk markers.

Authors

• Julia Madeleine Shadur, George Mason University
  Presenting Author

• Andrea M Hussong, UNC-CH
  Non-Presenting Author