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Poster #156 - When Mothers Feel Rejected by Their Young Children: Maternal Emotion Regulation and Emotion-Coaching

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

Integrative Statement

Analyses of conversations between mothers and their young children to assess emotion socialization often focus on negative emotional events that center around the child (Bohanek et al., 2008; Fivush et al., 2003). Here we examine mother-child conversations that focus on mothers’ experience of negative emotions, times when they have felt rejected by their children. This topic allows us to observe emotion-coaching (Hooven et al., 1995) – articulating, explaining, and evaluating emotions of self and child – in a complex situation where, in order to sensitively discuss emotion, mothers must process strong emotions in both members of the dyad. We expect that competence in discussing complex emotions (emotion-coaching) will bear systematic relations with parenting that aims to control child negative emotion (Borelli et al., 2015), and with mothers’ own emotion regulation (ER) ability, both intrapersonal (distress tolerance; Daughters et al., 2014) and interpersonal (reliance on others to gain perspective; Hofmann et al., 2016).

Our 56 dyads (Mmotherage=33.3 years, SD=4.69; Mchildage=42.38 months, SD=5.04; 49% female) were ethnically (38% Hispanic; 46% White) and socioeconomically (47% ≤ $60,000 annual income) diverse. During a laboratory visit, mothers first audiotaped their recollection of a time when they felt rejected by their child, and were then asked to “talk with their child about that time and how they both felt about it.” In our ongoing study, mothers are completing questionnaires to measure controlling parenting [Conditional Regard to Control Child Anger Expression (CR-anger; n=56)]; intrapersonal ER [Distress Tolerance Scale-Appraisal (DTS-A; n=48)]; and interpersonal ER [Interpersonal Emotion Regulation-Perspective Taking (IERQ-PT; n=35)].

Mother-child conversations were analyzed. Our coding scheme assessed the quality of emotion-coaching from verbatim transcripts of the rejection conversations on a 1 to 7 scale. Lower scores were given for speaking about their own emotion impersonally or in a blaming way (“That upset me”; “You made me mad”); not inquiring about or assigning emotions to their children; failing to link emotions to causes; and focusing on controlling bad behavior. Higher scores were given for speaking about emotion in a personal, specific way (“I was very sad”); inquiring about child emotion; connecting emotions to causes; and resolving episodes in emotional terms (“That was a tough day; What helped you feel better?”). Coders were reliable, ICC = .85.

Results showed, first, that the emotion-coaching measure has concurrent validity; better emotion-coaching was associated with lower CR-anger, r=-.30, p=.03, and lower IERQ-PT, r=-.53, p=.001, and with higher DTS-A, r=.34, p=.02. Second, there was a nearly significant indirect effect of mother endorsement of CR-anger on mother emotion-coaching, via intrapersonal distress tolerance (n=48; Figure 1), and a significant indirect effect of mother use of CR-anger on mother emotion-coaching, via interpersonal emotion regulation (n=35; Figure 2).

We conclude: 1) that our measure captures meaningful differences in mothers’ emotion-coaching ability in a uniquely challenging dyadic context, and 2) that mothers’ distress tolerance and reliance on others for assistance with emotion regulation help explain the negative association between parenting aimed at controlling child anger and the quality of mothers’ conversations about complex emotions.

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