Mother- and Father-Child Emotion Dialogues Interact to Predict Internalizing Outcomes

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Background: Research suggests that a parent’s ability to appropriately support their child’s exploration of emotions in the context of a focused, one-on-one dialogue helps build emotional competence (Fivush et al., 2003), which in turn is associated with better child socioemotional outcomes (e.g., lower internalizing problems; de Schipper et al., 2018). To date, however, the overwhelming majority of this research has focused on mother-child dyads (e.g., Delft et al., 2018; Overbeek et al., 2019; Fivush et al., 2003), leaving us with scant information about the contributions of fathers in this developmental task. Moreover, there is a growing need to investigate the extent to which mother and father-child relationships interact to predict child outcomes, consistent with an integrative framework that acknowledges the interdependency of family subsystems (Dagan & Sagi-Schwartz, 2018). Accordingly, we aimed to examine whether the quality of mother and father-child emotion dialogues interact to predict internalizing outcomes.
Method: Sixty-five community-recruited children (56% girls; 8-10 years) participated in the Autobiographical Emotional Events Dialogues (AEED; Koren-Karie et al., 2003) with their mothers and fathers in separate laboratory sessions (counterbalanced order). Dialogues involved the recounting of a happy, scary, angry, and sad event. Continuous AEED dyadic scales indexing the overall quality of dialogues (“coherence”; ICC = .85) and the dyad’s ability to generate four stories that adequately matched the queried emotions (“adequacy”; ICC = .73) were used. Mothers and fathers also rated their child’s internalizing symptoms (Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire; Goodman, 1997). Internalizing scores were log-transformed to correct a positive skew.
Results: We ran four bootstrapped interaction models (5,000 resamples). The model with mother-child coherence entered as predictor, and father-child coherence entered as moderator, significantly predicted internalizing symptoms (see Figure 1), interaction effect= -.03, SEboot= .01, 95%CIboot[-.06, -.01], p= .03. Specifically, at low levels of father-child coherence (16th percentile), mother-child coherence did not predict internalizing outcomes, effect= .05, SE= .04, 95%CI[-.03, .12], whereas at high levels of father-child coherence (84th percentile), greater mother-child coherence predicted lower mother-rated internalizing symptoms, effect= -.08, SE= .03, 95%CI[-.15, -.01]. The parallel model with mother-child adequacy as predictor (father-child adequacy as moderator) was marginally significant (see Figure 2), interaction effect= -.03, SEboot= .017, 95%CIboot[-.08, .01], p= .09. At low levels of father-child adequacy (16th percentile), mother-child adequacy did not predict internalizing outcomes, effect= .00, SE= .03, 95%CI[-.06, .06], whereas a marginal negative association between mother-child adequacy and internalizing symptoms emerged at high levels of father-child adequacy, effect= -.06, SE= .038, 95%CI[-.13, .018]. In contrast, the model with father-child coherence as the predictor, and mother-child coherence as moderator, was not significant in predicting internalizing symptoms, interaction effect = -.004, SEboot= .02, 95%CIboot [-.04, .03]. The parallel model with father-child adequacy (mother-child adequacy as moderator) was also not significant, interaction effect = -.02, SEboot= .02, 95%CIboot[-.05, .03].
Conclusion: Mothers’ ability to organize a coherent emotion dialogue with their child may be associated with fewer internalizing symptoms, but only when the child benefits from this same support from fathers. Result lend support to an integrative view of mother- and father-child relationships.

Authors

• Camille Guérin-Marion, University of Ottawa
  Presenting Author

• Sage Sezlik, University of Ottawa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jean-Francois Bureau, University of Ottawa
  Non-Presenting Author