Emotional Maltreatment, Responses to Children's Negative Emotions, and the Mediational Role of Emotion Regulation in the Specific Context of Parenting

Individuals who have experienced emotional maltreatment are at higher risk for mood dysregulation, psychological dysfunction, and risky behaviors. Childhood emotional maltreatment and emotion regulation difficulties are related to interpersonal dysfunction and subsequent likelihood of unsupportive parenting during emotional situations with children. The intergenerational transmission of harsh and emotionally unsupportive parenting behaviors warrants further investigation to identify potential ways to prevent this transmission. The goal of this study was to investigate how parents’ retrospective reports of childhood emotional maltreatment predict emotion-focused parenting behaviors and to identify emotion regulation in the context of parenting as a mediator of these relations. Results indicate that parent-specific emotion regulation mediated the relation between retrospective report of emotional maltreatment and parent responses to children’s negative emotions. Results also suggest that rumination regulation may serve a self-reflective function in the context of parenting.