Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-05T06:45:42.862Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 6 - Parental Emotion Regulation, Stress, and Burnout

from Part II - Influence of Parents’ Emotion Regulation on Parenting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2024

By
Moïra Mikolajczak ,
James J. Gross  and
Isabelle Roskam
Edited by
Isabelle Roskam ,
James J. Gross  and
Moïra Mikolajczak
Isabelle Roskam
Affiliation:
Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
James J. Gross
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Moïra Mikolajczak
Affiliation:
Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
Get access

Summary

It is becoming increasingly clear that emotion regulation (ER) plays a crucial role in parenting. In this chapter, we consider the role of parental ER in parental stress and parental burnout. In the first section, we define ER and its various facets in the parenting domain. In the second section, we focus on the protective role of parent’s self-focused (intrinsic) ER vis-à-vis parenting stress and burnout. Specifically, we show how parents’ efficient regulation of their own emotions mitigates parenting stress levels and reduces the risk for parental burnout. In the third section, we focus on the protective role of parent’s child-focused (extrinsic) ER vis-à-vis parenting stress and burnout. Specifically, we show how parents’ efficient regulation of their child(ren)’s emotions reduces their own parenting stress. Because perfect is often the enemy of good in the parenting domain, the fourth section presents recent evidence showing that too much ER may backfire and lead to increased parenting stress and burnout in the long run. Finally, we conclude with the most pressing research directions emerging from the evidence reviewed in this chapter.

Keywords

parentsemotion regulationextrinsicintrinsicself-focusedother-focusedself-servingchild-serving
Type
Chapter
Information
Emotion Regulation and Parenting , pp. 116 - 126
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Babore, A., Bramanti, S. M., Lombardi, L., Stuppia, L., Trumello, C., Antonucci, I., & Cavallo, A. (2019). The role of depression and emotion regulation on parenting stress in a sample of mothers with cancer. Supportive Care in Cancer, 27(4), 1271–1277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bariola, E., Hughes, E. K., & Gullone, E. (2012). Relationships between parent and child emotion regulation strategy use: A brief report. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21(3), 443–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bristow, J. (2014). The double bind of parenting culture: helicopter parents and cotton wool kids. In Lee, E., Bristow, J., Faircloth, C., & Macvarish, J. (Eds.), Parenting culture studies (pp. 200–215). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304612Google Scholar
Cortell, R. (2009). A pilot study of an emotion coaching and mindfulness program for parents of early adolescents [Unpublished master’s thesis]. Catholic University of America.Google Scholar
Costa, A. P., Steffgen, G., & Ferring, D. (2017). Contributors to well-being and stress in parents of children with autism spectrum disorder. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 37, 61–72.Google Scholar
Crespo, L. M., Trentacosta, C. J., Aikins, D., & Wargo-Aikins, J. (2017). Maternal emotion regulation and children’s behavior problems: The mediating role of child emotion regulation. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 26(10), 2797–2809.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deater-Deckard, K., Li, M., & Bell, M. A. (2016). Multifaceted emotion regulation, stress and affect in mothers of young children. Cognition and Emotion, 30(3), 444–457.Google Scholar
Doan, S. N., Venkatesh, S., Predroza, M., Tarullo, A., & Meyer, J. S. (2020). Maternal expressive suppression moderates the relations between maternal and child hair cortisol. Developmental Psychobiology, 62(8), 1150–1157.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N. (2020). Findings, issues, and new directions for research on emotion socialization. Developmental Psychology, 56(3), 664–670.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., & Spinrad, T. L. (1998). Parental socialization of emotion. Psychological Inquiry, 9(4), 241–273.Google Scholar
England-Mason, G., & Gonzalez, A. (2020). Intervening to shape children’s emotion regulation: A review of emotion socialization parenting programs for young children. Emotion, 20(1), 98–104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fabes, R., Eisenberg, N., & Bernzweig, J. (1990). The Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale: Procedures and scoring. Arizona State University. https://ccnes.org/Google Scholar
Fabes, R. A., Poulin, R. E., Eisenberg, N., & Madden-Derdich, D. A. (2002). The Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES). In Fabes, R. (Ed.), Emotions and the family (pp. 285–310). Routledge.Google Scholar
Garnefski, N., Kraaij, V., & Spinhoven, P. (2002). CERQ. Manual for the use of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire: A questionnaire measuring cognitive coping strategies. DATEC VOF.Google Scholar
Gottman, J. M., Katz, L. F., & Hooven, C. (1996). Parental meta-emotion philosophy and the emotional life of families: Theoretical models and preliminary data. Journal of Family Psychology, 10(3), 243–268.Google Scholar
Havighurst, S., & Kehoe, C. (2017). The role of parental emotion regulation in parent emotion socialization: Implications for intervention. In Deater-Deckard, K. & Panneton, R. (Eds.), Parental stress and early child development: Adaptive and maladaptive outcomes (pp. 285–307). Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Havighurst, S. S., Kehoe, C. E., Harley, A. E., Radovini, A., & Thomas, R. (2022). A randomized controlled trial of an emotion socialization parenting program and its impact on parenting, children’s behavior and parent and child stress cortisol: Tuning in to Toddlers. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 149, 104016.Google Scholar
Hughes, E. K., & Gullone, E. (2010). Parent emotion socialisation practices and their associations with personality and emotion regulation. Personality and Individual Differences, 49(7), 694–699.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchison, L., Feder, M., Abar, B., & Winsler, A. (2016). Relations between parenting stress, parenting style, and child executive functioning for children with ADHD or autism. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25(12), 3644–3656.Google Scholar
Iswinarti, I., Jadmiko, G., & Hasanati, N. (2020). Cognitive emotion regulation: Its relationship to parenting stress. Journal of Social Studies Education Research, 11(2), 204–222.Google Scholar
Johnson, A. M., Hawes, D. J., Eisenberg, N., Kohlhoff, J., & Dudeney, J. (2017). Emotion socialization and child conduct problems: A comprehensive review and meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 54, 65–80.Google Scholar
Lin, G.-X., Hansotte, L., Szczygieł, D., Meeussen, L., Roskam, I., & Mikolajczak, M. (2021). Parenting with a smile: Display rules, regulatory effort, and parental burnout. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 38(9), 2701–2721. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075211019124CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mikolajczak, M., & Roskam, I. (in press). Emotion regulation in parenting. In Gross, J. J. & Ford, B. (Eds.), Handbook of emotion regulation. Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Milyavsky, M., Webber, D., Fernandez, J. R., Kruglanski, A. W., Goldenberg, A., Suri, G., & Gross, J. J. (2019). To reappraise or not to reappraise? Emotion regulation choice and cognitive energetics. Emotion, 19(6), 964–981.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Preuss, H., Capito, K., van Eickels, R. L., Zemp, M., & Kolar, D. R. (2021). Cognitive reappraisal and self-compassion as emotion regulation strategies for parents during COVID-19: An online randomized controlled trial. Internet Interventions, 24, 100388.Google Scholar
Price, N. N., & Kiel, E. J. (2022). Longitudinal links among mother and child emotion regulation, maternal emotion socialization, and child anxiety. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, 50(2), 241–254.Google Scholar
Rogers, M. L., Halberstadt, A. G., Castro, V. L., MacCormack, J. K., & Garrett-Peters, P. (2016). Maternal emotion socialization differentially predicts third-grade children’s emotion regulation and lability. Emotion, 16(2), 280–291.Google Scholar
Shaffer, A., Suveg, C., Thomassin, K., & Bradbury, L. L. (2012). Emotion socialization in the context of family risks: Links to child emotion regulation. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21(6), 917–924.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaw, Z. A., & Starr, L. R. (2019). Intergenerational transmission of emotion dysregulation: The role of authoritarian parenting style and family chronic stress. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 28(12), 3508–3518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheppes, G., Catran, E., & Meiran, N. (2009). Reappraisal (but not distraction) is going to make you sweat: Physiological evidence for self-control effort. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 71(2), 91–96.Google Scholar
Sheppes, G., & Meiran, N. (2008). Divergent cognitive costs for online forms of reappraisal and distraction. Emotion, 8(6), 870–874.Google Scholar
Spinrad, T., Eisenberg, N., Kupfer, A., Gaertner, B., & Michalik, N. (2004, May). The coping with toddlers’ negative emotions scale [Poster presentation]. Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, Chicago, IL.Google Scholar
Stone, L. L., Mares, S. H., Otten, R., Engels, R. C., & Janssens, J. M. (2016). The co-development of parenting stress and childhood internalizing and externalizing problems. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 38(1), 76–86.Google Scholar
Suchy, Y. (2011). Clinical neuropsychology of emotion. Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Tamir, M. (2021). Effortful emotion regulation as a unique form of cybernetic control. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(1), 94–117.Google Scholar
Tan, L., & Smith, C. L. (2019). Intergenerational transmission of maternal emotion regulation to child emotion regulation: Moderated mediation of maternal positive and negative emotions. Emotion, 19(7), 1284–1291.Google Scholar
Vertsberger, D., Roskam, I., Talmon, A., Van Bakel, H., Hall, R., Mikolajczak, M., & Gross, J. J. (2022). Emotion regulation during the COVID-19 pandemic: Risk and resilience factors for parental burnout (IIPB). Cognition and Emotion, 36(1), 100–105.Google Scholar
Wang, M., Liang, Y., Zhou, N., & Zou, H. (2019). Chinese fathers’ emotion socialization profiles and adolescents’ emotion regulation. Personality and Individual Differences, 137, 33–38.Google Scholar
Williford, A. P., Calkins, S. D., & Keane, S. P. (2007). Predicting change in parenting stress across early childhood: Child and maternal factors. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 35(2), 251–263.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×