Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-8gtf8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-20T05:45:22.920Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Relationship of maternal negative moods to child emotion regulation during family interaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2011

Getachew A. Dagne  and
James Snyder
Getachew A. Dagne*
Affiliation:
University of South Florida
James Snyder
Affiliation:
Wichita State University
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Getachew A. Dagne, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, College of Public Health, University of South Florida, 13201 Bruce B. Downs, MDC 56, Tampa, FL 33612; E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The relationship of maternal hostile and depressive moods to children's downregulation of unprovoked anger and sadness/fear was assessed in a community sample of 267 5-year-old boys and girls. The speed of children's downregulation of unprovoked anger and sadness/fear was based on real-time observations during mother–child interaction. The association of downregulation with maternal mood was estimated using Bayesian event history analysis. As mothers reported higher depressive mood, both boys and girls were faster to downregulate anger displays as those displays accumulated during mother child interaction. The speed of boys' downregulation of anger and of sadness/fear was not associated with maternal hostile mood. As mothers reported more hostile mood, girls were faster to downregulate displays of sadness/fear, but the speed of this downregulation slowed as those displays accumulated during ongoing mother–child interaction. These associations of child downregulation and maternal mood were observed after controlling for child adjustment. The data suggest frequent exposure to different negative maternal moods affect children's expression and regulation of emotions in relatively specific ways, conditional on the type of maternal mood, the type of child emotion, and child gender.

Type
Regular Articles
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 211 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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

Achenbach, T. M. (1991). Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist/4–18. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, Department of Psychiatry.Google Scholar
Achenbach, T. M., & Edelbrock, C. (1983). Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist and revised Child Behavior Profile. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, Department of Psychiatry.Google Scholar
Birnbaum, D. W., & Croll, W. L. (1984). The etiology of children's stereotypes about sex differences in emotionality. Sex Roles, 10, 677–691.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boulet, J., & Boss, M. W. (1991). Reliability and validity of the Brief Symptom Inventory. Psychological Assessment, 3, 433–437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brody, L. R. (1999). Gender, emotion and the family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campos, B. E., Connor, J. K., Saltzman, H., Thompsen, A. H., & Wadsworth, M. E. (2001). Coping with stress during childhood and adolescence: Problems, progress, and potential in theory and research. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 87–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caspi, A. (2000). The child is the father of the man: Continuities from childhood to adulthood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 158–172.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cleveland, W. S. (1979). Robust locally weighted regression and smoothing scatterplots. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 74, 829–836.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, P. M., Martin, S. E., & Dennis, T. A. (2004). Emotion regulation as a scientific construct: Methodological challenges and directions for child development research. Child Development, 75, 317–333.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dagne, G. A., Brown, C. H., & Howe, G. W. (2003). Bayesian hierarchical modeling of heterogeneity in multiple contingency tables: An application to behavioral observation data. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 28, 339–352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, P. T., & Cummings, E. M. (2006). Interparental discord, family process, and developmental psychopathology. In Cicchetti, D. & Cohen, D. J. (Eds.), Developmental psychopathology: Vol. 3. Risk, disorder and adaptation (2nd ed., pp. 86–128). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.Google Scholar
Davis, B., Sheeber, L., & Hops, H. (2002). Coercive family processes and adolescent depression. In Reid, J. B., Patterson, G. R., & Snyder, J. (Eds.), Antisocial behavior in children and adolescents: A developmental analysis and model for intervention (pp. 173–192). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press.Google Scholar
Derogatis, L. R. (1993). Brief symptom inventory. Administration, scoring and procedures manual (4th ed.). Minneapolis, MN: National Computer Systems.Google Scholar
Derogatis, L. R., & Melisaratos, N. (1983). The brief symptom inventory: An introductory report. Psychological Medicine, 13, 595–605.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Diggle, P. J., Heagerty, P., Liang, K-Y., & Zeger, S. L. (2002). Analysis of longitudinal data. London: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., & Spinrad, T. L. (1998). Parental socialization of emotion. Psychological Inquiry, 9, 241–273.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., Spinrad, T. L., Fabes, R. A., Shepard, S. A., Reiser, M., et al. (2001). The relations of regulation and emotionality to children's externalizing and internalizing problem behavior. Child Development, 72, 1112–1134.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eisenberg, N., & Fabes, R. A. (1994). Mother's reactions to children's negative emotions: Relations to children's temperament and anger behavior. Merrill–Palmer Quarterly, 40, 138–156.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., Morris, A. S., & Spinrad, T. L. (2005). Emotion-related regulation: The construct and its measurement. In Teti, D. (Ed.), Handbook of research methods in developmental science (pp. 423–442). Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forbes, E. E., & Dahl, R. E. (2005). Neural systems of positive affect: Relevance to understanding child and adolescent depression? Development and Psychopathology, 17, 827–850.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frick, P. J., & Morris, A. S. (2004). Temperament and developmental pathways to conduct problems. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 33, 54–68.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Garside, R. B., & Klimes-Dougan, B. (2002). Socialization of discrete negative emotions: Gender differences and links with psychological distress. Sex Roles, 47, 115–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelman, A., Carlin, J., Stern, H., & Rubin, D. B. (1995). Bayesian data analysis. New York: Chapman & Hall.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelman, A., & Rubin, D. B. (1992). Inference from iterative simulation using multiple sequences. Statistical Science, 7, 457–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilks, W. R., Richardson, S., & Spiegelhalter, D. J. (1996). Markov chain Monte Carlo in practice. London: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Gottman, J. M., Katz, L. F., & Hooven, C. (1997). Meta-emotion. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Gottman, J. M., McCoy, K., Coan, J., & Collier, H. (1996). The Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF) for observing emotion communication in marital and family interaction. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Hayes, J. A. (1997). What does the Brief Symptom Inventory Measure in college and university counseling clients? Journal of Counseling Psychology, 44, 360–367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Izard, C. (1977). Human emotions. New York: Plenum Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Long, J. D., Harring, J. R., Brekke, J. S., Test, M. A., & Greenberg, J. (2007). Longitudinal construct validity of Brief Symptom Inventory subscales in schizophrenia. Psychological Assessment, 19, 298–308.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morris, A. S., Silk, J. S., Steinberg, L., Myers, S., & Robinson, L. R. (2007). The role of the family context in the development of emotion regulation. Social Development, 16, 361–388.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morris, A. S., Silk, J. S., Steinberg, L., Sessa, F. M., Avenevoli, S., & Essex, M. J. (2002). Temperamental vulnerability and negative parenting as interacting predictors of child adjustment. Journal of Marriage and Family, 64, 461–471.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saarni, C., Mumme, D., & Campos, J. J. (1997). Emotional development: Action, communication and understanding. In Damon, W. (Series Ed.) & Eisenberg, N. (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional and personality development (pp. 237–309). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Silk, J. S., Shaw, D. S., Skuban, E. M., Oland, A. A., & Kovacs, M. (2006). Emotion regulation strategies in offspring of childhood-onset depressed mothers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47, 69–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Silk, J. S., Steinberg, L., & Morris, A. S. (2003). Adolescents' emotion regulation in daily life: Links to depressive symptoms and problem behavior. Child Development, 74, 1869–1880.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Snyder, J., Schrepferman, L., McEachern, A., & DeLeeuw, J. (in press). The contribution of child anger and fear, and parental discipline to early antisocial behavior: An integrative model. In Portegal, M. (Ed.), Handbook of anger. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Snyder, J., Stoolmiller, M., Wilson, M., & Yamamoto, M. (2003). Child anger regulation, parental responses to children's anger displays, and early child antisocial behavior. Social Development, 12, 335–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spiegelhalter, D. J., Thomas, A., & Best, N. G. (2000). WinBUGS Version 1.4 user manual. Cambridge: Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit.Google Scholar
Stoolmiller, M., & Snyder, J. (2006). Modeling heterogeneity in social interaction processes using multi-level survival analysis. Psychological Methods, 26, 164–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, R. A. (1994). Emotion regulation: A theme in search of definition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(2–3, Serial No. 240).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thompson, R. A., & Meyer, S. (2007). Socialization of emotion regulation in the family. In Gross, J. (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (pp. 249–268). New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center. (2003). Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). Retrieved from http://www.iprc.unc.edu/measures/ages 5-11Google Scholar
Weibull, W. (1951). A statistical distribution function of wide applicability. Journal of Applied Mechanics: Transactions of ASME, 18, 293–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zahn-Waxler, C., Klimes-Dougan, B., & Slattery, M. J. (2000). Internalizing problems of childhood and adolescence: Prospects, pitfalls and progress in understanding the development of anxiety and depression. Development and Psychopathology, 12, 443–466.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zahn-Waxler, C., Race, E., & Dugal, S. (2005). Mood disorders and symptoms in girls. In Bell, D. J., Foster, S. L., & Mash, E. J. (Eds.), Handbook of behavioral and emotional problems in girls (pp. 25–78). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zahn-Waxler, C., Ridgeway, D., Denham, S., Usher, B., & Cole, P. M. (1993). Pictures of infants' emotions: A task for assessing mothers' and young children's verbal communication about affect. In Emde, R. N., Osofsky, J., & Butterfield, P. (Eds.), Parental perception of infant emotions. Clinical Infant Report Series of Zero to Three (pp. 217–236). Washington, DC: National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families.Google Scholar