Investigating the links between maternal parenting stress and pre-schooler's emotion regulation during parent-child interactions

• Main Author: Tan, Clara Zi Xin
• Other Authors: Gianluca Esposito
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Social sciences::Psychology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/148332
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The consequences of parenting stress on the development of young children can be devastating. Although much research has been conducted on parenting stress and its association with internalising problems in children, less is known about possible third variables which may underlie this relationship. The current study adds to this literature by investigating whether child emotion regulation differs based on the emotional context and how parenting stress may be linked to child emotion regulation. Sixty-three mother-child dyads participated in the study by engaging in three parent-child interactions – a free-play episode (to mimic typical parent-child interactions), a clean-up episode, aimed at eliciting frustration, and a novel mask episode, aimed at eliciting fear or apprehension. These interactions were video-taped, and emotion regulation strategies were coded retrospectively according to an adapted coding scheme. Contrary to our predictions, only significant differences were found in comfort-seeking scores between the free-play and clean-up episodes, and between the clean-up and the novel mask conditions. Higher parental distress scores also associated with less frequent use of symbolic self-soothing, but more frequent comfort-seeking in pre-schoolers. Although not part of our original research questions, our results showed that the mother may have a greater influence, compared to other caregivers, in pre-schoolers’ emotion regulation development. Overall, despite several insignificant findings, the results of the current study are still promising in indicating support for the association between maternal parenting stress and pre-schooler’s emotion regulation. They suggest that maternal parenting stress can undermine the healthy development of emotion regulation in pre-schoolers.