Emotion Regulation in Parent–Child Relationships: A Decade (2013–2023) Review
摘要
As emotion is a constant in life, successful emotion regulation is important to manage mental health, and create and maintain healthy relationships. An inability to regulate emotion has been linked to many undesirable outcomes, including psychopathology, substance abuse, and relational struggles. A facet of emotional regulation that has been a focus of research is parent–child emotion regulation. This is largely because parents are believed to have a vital role in their children’s overall development, and emotion regulation is a key component. The purpose of this study was to conduct a narrative decade review of emotion regulation in parent–child relationships. A screening of peer reviewed articles resulted in 32 research articles that met the inclusion criteria. The results identified the mechanisms, predictors and outcomes of parent–child emotion regulation and affirmed its bidirectionality. Accordingly, clinicians should ensure that they are using interventions that account for both parental and child emotion regulation during treatment. Further, less than a third of the studies included longitudinal data. Future research should prioritize creating longitudinal studies to further enhance our understanding of the bidirectionality of parent–child emotion regulation. Finally, as fathers are under-represented in the current literature, future research should work to create more representative samples among parents.