Parents’ emotion control beliefs: Links with responses to children’s negative emotions, child well-being, and parent–child relationship quality.

This study examined how parents' beliefs about controlling emotions affect their responses to children's negative emotions and the consequences for child well-being and parent-child relationships. Parents who believed emotions should be controlled tended to respond to their children's emotions with less support and more disapproval. Over a four-month period, these parental beliefs predicted worse child well-being and lower relationship quality with their children. The findings held across different parents, children of various ages and genders, and different ethnic backgrounds.

Key points

• Parents' emotion control beliefs longitudinally predicted worse child well-being and lower parent-child relationship quality at 4-month follow-up
• The negative links were mediated by parents providing less supportive and more disapproving responses to children's emotions
• Findings were generalizable across parents' and children's gender and age
• Results were consistent across different ethnic groups

Limitations

The study is observational and cannot establish that emotion control beliefs directly cause worse outcomes; other unmeasured factors may influence both parental beliefs and child well-being. The report does not specify the duration of the longitudinal follow-up or details about the sample composition beyond gender, age, and ethnicity.