Do maternal power assertive discipline and warmth interact to influence toddlers' emotional reactivity and noncompliance?

Abstract

Emotional and behavioural self‐regulation emerges during infancy and toddlerhood and is heavily influenced by parenting. Parents facilitate toddlers' behavioural regulation (e.g., compliance) by using appropriate control with warmth and managing children's emotional reactivity during situational demands. In contrast, power assertive discipline may strain children's regulatory skills, for example by evoking toddlers' negative affect. However, we have more to learn about how discipline relates to toddlers' self‐regulation in the moment and whether concurrent displays of parental warmth may moderate these relations. Mother–toddler dyads (N = 74, Mage = 13.30 months) from low‐to‐middle income Turkish families participated in a 3‐min laboratory task, in which toddlers needed to delay playing with an attractive toy. Maternal discipline, warmth, toddler's emotional reactivity, and noncompliance were coded from observations. Results showed that higher power assertive discipline was associated with more frequent emotional reactivity in toddlers whose mothers' showed warmth during the <84% of the task duration. Maternal warmth was negatively associated with child noncompliance, but warmth did not interact with power assertive discipline in relation to noncompliance. Results suggest that observed power assertive discipline is meaningfully related to toddlers' emotional reactivity and higher levels of expressed maternal warmth attenuates these relations.