Maternal Attachment Style and Responses to Adolescents’ Negative Emotions: The Mediating Role of Maternal Emotion Regulation

Abstract

SYNOPSIS Objective Previous research has examined the developmental consequences, particularly in early childhood, of parents’ supportive and unsupportive responses to children’s negative emotions. Much less is known about factors that explain why parents respond in ways that may support or undermine their children’s emotions, and even less is known about how these parenting processes unfold with adolescents. We examined the associations between mothers’ attachment styles and their distress, harsh, and supportive responses to their adolescents’ negative emotions two years later and whether these links were mediated by maternal emotion regulation difficulties. Design Mothers in a longitudinal study (n = 230) reported on their attachment style, difficulties regulating their emotions, and their hypothetical responses to their adolescents’ negative emotions, respectively, at consecutive laboratory visits one year apart. Results Mothers who reported greater attachment-related avoidance and anxiety reported having greater difficulties with emotion regulation one year later. Emotion dysregulation, in turn, predicted more distressed, harsher, and less supportive maternal responses to adolescents’ negative emotions the following year. In addition, greater avoidance directly predicted harsher maternal responses two years later. Conclusions These findings extend previous research by identifying maternal attachment style as a predictor of responses to adolescent distress and by documenting the underlying role of emotion dysregulation in the link between adult attachment style and parenting.

Overwhelmed by Emotion: Pathways from Revictimization to Mothers’ Negative Emotional Responsivity

“…The CCNES consists of nine hypothetical scenarios in which an adolescent expresses negative emotion, and mothers and adolescents rated the likelihood that the mothers would respond to the adolescents in each scenario using six different response types. The distress response type was used to assess maternal negative emotional responsivity, in accordance with theory (Fabes, Poulin, Eisenberg, & Madden‐Derdich, ) and empirical findings (Jones, Brett, Ehrlich, Lejuez, & Cassidy, ). Responses are made on a 7‐point Likert‐type scale ranging from 1 ( very unlikely ) to 7 ( very likely ), and mean scores were calculated for the distress response type (e.g., “becomes obviously uncomfortable when she sees I'm feeling down”) across the nine vignettes for mothers and adolescents.…”

A Model‐Based Cluster Analysis of Maternal Emotion Regulation and Relations to Parenting Behavior

“…For example, self‐reports of poor maternal ER predict ineffective disciplinary behaviors (Lorber, ) as well as maternal rejection and lower maternal warmth (Sarıtaş, Grusec, & Gençöz, ). Maternal self‐reported emotion dysregulation has also been associated with more self‐reported engagement in unsupportive emotion parenting behaviors (Jones, Brett, Ehrlich, Lejuez, & Cassidy, ; Mazursky‐Horowitz et al., ) and lower levels of observed positive/collaborative parent–child interactions (Shaffer & Obradović, ). Furthermore, Morelen and colleagues reported that both observed and self‐reported maternal emotion dysregulation were associated with poorer child ER abilities via unsupportive emotion parenting practices (Morelen, Shaffer, & Suveg, ).…”

Examining Parents’ Romantic Attachment Styles and Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms as Predictors of Caregiving Experiences

“…In addition, we did not examine emotion regulation in this study. However, given the close connection between emotion regulation and several of the constructs in this study, as well as well‐documented links between attachment style insecurity and emotion dysregulation (Jones, Brett, Ehrlich, Lejuez, & Cassidy, ; Kobak & Sceery, ; Mikulincer & Florian, ), it would be informative for future researchers to measure this directly. Further, it will be important to include measures of child attachment and other outcomes in the future to better understand which parent characteristics (i.e., attachment style, negative emotion, and SBS content) are most important for parent–child attachment and children's developmental trajectories.…”

“…Adult attachment states of mind have been linked to the experience of negative emotion as a parent (e.g., Adam et al., ), but less work has examined how attachment style is related to negative emotion in parenting. There is some evidence that insecure attachment style is associated with feeling less close to one's children, less satisfaction as a parent, greater parenting stress, increased distress related to separation from children, and feelings of jealousy, resentment, and hostility toward children (for a review, see Jones et al., ). However, few studies have examined how attachment style affects one's experience of discrete negative emotions during mundane parenting challenges such as reunions with children.…”

“…Finally, little is known about mechanisms that underlie the relation between romantic attachment style and caregiving, although some work has suggested that difficulties related to emotion regulation may play a role (Jones et al., ). To provide ports of entry for future clinical intervention research and practice with parents of young children, it is critical to better understand potential mediating factors in the relation between attachment and caregiving.…”