Post-Traumatic Stress, Mother’s Emotion Regulation, and Parenting in Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

Post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are high among female survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV), and children of parents experiencing PTSS are at heightened risk for a wide range of emotional and behavioral problems. Parenting has significant influence on child adjustment, and although links have been found between parental psychopathology and maladaptive parenting, little is known about the factors that may explain this relation. The current study examines mother's emotion regulation (ER) as a factor influencing the relation between mother PTSS and parenting around children's emotions in a study sample of sixty-four female survivors of IPV and their 6- to 12-year-old children. Mothers reported on their own PTSS and their parenting. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was used as a psychophysiological index of mother's ER. Experiential components of mother's ER was also measured by observer coding of the Meta-Emotion Interview, a structured assessment that asks parents about their attitudes toward and experiences with emotions, including their regulation of emotions. Mother's RSA reactivity moderated the relation between PTSS and negative parenting. There was also a significant indirect relation between mothers' PTSS symptom severity and supportive parenting reactions through mothers' self-report of ER. Results suggest that mother's ER abilities represent factors that significantly affect associations between maternal PTSS and parent's emotion socialization practices. Implications for assessment and intervention with families exposed to the stress of IPV are discussed.

Posttraumatic Stress and Parenting Behaviors: The Mediating Role of Emotion Regulation

“…As predicted, greater emotion dysregulation mediated associations between PTSD status and greater lax parenting. Results are consistent with prior work linking PTSD to greater emotion dysregulation (e.g., Orsillo et al 2004;McDonagh-Coyle et al 2001;Veazey et al 2004), and complements a recent study of mothers of older children, which found that emotion dysregulation mediated the association between PTSD and supportive parenting reactions (Gurtovenko and Katz 2017). However, multiple prior studies of community samples (without regard to trauma history) have not found support for the link between parental negative emotion and permissive parenting behaviors, concluding that maternal emotion regulation may be less relevant for lax discipline (Leung and Slep 2006;Lorber and Slep 2005;Lorber 2012).…”

“The Propellers of My Life” The Impact of Domestic Violence Transitional Housing on Parents and Children

“…Children exposed to DV are not only impacted by the violence that they witness, but can also be negatively impacted when violence interferes with children’s ability to access the support and stability they need in order to heal from any trauma they experience. Survivors living in abusive relationships are often hindered in their ability to effectively parent their children (Gurtovenko & Katz, 2020 ). Abusers may undermine survivors’ parental authority as part of the relationship dynamics (Bancroft et al, 2012 ).…”

“…Previous research has documented the deleterious impact of DV on children’s health and survivor parenting (Felitti, et al, 1998 ; Gurtovenko & Katz, 2020 ) as well as the strong role of housing as protective for positive child welfare outcomes (Fowler et al, 2017 ). However, the short-and long-term impact on the lives of survivors and their children of housing provided by DV programs- which serves over 10,000 children any given day (National Network to End Domestic Violence, 2021 )- is understudied.…”

Maternal Intimate Partner Violence Exposure and Autonomic Reactivity: Associations With Positive Parenting

“…Studies suggest that parental emotion regulation (ER) abilities, particularly in the context of parent-child interactions, may prevent the negative sequelae of IPV by helping parents regulate their emotions in challenging situations or when faced with adversity in the environment (Crandall et al, 2015;Gurtovenko & Katz, 2020). However, Crandall et al (2015) raise competing hypotheses about whether parental ER plays a buffering role against family and environmental stressors like IPV, whether environmental stressors impede ER and lead to poor parenting, or whether environmental stressors and ER are independent predictors of parenting.…”