Parent emotion socialization and emotion regulation in substance abusing families

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Creator

Shadur, Julia Madeleine
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience

Abstract

The current study examined emotion socialization behaviors among mothers in addiction treatment and explored risk mechanisms that may explain emotion regulation deficits in young children of substance-abusing mothers. Variability within the sample was explored in order to evaluate who is at risk (i.e., those with greater severity of drug use) and when they are at risk (i.e., while using) for engaging in less effective emotion socialization behaviors. On average, mothers reported engaging in emotion coaching styles of socialization involving more consistent and supportive reactions and fewer non-supportive reactions to children's emotions, consistent with general population studies. However, the context of drug use negatively impacted how well mothers balanced these types of reactions: mothers engaged in significantly higher levels of non-supportive and inconsistent reactions during periods of problematic drug use compared to periods of sobriety. Findings support a mediated risk mechanism such that more severe impairment related to maternal substance use predicted higher levels of non-supportive reactions to children's negative emotions which, in turn, predicted poorer child emotion regulation. Implications for prevention and treatment suggest that non-supportive emotion socialization behaviors may be an appropriate target for supporting emotion regulation within contexts of maternal drug use.

Date of publication