Year: 2019
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Learning to regulate and manage emotions efficiently are important parts of normal development for children (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998). Children learn a considerable amount about emotions from their parents, and parental emotion socialization has been shown to play a role in predicting and preventing anxiety symptoms in children (Bögels & Brechman-Toussaint, 2006; Eisenberg et al., 1998; Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers, & Robinson, 2007; Suveg, Morelen, Brewer, & Thomassin, 2010). However, limited research has been conducted on the relationship between parental emotion socialization and child anxiety in Norway. The aim of the present study was to explore the role of parental emotion socialization in child anxiety in a Norwegian sample. This study explored whether parent anxiety predicted preschool children’s anxiety, and whether parent’s emotion dysregulation was related to the way parents responded to their children’s emotions (dismissive/coaching). Parenting (dismissive/coaching) was examined to see whether it mediated the relation between parent emotion dysregulation and child anxiety, or parent anxiety and child anxiety in two separate models. Lastly, the study explored whether parents’ emotion socialization (parent emotion dysregulation, responses to children’s emotions) predicted preschool children’s anxiety symptoms beyond the contributions of child temperamental shyness. The data used in this master’s thesis was collected as part of a larger project at the University of Oslo known as Norwegian Tuning in to Kids (N-TIK) Effectiveness trial. A sample of 258 primary caregivers participated in the study. Each parent had a child attending their second to last year of kindergarten (4-5 years of age). Parents completed an online questionnaire. The research questions were explored using correlation and regression analyses. The results indicated that anxious parents had children with higher level of anxiety than less anxious parents. Emotionally dysregulated parents had a higher level of emotion dismissive parenting and a lower level of emotion coaching parenting with their children. Parent emotion dysregulation and child anxiety symptoms were directly linked, but also partly mediated by emotion dismissing parenting style. This parenting style also partly mediated the relationship between parent anxiety symptoms and child anxiety symptoms. Temperament had a higher unique contribution to child anxiety than emotion socialization, however, parent emotion socialization also had an added role in child anxiety when controlling for child temperamental shyness. These findings suggest that parenting style and parent emotion regulation abilities may affect children’s anxiety symptoms, and efforts to provide intervention targeting these aspects of parenting and parents’ abilities to regulate emotions may reduce the risk of children developing anxiety problems.
Author: Mina Caroline Engebretsen
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3000526338