Perceived Child Difficultness, Emotion Dysregulation, and Emotion-Related Parenting among Chinese Parents

This study investigated the integrative effects of parents’ perceptions of child difficultness and parental emotion dysregulation on emotion-related parenting among a group of Chinese parents of school-age children. One hundred and fifty parent–child dyads (121 biological mothers and 29 biological fathers as primary caregivers; M_age = 39.22 years) from urban Beijing, China participated in the study. Parents reported on their own emotion dysregulation and their children’s difficultness, as well as their emotion socialization practices. Children (M_age = 8.54 years; ranged from 6 to 12 years) reported on their parents’ use of psychological control strategies. Main and interactive effects were tested using path analysis. Results indicated that parents’ perceived child difficultness was negatively associated with supportive reactions to children’s expression of negative emotions, and parental emotion dysregulation was positively associated with unsupportive reactions. When parents perceived their children to be difficult and also reported emotion regulation difficulties of their own, they showed the highest levels of psychological control (child reports). These findings suggest differential effects of parent cognition and emotion on supportive and unsupportive reactions to children’s negative emotions. Both cognition and emotion play important roles in relation to parents’ use of psychological control.