What is it about?
This study examined whether parents' emotion-related parenting changes over a one year period. We found that parents who are supportive and accepting of children's emotions had very stable parenting. Parents who dismiss and minimize children's emotions, or disengage from children's emotions, were also stable in their approaches, and were unlikely to shift to a supportive/accepting approach. For parents who did change, stress/distress placed then at an increased risk for changing.
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Why is it important?
Our findings show that parents with less optimal approaches to emotions (i.e., dismissing/disengaged parenting) are unlikely to naturally shift to a supportive/accepting approach over time. Participating in parenting programs could help parents shift their parenting to a supportive/accepting approach. We found that for parents who did change their approach, stress/distress placed them at risk for changing. As such, parents should be provided support for how to manage challenging situations. Shifting to a less optimal approach may confuse children, and lead to less optimal child developmental outcomes.
Perspectives
Exploring whether parents' approaches to children's emotions change over time was really interesting to me, as not many studies have looked at this before. I hope that this study strengthens efforts to provide parents access to parenting support.
Gabriella King
Deakin University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Latent transition analysis of parent emotion socialization profiles., Developmental Psychology, June 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/dev0001983.
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