The Impact of Parenting on Emotion Regulation During Childhood and Adolescence

TLDR

Emotion regulation is essential for children’s social and emotional health, and parents influence it through observation, parenting practices, and family emotional climate, as outlined in Morris et al.’s tripartite model. The authors aim to review evidence supporting this model and related parenting research, and to outline implications for prevention and intervention. They summarize studies over the past decade, discuss recent work on parenting’s effects on neural circuitry of emotion regulation, and propose future research directions.

Abstract

Abstract Regulating emotions well is critical for promoting social and emotional health among children and adolescents. Parents play a prominent role in how children develop emotion regulation. In 2007, Morris et al. proposed a tripartite model suggesting that parents influence children's emotion regulation through three mechanisms: children's observation of parents' emotion regulation, emotion‐related parenting practices, and the emotional climate of the family. Over the past decade, we have conducted many studies that support this model, which we summarize here along with other research related to parenting and emotion regulation. We also discuss recent research on the effects of parenting on the neural circuitry involved in emotion regulation and highlight potential directions for research. Finally, we suggest how this research can aid prevention and intervention efforts to help families.