1. The Link Between Anger and Depression in Childhood:
Moderating Effects of Parent Emotion Socialization
Wesley Sanders1 Janice Zeman2, Rachel Miller3, Jennifer Poon4, & Laura Crespo5 1University of Vermont, 2College of William & Mary, 3Virginia Tech, 4George Mason University, 5Wayne State University
Introduction
Methods
Results
Previous research suggests that parental emotion socialization strategies influence the development of child emotion regulation (Barrett & Campos, 1987).
Parents’ use of punitive and dismissive responses to their child’s emotions is associated with maladaptive responses to emotion, which in turn is predictive of internalizing outcomes in childhood (Deater-Deckard, 2001).
Although previous studies have examined the link between parental emotion socialization and internalizing symptoms with regards to sadness, little research has examined the link between parental responses to child anger and internalizing outcomes.
The present study examines the link between child anger coping abilities, depressive symptoms, and the moderating role of parental unsupportive responses to their child’s anger.
Separate contributions of mothers’ and fathers’ responses to their child’s emotions are studied.
Participants
N = 84, 2-parent families
48 boys and 36 girls (M = 10.1 years)
84.1% Caucasian sample
Middle to Upper Class families (63% mothers, 76.6% fathers obtained a university or graduate degree)
Research Question 1
Do unsupportive parental responses to their child’s anger predict depressive symptoms?
Measures
Emotion Socialization
Emotions as a Child questionnaire (EAC; Magai, 1996)
Measure of parental emotion socialization strategy.
Five strategies of response: Neglect, Override, Magnify, Reward, and Punish.
Discussion
It appears that the impact of unsupportive parenting is most influential at high levels, particularly for children low in emotion coping ability.
At low levels of parental unsupportive emotional responses, no significant difference was found for children of high and low emotion coping abilities.
This study also highlights the association between anger and depression, as the present findings suggest both unsupportive responses to child anger and maladaptive coping with anger in childhood predict to depressive symptoms.
The patterns found in the moderation analyses suggest that both mothers and fathers significantly contribute to adaptive child emotion coping in similar ways.
Research Question 2
Does unsupportive parenting moderate the association between child emotion coping and depressive symptoms?
Internalizing Symptoms
Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI; Kovacs, 1992)
Assesses presence of depressed mood in children aged 7 to 17 using 27 questions.
Procedure
Parents were asked to complete their questionnaires in separate rooms.
The experimenter read the child’s questions aloud to the child and recorded the answers.
Note. UER = Unsupportive Emotion Responses