Higher maternal reflective functioning is associated with toddlers' adaptive emotion regulation.

Parental reflective functioning (RF), the ability to consider the child's behavior as a function of mental states (cognitions, emotions), is theorized to promote emotion regulation in children via its positive impact on parenting sensitivity. Using a sample of mothers and toddlers (N = 151 dyads; 41% Latinx; 54% girls; M  = 21 months; SD = 2.5 months), we measured mothers' self-reported RF (high RF = low certainty/high interest-curiosity/low prementalizing), toddlers' distress during a standardized challenging behavioral task (toy removal), and three methods of children's coping with distress.

Exploring the complexity of mothers' real-time emotions while caregiving.

Existing research suggests that parenthood is both emotionally rewarding and demanding, yet little work has examined multiple facets of parents' emotions. The current study examines the complexity of parents' emotions by examining the intensity, variability, and emodiversity of mothers' positive and negative emotions across caregiving and noncaregiving contexts. Data were collected from 136 mothers of young children using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to measure their real-time experiences of positive and negative emotion during a 10-day period.

Quantitatively representing real-time emotion dynamics: Attachment-based differences in mothers' emotion experiences.

Given inconsistent findings emerging in the literature between motherhood and emotional well-being, it is important to employ cutting-edge methods to evaluate mothers' dynamic emotional experiences. As anticipated by theory, attachment anxiety and avoidance may uniquely predict fluctuations in mothers' positive emotion, which may be yoked in particular to 2 aspects of their experiences: their emotional closeness with their children and their perceptions of their children's positive emotion. In the current study, 144 mothers (41% Hispanic) of young children (mean [] = 20.

In a father's mind: paternal reflective functioning, sensitive parenting, and protection against socioeconomic risk.

This study utilized attachment theory as a framework for understanding how fathers' reflective functioning (RF) and social emotional (SE) and autonomy (AU) supportive behaviors relate to children's emotion regulation (ER) beyond effects of mothers' RF. Moreover, the study explored how fathers' RF may be a protective factor against risks associated with low income. Fathers (n = 77) and their toddlers participated.

Mothers' real-time emotion as a function of attachment and proximity to their children.

Building on established links between attachment insecurity and maladaptive emotion regulation, here we examine whether traitlike attachment style predicts individual differences in mothers' emotions in situations with and without their children. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), we measured the real-time positive and negative emotions of 145 mothers of young children across a 10-day period, with self-reported attachment and presence of children as predictors of individual differences in emotion. Attachment anxiety was associated with more negative emotion and attachment avoidance was associated with less positive emotion.

Parental Anxiety Prospectively Predicts Fearful Children's Physiological Recovery from Stress.

Parental anxiety confers risk for the development of an anxiety disorder in children, and this risk may be transmitted through children's stress reactivity. Further, some children may be more vulnerable to reactivity in the presence of parent factors such as anxiety. In this study, we examined whether parents' anxiety symptoms prospectively predict school-aged children's physiological reactivity following stress, assessed through their electrodermal activity (galvanic skin response) during recovery from a performance challenge task, and whether this varies as a function of children's temperamental fearfulness.