Department of Human Development and Family Studies.
Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology.
J Fam Psychol. 2021 Aug;35(5):639-648. doi: 10.1037/fam0000824. Epub 2021 Mar 11.
Research on predictors of emotion-related parenting has predominantly focused on parents' social cognitions including parenting goals and beliefs about emotions. Less is known about parents' regulation of their own arousal when facing children's negative emotions, and how it relates to parents' ability to engage in sensitive and supportive behaviors. Taking a biopsychosocial approach, the current study focused on parents' psychophysiological responses when viewing their children experience frustration among 150 urban Chinese families (children were 6-12 years, = 8.54, = 1.67), and examined how these responses were associated with emotion-related parenting. The primary caregiver of each family (121 mothers and 29 fathers) participated in the study with the child. Measures of sympathetic [skin conductance level (SCL)] and parasympathetic [respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA)] activity were collected from parents during resting baseline and a child frustration task. Parents self-reported their tendency to react supportively and unsupportively to children's displays of negative emotions. Their general availability to children's emotional needs was observed during a separate interactive task. Results suggested that parents who showed greater sympathetic arousal during the child frustration task reported less supportive and more unsupportive reactions to children's negative emotions in daily life, and also tended to be emotionally unavailable during the interactive task. No main effect was found for RSA reactivity, and there was no significant interaction between SCL and RSA reactivity in predicting parenting. Findings highlight the importance of considering parents' physiological regulatory functioning as a proximal factor shaping parenting behaviors directed toward children's emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
情绪相关养育预测因素的研究主要集中在父母的社会认知上，包括养育目标和对情绪的信念。对于父母在面对孩子的负面情绪时如何调节自己的情绪唤起，以及这种调节与父母进行敏感和支持性行为的能力如何相关，人们知之甚少。本研究采用生物心理社会方法，关注 150 个城市中国家庭中父母在观察孩子经历挫折时的心理生理反应（孩子年龄为 6-12 岁， = 8.54， = 1.67），并研究这些反应如何与情绪相关的养育相关。每个家庭的主要照顾者（121 名母亲和 29 名父亲）与孩子一起参加了这项研究。在休息基线和孩子挫折任务期间，从父母那里收集交感神经[皮肤电导水平（SCL）]和副交感神经[呼吸窦性心律失常（RSA）]活动的测量值。父母自我报告他们对孩子负面情绪表现出支持和不支持的倾向。在单独的互动任务中观察他们对孩子情感需求的一般可用性。结果表明，在孩子挫折任务中表现出更大的交感神经唤起的父母在日常生活中对孩子的负面情绪反应更不支持和更不支持，并且在互动任务中也往往情绪上无法提供支持。RSA 反应没有发现主要效应，SCL 和 RSA 反应之间也没有预测养育作用的显著相互作用。研究结果强调了考虑父母的生理调节功能作为塑造父母针对孩子情绪的养育行为的近端因素的重要性。
