Direct and indirect associations among mothers’ invalidating childhood environment, emotion regulation difficulties, and parental apology
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Date
2022-08-15
Authors
Adams-Clark, Alexis A.
Lee, Angela H.
Everett, Yoel
Zarosinski, Arianna
Martin, Christina Gamache
Zalewski, Maureen
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BMC
Abstract
Background: Effective emotion regulation abilities are essential for engaging in positive, validating parenting practices.
Yet, many parents report difficulties with both emotion regulation and positive parenting, and these difficulties
may in part be the result of parents’ own childhood experiences of invalidation. Building upon prior literature documenting
the intergenerational transmission of invalidation and emotion dysregulation, the present study examined
the associations between these constructs and a specific parenting practice – parental apology – that can be conceptualized
as a type of validating parenting practice.
Methods: Using a sample of 186 community mothers, we tested direct and indirect relationships via correlational
and path analysis between participants’ retrospective reports of parental invalidation during childhood, difficulties
with emotion regulation, and two aspects of parental apology – proclivity (i.e., participants’ self-reported propensity
to apologize to their child) and effectiveness (i.e., participants’ inclusion of specific apology content when prompted
to write a child-directed apology). Parental invalidation, difficulties with emotion regulation, and parental apology
proclivity were measured via self-report questionnaires. Apology effectiveness was measured by coding written
responses to a hypothetical vignette.
Results: There was a significant negative bivariate relationship between difficulties with emotion regulation and
parental apology proclivity and effectiveness. Parents’ own childhood experiences of invalidation were linked to
parental apology indirectly via emotion regulation difficulties.
Conclusions: Results suggest that mothers with greater difficulties regulating emotions may be less able to or have
a lower proclivity to apologize to their child when appropriate. Thus, parent apology may be an important addition to
current calls for parent validation training.
Description
9 pages
Keywords
Apology, Parenting, Invalidating environment, Emotion regulation
Citation
Adams-Clark, A.A., Lee, A.H., Everett, Y. et al. Direct and indirect associations among mothers’ invalidating childhood environment, emotion regulation difficulties, and parental apology. bord personal disord emot dysregul 9, 21 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40479-022-00191-z