Citation

Thomassin K, Suveg C, Davis M, Lavner JA, Beach SR. Fam. Process 2015; 56(1): 126-140.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Family Process Institute, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/famp.12184

PMID

26384583

Abstract

Children's emotion dysregulation and depressive symptoms are known to be affected by a range of individual (parent, child) and systemic (parent-child, marital, and family) characteristics. The current study builds on this literature by examining the unique role of coparental affect in children's emotion dysregulation, and whether this association mediates the link between parent and child depressive symptoms. Participants were 51 mother-father-child triads with children aged 7 to 12 (M age = 9.24 years). Triads discussed a time when the child felt sad and a time when the child felt happy. Maternal and paternal displays of positive affect were coded, and sequential analyses examined the extent to which parents were congruent in their displays of positive affect during the emotion discussions.

RESULTS indicated that interparental positive affect congruity (IPAC) during the sadness discussion, but not the happiness discussion, uniquely predicted parent-reported child emotion dysregulation, above and beyond the contributions of child negative affect and parental punitive reactions. The degree of IPAC during the sadness discussion and child emotion dysregulation mediated the association between maternal, but not paternal, depressive symptoms and child depressive symptoms.

FINDINGS highlight the unique role of coparental affect in the socialization of sadness in youth and offer initial support for low levels of IPAC as a risk factor for the transmission of depressive symptoms in youth.

Language: en