Parenting After Child Maltreatment: An Examination of Risk and Protective Factors for Unsupportive Emotion Socialization and its Impact on Young Adult Offspring

Child maltreatment (CM) is a widespread problem in Canada that is known to impede the healthy emotional development of affected individuals and their families. In adults, a history of CM has been associated with maladaptive parenting behaviours and poor mental health outcomes among offspring in the next generation. Although several studies have investigated the mechanisms involved in the intergenerational transmission of these negative outcomes, only a handful of them have investigated the role of emotion regulation difficulties and parents’ emotion-related socialization behaviours (ERSBs). Moreover, given that CM is associated with a host of other negative sequalae across the individual, relational, and community level, it is important to discern the relative influence of multi-level factors on parents’ ERSBs and to identify protective factors that may disrupt cycles of maladaptive parenting. Drawing from Gratz and Roemer’s model of emotional dysregulation, theories of emotion socialization (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Morris et al., 2007), and Belsky’s (1984) process model of the determinants of parenting, the program of research outlined in this dissertation aimed to elucidate how a history of CM and associated stressors and supports may influence parents’ contingent responses to emotions and the intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation difficulties. Mothers and their young adult children (aged 18-25) were recruited from across Canada to participate in an online research project (N = 185 dyads). Study 1 demonstrated that mothers who endorsed more types of CM were described by their young adults as more likely to use unsupportive contingencies during adolescence, but only when mothers also endorsed high levels of emotion regulation difficulties. In particular, maternal difficulties with impulse control and emotional clarity contributed to unsupportive contingencies. Further, a moderated mediation analysis revealed that mothers’ CM histories had a positive, indirect effect on young adults’ emotion regulation difficulties that occurred through mothers’ unsupportive contingencies, but this effect was only evident when mothers had high levels of emotion regulation difficulties themselves. Subsequently, Study 2 examined multi-level factors, in addition to child maltreatment and impulse control difficulties, that might contribute to, or discourage, unsupportive emotion socialization. The results of a hierarchical linear regression analysis revealed that mothers who reported higher impulse control difficulties, who experienced greater revictimization, and who had more severe dissociative symptoms were rated as higher in their use of unsupportive contingencies. However, when contextual supports were added into the model, only revictimization remained associated with unsupportive contingencies. Further, mothers’ positive perceptions of the parent-child attachment relationship were negatively associated with unsupportive contingencies. These findings contribute to our understanding of the relationship between a history of CM and parental emotion socialization by identifying specific dimensions of emotion regulation that might contribute to unsupportive contingencies and the intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation difficulties. They also emphasize the importance of ameliorating dissociative symptoms, reducing impulse control difficulties, preventing revictimization, and bolstering parent-child attachment, thereby illuminating potential avenues for prevention and intervention for parents with histories of CM

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