Direct and Indirect Associations Among Mothers' Invalidating Childhood Environment, Emotion Regulation Difficulties, and Parental Apology

Overview

Journal Borderline Personal Disord Emot Dysregul

Publisher Biomed Central

Date 2022 Aug 17

PMID 35978371

Authors

Alexis A Adams-Clark

Angela H Lee

Yoel Everett

Arianna Zarosinski

Christina Gamache Martin

Maureen Zalewski

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

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.

References

McCallum M, Goodman S . A multimethod, multi-informant investigation of maternal validation and invalidation of female adolescents who engage in self-inflicted injury. J Consult Clin Psychol. 2019; 87(6):563-575. DOI: 10.1037/ccp0000411. View

Musser N, Zalewski M, Stepp S, Lewis J . A systematic review of negative parenting practices predicting borderline personality disorder: Are we measuring biosocial theory's 'invalidating environment'?. Clin Psychol Rev. 2018; 65:1-16. DOI: 10.1016/j.cpr.2018.06.003. View

Gill D, Warburton W . An investigation of the biosocial model of borderline personality disorder. J Clin Psychol. 2014; 70(9):866-73. DOI: 10.1002/jclp.22074. View

Ely R, Gleason J . I'm sorry I said that: apologies in young children's discourse. J Child Lang. 2006; 33(3):599-620. DOI: 10.1017/s0305000906007446. View

Buckholdt K, Parra G, Jobe-Shields L . Intergenerational Transmission of Emotion Dysregulation Through Parental Invalidation of Emotions: Implications for Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors. J Child Fam Stud. 2014; 23(2):324-332. PMC: 4024378. DOI: 10.1007/s10826-013-9768-4. View

Rizvi S, Struthers C, Shoikhedbrod A, Guilfoyle J . Take a moment to apologize: How and why mindfulness affects apologies. J Exp Psychol Appl. 2022; 28(3):661-675. DOI: 10.1037/xap0000387. View

Morris A, Silk J, Steinberg L, Myers S, Robinson L . The Role of the Family Context in the Development of Emotion Regulation. Soc Dev. 2009; 16(2):361-388. PMC: 2743505. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9507.2007.00389.x. View

Are F, Shaffer A . Family Emotion Expressiveness Mediates the Relations Between Maternal Emotion Regulation and Child Emotion Regulation. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev. 2015; 47(5):708-15. DOI: 10.1007/s10578-015-0605-4. View

Lee S, Keng S, Hong R . Examining the intergenerational transmission of parental invalidation: Extension of the biosocial model. Dev Psychopathol. 2023; 35(1):24-34. DOI: 10.1017/S0954579421000778. View

10.

Martin C, Kim H, Freyd J . Overwhelmed by Emotion: Pathways from Revictimization to Mothers' Negative Emotional Responsivity. Fam Process. 2017; 57(4):947-959. DOI: 10.1111/famp.12339. View

11.

Robertson C, Kimbrel N, Nelson-Gray R . The Invalidating Childhood Environment Scale (ICES): psychometric properties and relationship to borderline personality symptomatology. J Pers Disord. 2012; 27(3):402-10. DOI: 10.1521/pedi_2012_26_062. View

12.

Eisenberg N, Fabes R, Murphy B . Parents' reactions to children's negative emotions: relations to children's social competence and comforting behavior. Child Dev. 1996; 67(5):2227-47. View

13.

Fruzzetti A, Shenk C, Hoffman P . Family interaction and the development of borderline personality disorder: a transactional model. Dev Psychopathol. 2006; 17(4):1007-30. DOI: 10.1017/s0954579405050479. View

14.

Hajal N, Paley B . Parental emotion and emotion regulation: A critical target of study for research and intervention to promote child emotion socialization. Dev Psychol. 2020; 56(3):403-417. DOI: 10.1037/dev0000864. View

15.

Schmitt M, Gollwitzer M, Forster N, Montada L . Effects of objective and subjective account components on forgiving. J Soc Psychol. 2004; 144(5):465-85. DOI: 10.3200/SOCP.144.5.465-486. View