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Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences
RETPS 2023
Volume 22 (2023)
518
The Association between Parent-Child Relationship and
Emotional Regulation
Yunwei Zuo *
Jericho High School, New York, United States
* Corresponding author: Yunwei.zuo@jerichoapps.org
Abstract. Emotional regulation is the way people control their emotions, adjust emotions, and
maintain emotional stability. The parenting style are influencing children’s mental health
development a lot, and a positive parent-child relationship will help children’s emotional regulation
ability develop. This research is focused on the attachment relationship of children to their parents
in their childhood, and what kind of influence people's growth environment will have on their
personality and social adaptability in adulthood. The ability to control depression before they grow
up, and what behaviors of parents will lead negative impact on children's psychological development,
and how mothers and fathers have different influences on children's growth, etc. to conduct research.
In the end, the result shows a warm family environment and emotionally stable parents will raise
strong emotional regulation ability children. The studies also have some limitations, such as there
was no investigation into the experiences of the participants as adults. Future studies should do
more surveys about experiences in the adulthood of the participant.
Keywords: parent-child relationship, emotional regulation, emotion.
1. Introduction
Studying the parent-child relationship is important because everyone comes from their parents,
and parents will feed children until they grow into an adult. Parents educate their children and help
them establish three views. Most children live with their parents throughout childhood and
adolescence, the treatment and education children receive during these two stages will affect their
character and their entire life [1]. Parent-child relationships are critical to children's emotional,
cognitive, and social development. A positive parent-child relationship develops a child's emotional
security and self-esteem. The relationship also helps to form the child's social skills, cognitive abilities,
and emotional regulation. Emotional regulation means to control their emotions and be able to adjust
bad emotions in a short time. It is also important to people, as it influences people every day.
Sometimes people will have positive emotions but sometimes people are also influenced by their bad
emotions. Negative emotions not only affect people's mental health but also affect their physical
health due to prolonged emotional depression and depression. Having a positive emotional regulation
ability can help people maintain mental health balance, adjust their emotions, and not stay in
depressed emotions for a long time. Also, strong emotional regulation skills help people build healthy
relationships and promote effective communication and conflict resolution. Building positive
emotional regulation skills at an early age is important for the development of emotional intelligence
and social skills. It fosters the ability to understand and cope with emotions, which leads to better
adaptation to changes and challenges in life. Understanding how parenting style would affect
children’s mental health development helps parents learn the importance of their parenting style to
children, and how they would influence their child. At the same time, the study also shows the
importance of emotion regulation to a person and how it is developed at an early age.
There are already many studies studying parent-child relationships and emotional regulation [2].
Currently, studies divide parenting styles into serval types, some parents are authoritative for children,
some have serval requirements for children but are not so strict, and some are permissive parenting.
Parenting style is considered to be related to social competence, and different parenting styles have
different effects on children. Parents from different cultures also have different parenting styles. For
example, authoritarian education is common among minorities in the United States, and strict and
Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences
RETPS 2023
Volume 22 (2023)
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punitive education is common in China. According to the studies, authoritarian and strict parenting
methods can produce a negative impact on children's social competence and adapting ability. Harsh
punishments are considered humiliating for children, which will negatively affect their psychological
health development. According to more studies about parent-child relationships people gradually
understand how much influence will parenting style have on children's growth and their future life.
Currently, people also have some research about emotional regulation done. The skill of emotional
regulation is established in people’s early age, emotion regulation ability also affects people's social
ability and adaptability. When people have strong emotion regulation ability, they will reduce their
dependence on external factors and be able to balance their emotions well. People's behavior is always
controlled by emotions, so emotional regulation also influences people’s physical behaviors. At the
same time, brain tissue is also influencing people’s emotional regulation. When people change their
state, the brain tissue will work to make people change their emotions. Emotional regulation was
considered systematic, it was also influenced by people’s living environment. Studying the
connection between emotional regulation and the parent-child relationship is important, as that will
help parents learn the better way to parent a child and to build a better developed environment for
children. This review included what is emotional regulation, why is important to people, and how
parents influence children’s emotional regulation ability development. People have already had many
studies about emotional regulation and different parenting styles separately, and this review essay
will summarize the association between these two factors.
2. Effects of Parenting on Emotional Regulation in Children
2.1. Parenting Style, Attachment, and Emotional Regulation
As a child grows up, parents' responses to the child's emotional changes affect the kid's ability to
control emotions. For example, when parents answer to their kids’ negative emotions in a comforting
and warm way, this will help children build strong emotional regulation skills. In the study by Boldt
and colleagues, they studied the relationship between children's ability to regulate emotions and future
social adjustment [3]. They used several ways to study it, observing children's responses to task
setbacks and parents' responses to children in the laboratory. Babies from 7 months years old to 25
months years old, came to the laboratory with their parents, and the researchers observed their
behaviors and recorded the child's attachment to parents. Ten years later, the researchers also
observed these children's times of negative emotions and their parents’ responses. The researchers
recorded children’s data at different ages and compared it to their behavior when they grew up. Then
the result of the study shows children's early emotional management will affect their later life, and
children with good emotional regulation skills tend to perform better. At the same time, parents'
response to children's negative emotions will also affect children's ability to regulate emotions, and
children whose negative emotions are not valued by their parents have poorer emotional control.
Supportive parenting will affect the risk of children's anxiety disorder. The study of Hurrell and
colleagues [4]. They studied if anxiety disorders have a profound impact on children and the role of
parenting style. Compared with children without mental illness, children with anxiety disorders are
more sensitive to negative emotions and have a lower ability to regulate emotions. Parents' education
methods also affect children's mental state. In order to learn more about children’s anxiety disorders,
researchers started a survey about parents' reactions to their children's emotions. The researchers gave
several parents 12 short stories about events that caused the children distress, to survey how parents
will react to these events. Then, according to the answers of the father and mother, the scores are
divided into two types: supportive parenting and non-supportive parenting. At the same time, their
kids also took the mental state test. In the end, they got the result an active support from parents
reduced the risk of mental illness in children. For example, when parents do not have a good way to
respond to children's bad emotions, it may lead to children's lack of attention. Parents who have
difficulty controlling negative emotions are likely to raise anxious children.
Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences
RETPS 2023
Volume 22 (2023)
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Parent-child happiness would affect children’s behavior in their adulthood. In the study of Aneesh
and colleagues, they studied the relationship between teenagers and their parents, and teenager’s
emotional regulation [5]. This study used cross-sectional correlational and questionnaires for data
collection. There were 431 teenagers who participated in this study. The teens filled out some
questionnaires about prosocial and antisocial behavior and also reported their relationship with their
parents. The researchers analyzed these teenagers’ mental state and the correlation with their parent-
child relationship. In the end, the result shows that children who have a good relationship with their
parents and whose parents always show warmth will have stronger emotional management skills.
Controlling and disciplining parenting behaviors is likely to lead to poorer happiness for children.
Children with high parent-child happiness are likely to show prosocial behavior, whereas children
with poor parent-child relationships are likely to have antisocial personalities.
It's important to understand how the attachment to parents from early childhood affects emotional
regulation in adulthood, and how it would affect them. In the study of Girme and colleagues started
researching how infant attachment will affect emotion regulation after they become adults [6]. This
experiment was used to study how development in early childhood affects people to regulate their
emotions in frustrating situations as adults. The researchers observed babies’ attachment at 12 months
years old and 18 months years old, during this time babies were faces separated from their mother
and strangers appeared in the room, and the researchers recorded babies’ emotional changes.
Researchers also recorded these people’s circumstances of conflict with a romantic partner in
adulthood through surveys during their adulthood. The final results showed that people classified as
having stable and insecure attachment styles in infancy had decreased use of adaptive emotion
regulation strategies and increased use of maladaptive strategies when confronted with conflict in
adult relationships. Children who were classified as unstable and secure in infancy showed more
overregulation strategies when conflicting with their partners in adulthood. The attachment insecurity
in early childhood predicts emotional regulation in adulthood 20-35 years later. The sense of security
in infancy affects emotional regulation throughout life.
Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is a specialized anxiety for children, children that have ODD
are usually very irritable. And the form of ODD is likely to have a correlation with attachment to their
parents. In the study Craig and colleagues studied emotional regulation as the way to manage
emotions and feelings, the ability will also become stronger with age [7]. This study was a survey of
high-risk teenagers, these children are more likely to suffer from mental problems. The researchers
started a study to research the relationship between a kid’s emotional regulation and their parent’s
behavior. This study chose 179 teenagers who have broken the law, and these teenagers reported their
mother's education level and family environment. For example, how their mother treats them. In the
end, the study shows there is an association between attachment anxiety and emotional regulation.
Children’s ODD is associated with their attachment to their mother, and if the mother often loses
control of her emotions the child is likely to have odds.
Parenting style is very important to children’s psychological development, every parent has their
own parenting style, but some might negatively affect the psychological development of adolescents.
In the study of Richter and colleagues, it is stated that becoming a mother is not an easy thing [8].
The mother’s parenting style will affect the child’s happiness level and emotional control. For
example, if the mother shows warmth and concern for the child that will help children build strong
emotional control skills. At the same time, the researchers also studied if the way parents behaved
and how their children dealt with emotions when they were young could predict how satisfied their
children would be with their lives later in life. The researchers selected some volunteering mothers
to be surveyed. Mothers rated on 3 questions about their baby’s general emotional situation and the
answers were divided by four levels. The baby who has a higher score means stronger emotional
regulation ability. Also, mothers reported how they would respond to their baby in the situations that
researchers provided, to show their warmth. At the same time, mothers also answered their parenting
styles, and how they treated their kids usually. Then the result shows when a mother is warm and
patient with her child, her child is likely to have a better ability to regulate emotions.
Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences
RETPS 2023
Volume 22 (2023)
521
2.2. Different Roles of Father and Mother
The roles of father and mother for children are both very important and also will have different
effects on children. In the study of Van Lissa and colleagues, they stated emotion regulation means
controlling and accepting emotions and not being controlled by emotions, which is important for
mental health. This experiment studied how parents help and influence kids’ ability to control their
emotions, and how girls and boys are different [9]. Participants in this study were 480 teenagers, and
these teenagers answered some questions to show how they control their emotions. The questionnaire
included some situations and teenagers answered how they would react due to these kinds of
situations, and the answers to these questions were from never to always. The researchers also
recorded these teenager’s relationship with their parents and how they get along. In the end, the result
of this survey shows that parental support and adolescent emotional regulation are positively
correlated. Compared to boys, mothers’ support is greater in girls' adolescence. Also, when fathers
reduce their behavioral control over children, children’s emotional regulation ability will become
stronger.
3. A Reciprocal Relationship
Reciprocal effects which mean parents' emotions will influence child's mental development, and
children's mental state will also have an impact on the parents' emotions. In the study of Otterpohl
and Wild started a three-year experiment to study how parenting styles would affect children's early
social adjustment during adolescence [10]. There were 29 schools participating in this study. Six-
grade and seventh-grade students were surveyed by researchers. Students received two questionnaires,
one for themself and another one for their parents. Students responded to questionnaires about how
their mothers raised them, and how they would respond to their negative emotions. At the same time,
the researchers also investigated students' mental health, which will include distraction, venting, and
failure of these kinds of questions. In the end, the result shows if parents do not respond to teenager’s
negative emotions in time, which is likely to strengthen the teenagers' negative emotions. This
situation will make the parent and their child relationships worse, and the emotional state of the
parents will also be affected. Parents should provide more attention to children's emotional changes
to help their mental health development.
4. Conclusion
Emotional regulation is very important to people, it affects the development of people's social
skills and forms the foundation for people to adapt to society. Emotional regulation ability develops
during early people’s childhood and adolescence and is influenced by parenting styles and
relationships with parents. Parents’ parenting style directly affects the emotional regulation ability of
children as adults and also affects their ability to adapt to society in their adulthood. Children's ability
to control their emotions as adults is also related to their attachment to their parents in early childhood.
At the same time, during the child's early childhood, the roles played by the father and mother will
be different, and they will have different influences on their child. Problems with a child's ability to
develop emotional control can also affect parents and influence each other.
Most of the current research on the development of people's emotional control ability uses survey
methods to investigate people's growth environment in childhood and adolescence and their
emotional status in adulthood and to find the association between them. However, this study method
also has some limitations, people's emotional control ability will also be affected by the environment
in adulthood. For example, when people encounter some specific events and receive stimuli in
adulthood, which may change people's personality and emotional control ability. Therefore, future
research may include a survey of important experiences in adulthood to determine the impact on
emotional control.
Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences
RETPS 2023
Volume 22 (2023)
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