Longitudinal associations among maternal emotion regulation, maternal emotion-related socialization behaviors, and children's emotion regulation

Parents' emotion regulation (ER) may relate to their emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) and their children's ER, yet longitudinal, multimethod research on these constructs is limited. Ninety-eight American mothers (Mage = 34.83) and their 6- to 8-year-olds (Mage = 6.89; 54.1% girls; 49% White) completed three lab visits, 6 months apart, in 2023 and 2024. Maternal ER, ERSBs, and child ER were assessed with multimethod batteries. There were longitudinal associations among unique components of maternal ER, maternal ERSBs, and child ER, over and above autoregressive controls; however, indirect effects did not reach statistical significance. Findings demonstrate nuanced patterns of ER transmission across generations among racially and socioeconomically diverse families.