Associations between mothers’ emotion regulation and real‐time experiences of negative emotion: The moderating role of caregiving context

Abstract Parents’ emotion regulation and emotional experiences have important consequences for family well‐being and child outcomes. Little is known about whether traitlike emotion regulation abilities predict statelike experiences of real‐time negative emotion. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), this study examines associations between mothers’ self‐reported emotion regulation abilities and their real‐time experiences of negative emotion, as well as the moderating role of caregiving context among 145 mothers (41% Hispanic; 31% earned below $40,000) of young children (mean age = 20.9 months) across a 10‐day period. Results indicated that on average, mothers who report high levels of traitlike rumination and difficulties in emotion regulation also report more statelike negative emotion. Further, the presence of children weakened the associations between mothers’ traitlike reports of emotion dysregulation and statelike EMA negative emotion reports. The findings demonstrate the importance of parents’ emotion regulation for supporting family well‐being, especially when parents are separated from their children; the findings may have implications for developing family interventions.