Knowledge Bank

Emotion regulation, the internal and external processes involved in initiating, maintaining and modulating the occurrence, intensity and expression of emotions, is vastly important for success in school and throughout life. Prior research has pointed to a link between the development of strong emotion regulation skills and the parent-child relationship. One important aspect of the parent-child relationship is parenting quality. This research sought to investigate the associations of child gender, father's parenting quality at 9-months postpartum, and emotion regulation in school age children. Participants were recruited from a sample of 182 families from The New Parents Project, a longitudinal study of dual-earner couples and their first-born child. Father's parenting was studied at nine months postpartum using a five-minute play interaction between father and child. To measure emotion regulation, children performed the Attractive Toy in Transparent Box task. Upon analysis of father's parenting quality in infancy and children's emotion regulation, it was found that boys are more likely to engage in self-soothing behaviors when their fathers had lower parenting quality in infancy. However there was no significance for girls. Through investigating this relationship this study found an association between parenting quality and emotion regulation strategies children use, along with information about how gender affects regulation. Overall this research has provided more information on the importance of the father-child relationship and child outcomes.