Emotion Regulation and Socialization in the Context of Cumulative Risk: Social-Emotional Adjustment in Children Experiencing Homelessness

Abstract

The acquisition of emotion regulation skills is a key developmental task, largely socialized by caregivers, that lays the foundation for healthy social-emotional adjustment. Unfortunately, both parental socialization and children’s self-regulation are disrupted in contexts of high cumulative risk. The current dissertation evaluated emotion regulation and socialization during observed parent-child interaction as predictors of social-emotional adjustment in young children experiencing homelessness. Study 1 used linear regression and latent profile analysis to identify links among child reactivity and regulation, parental affect profiles, and teacher-reported adjustment in the context of risk and adversity. Children’s difficulty down-regulating anger during parent-child interaction was linked to more teacher-reported social-behavioral problems. Empirically-derived profiles of parent affect were related to child behavior during the interaction and in the classroom: the minority of parents showing elevated anger had children who were observed to struggle with anger down-regulation and were reported by teachers to have more social-behavioral problems at school. Sociodemographic risk additionally predicted more social-behavioral problems, controlling for child and parent anger expression. Study 2 built on these findings using dynamic structural equation modeling to investigate dyadic interplay between parent and child anger across the problem-solving discussion. Parents and children showed significant stability in anger from one interval to the next, as well as cross-lagged associations consistent with bidirectional feedback processes and significant novel anger reactivity. Individual differences in child anger stability were related to more social-behavioral problems at school. More observed anger contagion, particularly from child to parent, predicted more parent-reported externalizing problems, as did higher family adversity. Results are interpreted in light of theory and research and future directions are discussed.