Thinking Positively or Repeating Negative Feelings? The Roles of Parental Cognitive Interpersonal Emotion Regulation in Parental Health and Adolescent Achievement

Adolescence is characterized by dynamic biological and emotional changes that influence key developmental tasks (e.g., dealing with academic demands). Parents are critical for their children’s emotion regulation development and offer child-focused emotion regulation strategies in challenging situations. To date, child-focused emotion regulation processes in critical achievement situations are not comprehensively understood as questions remain about their influence on parents’ health and adolescents’ academic achievement. In addition, the roles that parents’ and adolescent’s gender play in parents’ use of child-focused emotion regulation strategies have yet to be explored. The current cross-sectional study addressed these gaps by applying structural equation modeling and latent mean comparisons in a broad gender-balanced sample of U.S. parents of sixth–ninth graders (N = 1,373). Higher levels of child-focused reappraisal were related to parents’ lower overall health issues, whereas child-focused rumination was negatively associated with adolescents’ academic achievement. No significant differences in child-focused reappraisal were observed by parent or adolescent gender. By contrast, fathers were more likely to utilize child-focused rumination than mothers, and parents were more likely to use child-focused rumination with female adolescents. Results demonstrate the importance of understanding social influences of child-focused emotion regulation, as they can contribute to adolescents’ academic development, parents’ health, and gender socialization. The findings further indicate more pronounced associations between child-focused reappraisal and the parent outcome, whereas child-focused rumination is more strongly associated with child variables.