The unique effect of the number of children on mothers’ acceptance of children’s negative emotions

Although parenting research typically focuses on one target child, parents’ emotion-related parenting behaviours are predicted by the broader family context. The number of children in the home impacts parents’ emotional resources and may be particularly relevant to mothers’ beliefs about acceptable emotional displays from their young children. Participants included 226 Portuguese mothers of a 2- to 6-year-old target child (M = 3.89 years) with between 1 and 4 children. Mothers reported on their family makeup, tolerance of their child’s dominant and submissive negative emotion displays, parenting stress and mindful parenting. Covarying maternal age, family income and target child age, regressions revealed that mothers with more children were less likely to endorse beliefs that it was acceptable for their young child to display dominant negative emotions. Mothers were also more tolerant of displays of dominant negative emotions for younger children than older children within this early childhood period. These effects remained even after accounting for mothers’ parenting stress and mindfulness. Results are interpreted using social information processing, emotion socialisation and transactional stress and coping perspectives.