The relationship between parenting styles of mothers and emotion regulation skills of children

Abstract

The aim of the current study was to explore the relationship between mothers' parenting styles and the emotion regulation skills of preschool children in Turkish cultural context. It was assumed that parenting styles of mothers are related to emotional regulation skills of their children. In this quantitative research, the sample was composed of 408 mothers whose children attend one of various preschool programs. For the purposes of data collection, the mothers were invited to participate in the study via various educational sites and social media accounts. The mothers of 193 girls and 215 boys filled out the forms containing demographic information and two scales. First of all, mothers completed the demographic information forms that asked them about age, education levels, working status, and family income, alongside their children’s age, gender, and how long they were in preschool. The Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC) (Altan, 2006; Shields & Cichetti,1997) and Parenting Styles Scale (PAS) (Demir & Şendil, 2008) were completed by the mothers. The emotion regulation skills were investigated using two subscales (i.e., emotion regulation and lability/negativity). Their parenting styles were examined using four subscales (i.e., democratic, authoritarian, overprotective, and permissive). In the bivariate correlation analysis, a significant relationship was found between parent’s democratic style and children’s emotion regulation. In addition to that, authoritarian, permissive, and overprotective parenting was significantly and positively linked to lability/negativity. In the hierarchical multiple regression analysis, democratic style predicted children’s emotion regulation, whereas their authoritarian style predicted their children’s lability/negativity.