Abstract
There is considerable research on mothers’ contributions to a children’s emotion regulation, but less known about how fathers contribute to a child’s emotion regulation. The current study focuses on associations between fathers’ beliefs about emotions, emotion socialization practices, and emotion regulation with their young children’s emotion regulation. The participants were 58 fathers of 3- to 6-year-old children who were primarily recruited through the researcher’s place of work and through flyers, word of mouth, and social media. An online anonymous survey was used to gather father report of their responses to their children’s negative emotions (positive, negative response), their beliefs about the usefulness and controllability of emotions, and their use of expressive suppression and/or cognitive reappraisal in regulating their own emotions. Fathers also reported on their children’s emotion regulation (reactivity, mindfulness, help-seeking, avoidance, and distraction). Significant correlations were found between demographic variables and study variables, and significant correlations were also discovered between father emotion beliefs and practices and child emotion regulation variables. Controlling for demographic variables, father supportive responses to children’s negative emotion was linked to the child’s regulatory use of distraction and help seeking, and father’s negative beliefs were linked to child’s use of avoidance and mindfulness. Results are discussed in light of the role of father’s beliefs and practice in the development of children’s emotion regulation.