[[alternative]]THE EFFECT OF MATERNAL META-EMOTION PHILOSOPHY AND PARENTING STYLE ON ADOLESCENT DEPRESSION—THE ROLE OF EMOTION REGULATION

[[abstract]]The main purpose of this study was to explore the role of adolescent’s emotion regulation in the relationship between parental meta-emotion philosophy, parenting style, and adolescent depression. The participants in this study were 549 mother-child dyads, in which children were students recruited from fifteen senior high or senior vocational schools in Taiwan. Adolescents filled out instruments including "Emotion Regulation Inventory", "Parental Bonding Inventory" and "Adolescent Depression Inventory", and mothers filled out "Parental Meta-emotion Philosophy Inventory". The collected data were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics, the Pearson correlation, t-test , one-way MANOVA, and structural equation modeling. The major findings of the study were as the following: 1. There were 188(16.2%) adolescents likely to be highly depressive. No gender difference was found on adolescent depression.. 2. There were significant differences on three aspects (emotional expression, emotional regulation strategies, and emotional awareness and control) of emotion regulation between male and female adolescents. On these aspects, the male adolescents are better than the females. However, gender did not have significant influence on the other two aspects (emotional reflection and emotional efficacy). 3. The results showed some mediating effects of adolescent’s emotion regulation on the relationship among maternal meta-emotion philosophy (emotion coaching and emotion dismissing), parenting style (maternal care), and adolescent depression. This means that mothers with higher emotion-coaching philosophy provided more care to children and then contributed to adolescent’s emotion regulation and in turn inhibited the possibility of adolescent depression; whereas mothers with higher emotion-dismissing showed less care and were more likely to diminish adolescent’s emotion regulation, which led their children to become more depressive. Even though adolescent’s emotion regulation didn’t play a mediating role in the relationship among maternal meta-emotion philosophy (emotion coaching and emotion dismissing), parenting style (maternal protect), and adolescent depression, there were some significant direct effect paths among maternal meta-emotion philosophy, maternal protect, and adolescent depression. 4. There were no significant paths from maternal emotion-noninvolvement philosophy to parenting styles, and adolescent depression. Nevertheless, mothers with higher emotion-dysfunction contributed to adolescent depression directly. Based on these findings and conclusions, some suggestions for the emotion education practice, school counseling, and future research were proposed.