The role of parental mindfulness and emotion regulation in child functioning

There is strong evidence for the efficacy of behavioural parent training programs. Recently, parents programs derived from Attachment Theory have focused on parent-child relationships, including the capacity of parents to help children regulate their emotions. The parent’s capacity to regulate their own emotional state has been targeted by attachment-based parenting programs as an important factor in helping parents achieve this. In the adult psychotherapy literature, techniques drawing on the Eastern philosophical concepts of mindfulness, have been developed to help people regulate their emotions, which has lead to the use of mindfulness techniques in the context of parenting. However, whether parental mindfulness is a construct that explains variance beyond emotion regulation has been questioned. This study aims to investigate whether parental emotional regulation and mindfulness independently explain variance in child outcomes. Participants were 166 parents who completed a questionnaire including measures of parental stress, social support, emotion regulation, parental mindfulness and child functioning. Factor analyses revealed mindfulness and emotion regulation are two separate constructs, however mindfulness may need to be thought of as a single construct, rather than separated into subscales. Mindfulness predicted variance in child externalising problems and aspects of child mindfulness. Emotion regulation did not significantly predict child functioning, or mediate the relationship between mindfulness and child functioning. Mindfulness and emotion regulation did not mediate the relationship between parental stress and child functioning, when controlling for social support. Findings suggest mindfulness is important for child functioning, and emotion regulation is not the mechanism of change for this relationship