Family Environment and Early Experiences and Their Associations with Emotion Regulation in Youth

Abstract

This cross-sectional study draws on the emotional climate of the family component of the tripartite model of the impact of the family context on children’s emotion regulation. It aims to explore the associations between emotion regulation and early memories of warmth and safeness, parental antipathy and neglect, and parental attachment. A representative sample of 8,622 participants (52.4% girls), with ages between 12 to 21 years old (M = 15.5, SD = 1.8), and self-report measures were used. In the multiple regression, parental trust, maternal neglect, the female gender, maternal antipathy, early memories of warmth and safeness, parental alienation, and parental communication were uniquely associated with emotion regulation (in decreasing order of explanatory strength). These results support the tripartite model of the impact of the family context on children’s emotion regulation by extending it to youth and emphasize the relevance of promoting emotionally intelligent and secure family contexts to increase the likelihood of youth’s developing adaptive emotion regulation strategies.