Child-Focused Reappraisal and Ruminative Reflection: Associations With Parental Health,Adolescent Academic Achievement,and Parent and Adolescent Gender

Abstract

Adolescence is characterized by dynamic biological and emotional changes that influence key developmental tasks (e.g., dealing with academic demands). Parents are critical for their children’s emotion regulation development and offer child-focused emotion regulation strategies in challenging situations. To date, child-focused emotion regulation processes in critical achievement situations are not comprehensively understood as questions remain regarding their associations with parental health and adolescents’ academic achievement. In addition, the roles of parents’ and adolescents' gender in child-focused emotion regulation have yet to be explored. The current cross-sectional study addressed these gaps by applying single-group and multi-group structural equation modeling, as well as latent mean comparisons in a sample of U.S. parents of sixth–ninth graders (N = 1,304). Higher levels of child-focused reappraisal were related to parents’ lower subjective health issues, whereas child-focused ruminative reflection was negatively associated with adolescents’ academic achievement. Further analyses indicated that the structural paths linking child-focused emotion regulation, parental health issues, and adolescents’ academic achievement differed by parents’ gender, but not by children’s gender. Surprisingly, fathers were more likely to utilize child-focused ruminative reflection than mothers and reported a negative association between self-focused reappraisal and health issues, which was not found for mothers. Parents were more likely to use child-focused ruminative reflection with male adolescents, who also had lower average academic achievement than female adolescents. No significant differences in child-focused reappraisal were observed by parents’ or adolescent’s gender. The results highlighted distinct and context-specific associations between child-focused emotion regulation strategies and family correlates.