The Role of Parental Tolerance of Child Distress in Behavioral Responses to Child Negative Emotions
Abstract
Parent tolerance of child distress (PDT) has been implicated in the use of maladaptive parenting behaviors that quickly alleviate the child’s distress, preventing children from developing self-soothing skills. While this has been demonstrated in parents of infants (Rutherford et al., 2013), it has rarely been explored in families with preschool or school-age children. Further, few studies have examined cognitive and emotional factors that might moderate associations between PDT and parenting behaviors. Parental reflective functioning (PRF), a parent’s ability to understand a child’s behaviors as a reflection of a mental state and empathy, are associated with low PDT in families of school-aged children (Borelli et al., 2021). We investigated the relationships among PDT, PRF, empathy, and parenting behaviors in a community sample of parents (n = 89) of young children (ages 3-5.9). We found that parents with lower PDT are more likely to use non-supportive parenting behaviors and adopt a pre-mentalizing stance, characterized by an inability to enter the subjective world of their child or a tendency to attribute malevolence to their child’s behaviors, than those with a higher tolerance. Moreover, pre-mentalizing moderated the relationship between PDT and non-supportive parenting behaviors and expressive encouragement. Additionally, we found that parent certainty of mental states moderated the relationship between PDT and non-supportive parenting such that parents with low PDT and high CM exhibited more non-supportive parenting. Finally, parent interest and curiosity of mental states moderated the relationship between PDT and supportive parenting. No relationship was found between PDT and empathy, and empathy did not moderate relationships between PDT and parenting behaviors. These findings are discussed in the context of normative temper tantrums characteristic to this age group, and we hope this work provides a foundation for future clinical studies and parenting interventions.
Subject Area
Psychology|Developmental psychology|Cognitive psychology
Recommended Citation
Garvey, Robert W, "The Role of Parental Tolerance of Child Distress in Behavioral Responses to Child Negative Emotions" (2022). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI29322869.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI29322869
