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Objective: Investigate (1) the association of child adiposity with parent-to-child and parent-to-parent hostility, (2) the mediation of these associations by dietary behaviours and (3) moderation by gender., Design: One hundred thirty-five couples with 6- to 14-year-old children completed measures of emotional and physical aggression, overreactive discipline and child diet. Parent-to-parent hostility was also coded from laboratory observations., Main Outcome Measure: Child adiposity was a combination of body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio., Results: Mother-to-child hostility was associated with child adiposity. This association was concentrated in boys and was not significantly explained by child dietary factors. Mother-to-father hostility was not significantly associated with boys' or girls' adiposity. Girls' adiposity was not significantly associated with family hostility. Fathers' hostility was not linked to child adiposity., Conclusion: This is the first study to take a family-level approach to understanding the relation of hostility to child adiposity by examining relations among adiposity and both mothers' and fathers' hostility directed toward one another and toward their children. Our findings highlight the potential role played by mothers' emotional hostility in boys' adiposity and suggest that, if this role is further substantiated, mother-son emotional hostility may be a promising target for the prevention of child obesity.

In family psychology, the term flooding refers to the feeling of being overwhelmed by a family member's behavior in a manner that undermines an organized response. In the present investigation we first aimed to clarify the role of flooding in overreactive and lax discipline. The second study aim was to more fully establish the position of parental flooding in its nomological network given the relative paucity of research on parental flooding. Maternal discipline and physiological responses, as well as child behavior, were observed in laboratory discipline encounters with 97 mother-toddler dyads. Mothers then rated the extent to which they experienced flooding in response to their children's behavior and emotion displays during the immediately preceding discipline encounters. Mothers' experience of negative emotion was assessed via video-mediated recall. Flooding was positively associated with both overreactive and lax discipline; this association did not reflect confounding by mothers' experience of negative emotion. Flooding was further associated with mothers' experienced negative emotion and heart rate reactivity, as well as child misbehavior and negative emotion displays. The flooding-overreactive discipline association was concentrated in those mothers who exhibited greater increases in heart rate and greater vagal withdrawal, and whose children misbehaved more during the discipline encounter. The present results suggest the incremental validity of flooding in predicting discipline practices, as well as the strong fit of flooding in its nomological network. Parents' self-recognition of flooding may ultimately prove useful in parenting interventions as a signal to trigger compensatory techniques. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

The roles of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression as intentional methods mothers use to regulate their own emotion were investigated in relation to mothers' experience and expression of negative emotion and their overreactive and lax discipline practices. Eighty-two mothers of toddlers completed questionnaires that measured these constructs. Emotion regulation strategies were more consistently associated with overreactive than with lax discipline. More suppression in discipline encounters was associated with less overreactivity, an association partially mediated by expressed negative emotion. Reappraisal, both globally and in the context of discipline encounters, was inversely associated with overreactive discipline. The association of global reappraisal and overreactivity was mediated in parallel by experienced and expressed negative emotion. Surprisingly, global reappraisal, relative to reappraisal in discipline encounters, appears to have more consistent implications for mothers' emotion and parenting practices in discipline encounters. A reconceptualization of the nature of reappraisal in discipline encounters is suggested. The study is the first to systematically apply methods and concepts from the better-developed basic research literature on adults' emotion regulation to the domain of parenting., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.)

The validity of video-mediated recall (VR) measures of mothers' experience of emotion and appraisals of their children's behavior was evaluated. While viewing videotapes of their immediately preceding interactions, 97 mothers used a dial to continuously rate their toddlers' behavior and then their own emotion. Mothers' appraisals, emotion, and autonomic responses measured as averages across each VR condition were associated with their autonomic responses and their children's misbehavior measured during the live interactions. Less correspondence was found when similar relations were assessed in 10-s intervals. Additional tests supported concurrent and discriminant validity of the averaged VR measures. Taken together, the results suggest acceptable construct validity, but that the timing of mothers' thoughts and feelings may differ between live interactions and VR., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)

The present investigation was designed to evaluate whether mothers' emotion experience, autonomic reactivity, and negatively biased appraisals of their toddlers' behavior and toddlers' rates of misbehavior predicted over-reactive discipline in a mediated fashion. Ninety-three community mother-toddler dyads were observed in a laboratory interaction, after which mothers' emotion experience and appraisals of their toddler's behavior were measured via a video-recall procedure. Autonomic physiology and over-reactive discipline were measured during the interactions. Mothers' negatively biased appraisals mediated the relation between emotion experience and over-reactive discipline. Heart rate reactivity predicted discipline independent of this mediation. Toddler misbehavior appeared to be an entry point into the above process. Interventions that more actively target physiological and experiential components of mothers' emotion may further reduce their over-reactive discipline., (((c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).)

Hypotheses were tested about how moment-by-moment variation in mothers' negative emotion predicts harsh and lax discipline. Mother-toddler dyads interacted in a task designed to elicit challenging child behavior. Mothers viewed videotapes of their interactions and continuously rated their experienced emotion. Harsh discipline was associated with mothers' greater negative emotion intensity, greater dependence of mothers' emotion on toddlers' negative affect, and lower serial predictability of mothers' emotion. Laxness was also associated with greater emotion dependence on negative toddler affect and lower serial predictability but not with negative emotion intensity. The dependence of mothers' emotion on toddlers' rule violations was not associated with discipline. Dynamic emotion variables were not redundant with emotion intensity and therefore enhance our understanding of the role of emotion in discipline.

The relations of observed overreactive discipline with mothers' tendencies to notice negative, relative to positive, child behavior (preferential negative encoding), and mothers' negative appraisals of neutral and positive child behavior (negative appraisal bias), were examined in mothers of toddlers. The mothers rated both their own children's and unfamiliar children's behavior. Negative appraisal bias with respect to mothers' own (but not unfamiliar) children was related to mothers' overreactivity, independent of child misbehavior. Overreactivity was not related to mothers' preferential negative encoding either of their own or of unfamiliar children's behavior. However, in the case of mothers' own children, preferential negative encoding moderated the relation between negative appraisal bias and overreactive discipline, such that the negative appraisal bias-overreactivity relation was significant only in the context of high preferential negative encoding.