'Can I still blame my parents?' Links between perceived parenting, cognitive emotion regulation strategies, and adolescent mental health

The role of childhood parental practices in long-term mental health problems is well-documented. However, recent developmental perspectives suggest that parenting strategies exerted during adolescence play a crucial role in shaping adolescents' emotion regulation (ER), a role which may hold the key to our understanding on how parenting relates to adolescent psychopathology. This study set out to investigate specific links between perceived parenting practices (emotional warmth, rejection, and control), adolescents' use of cognitive ER strategies when encountering negative situations, and adolescence-related symptomatology (internalizing, externalizing symptoms, social interaction disturbances) in a sample of 16- to 18-year-olds (N = 197). Findings showed that: (1) parental emotional warmth was directly linked to adolescents' lower symptomatology across all indices of psychopathology, (2) heightened control was indirectly linked to higher levels of adolescent internalizing symptoms, through its positive relationship to greater use of cognitive maladaptive ER strategies, (3) parental rejection was indirectly linked to adolescents': (a) social interaction disturbances through both its negative relationship to greater use of adaptive ER, and its positive association with maladaptive ER strategies, (b) externalizing problems, via its positive relation with adolescents' use of maladaptive cognitive ER strategies. Thus, findings suggest that while parental emotional warmth appears to be a substantial protective factor in adolescent mental health, by engaging in dysfunctional (harsh, invalidating, or controlling) rearing practices, parents may maladaptively shape adolescents' cognitive response to negative information which, in turn, may increase their susceptibility to internalizing, externalizing, and social interaction issues. Implications for intervention and mental health policy makers are discussed.
Author(s): Eva Kallay [sup.1] , Lavinia Cheie [sup.2] [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) https://ror.org/02rmd1t30, grid.7399.4, 0000 0004 1937 1397, Department of Psychology, Babeò-Bolyai University, , Republicii Street, no. 37, 400015, Cluj-Napoca, [...]