Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, 2020.
The role of parenting behaviors in the development of offspring emotion regulation has
received a great deal of attention in the literature in recent years. However, the vast
majority of studies focus on Baumrind’s parenting styles, with minimal attention given to
other parenting behaviors and styles that influence offsprings’ emotion regulation
repertoire. This study proposes a gendered analysis to examine the impact of various
parenting behaviors on Millennial offsprings’ use of cognitive reappraisal and expressive
suppression. More specifically, parental variables of interest include a helicopter
parenting style and emotion coaching and dismissing behaviors related to Gottman’s
(1996) parental meta-emotion philosophy. Participants were adults born between the
years of 1981 and 2000 (age range 18-37) from the U.S. who completed questionnaires
rating their mothers’ and/or fathers’ meta-emotion philosophies, autonomy support, and
helicopter parenting behaviors. Participants also completed a self-report emotion regulation
assessment tool. T-tests were conducted to determine whether differences
exist between males and females in terms of expressive suppression and cognitive
reappraisal, and between mothers’ and fathers’ use of coaching versus dismissing
behaviors with sons versus daughters. Multiple regression analyses separated by
participant sex/gender were also conducted to examine the relative contributions of
maternal and paternal emotion coaching and emotion dismissing, helicopter parenting,
and autonomy-supportive behaviors on Millennial offspring emotion regulation strategy
use. Results indicate complex, gender-specific patterns of influence, providing empirical
support for the claim by Cassano, Perry-Parrish, and Zeman (2007) that parental emotion socialization practices and children’s emotion regulation development are dependent on
both parent and offspring gender.
