The effect of maternal depressive-anxious symptoms on children's emotion regulatio

This study sought to examine the impact of maternal depressive and anxious symptoms on parenting quality and children's capacity to regulate their emotions. Participants were one hundred-ten toddlers and their primary caregivers. Measures included parent questionnaires and observations of parent-child interactions. Results showed that only one aspect of children's emotion regulation was associated with mothers' symptoms of depression and anxiety---number of regulatory strategies. Mothers' symptoms of depression and anxiety were not associated with the children's use of specific strategies, or with key components of emotion expression, such as peak distress, latency to distress, and distress duration. It is possible that the toddler years might be too early to capture the effects of maternal depressed-anxious symptoms on children's emotion regulation.