Maternal sensitivity, cortisol, and emotion regulation: Relations between maternal and child response to stress

The development of self-regulation of emotion is an important task of the preschool period. Previous work has shown that a relationship exists between behavioral regulation and physiological response to mild stress. This study examined the nature and extent of a match between a mother and her child on cortisol responses to stress, as a function of maternal sensitivity. Results supported the hypothesis that mothers who were rated higher on sensitivity would be more likely to match their children in a measure of physiological response to a stressor in a laboratory setting. In addition, as expected, more sensitive mothers rated their own feelings as more similar to how they perceived their children to be feeling while the children were performing the task. Further, more sensitive mothers had increased cortisol in response to watching their children perform a stressful task, reported less stress in their lives as a result of being a parent, and reported more cognitive strategy use in a hypothetical situation than mothers rated lower on sensitivity.; Emotion regulation use was categorized into self-comforting, instrumental, cognitive, and distraction strategies. Developmental differences in strategy use were found as predicted. Two-year-old children used more comforting and distraction strategies than three- and four-year-olds, while four-year-old children used fewer instrumental strategies than their younger counterparts. Contrary to expectation, older children did not use more cognitive strategies than younger children. There was a positive relationship between self-comforting and cortisol, as expected. No other relationships between emotion regulation strategy use and cortisol were found.; The results of this study added to our understanding of the mother-child relationship by contributing to our knowledge of the psychological factors governing physiological responses within this relationship. Moreover, developmental differences in children may affect the types of strategies used, and the consequences of those strategies with respect to the HPA system. Implications for future study are discussed.