Parent Control and Child Shame: Associations with Children’s Task Persistence and Depressive Symptoms in Middle Childhood

SYNOPSIS

Objective. Understanding how parents socialize shame may shed light on two related issues: why some children experience intense shame, and whether shame serves as an indirect pathway between parenting behavior and academic and mental health outcomes in middle childhood. Design. This cross-sectional study examined socialization of shame with mothers (N = 98, M_age = 38.73 years) and their school-aged children (53 girls, M_age = 11.55 years). Mothers reported their use of negative conditional regard (NCR) as it pertains to their children’s academic performance, a salient domain of functioning in this developmental stage. Children completed a brief narrative task that was coded to measure their shame-specific emotion regulation; they also participated in an impossible-puzzle stressor to assess task persistence and self-reported their depressive symptoms. Results. Separate models examining the unique effects of NCR in the academic domain and its associations with task persistence during the stressor and with child depressive symptoms showed that children’s more intense shame responses were an indirect pathway between higher NCR and these two distinct child outcomes. Conclusions. Parent use of NCR in the academic domain places school-aged children at higher risk for intense shame and thereby for lower persistence on challenging tasks and more depressive symptoms.

AFFILIATIONS AND ADDRESSES

Patricia A. Smiley, Department of Psychological Science, Pomona College, 647 N. College Way, Claremont, CA 91711. Email: [email protected]. Hannah F. Rasmussen is at the University of Southern California, Katherine V. Buttitta is at Boston Children’s Hospital, Hannah K. Hecht and Kelly M. Scharlach are at Pomona College, and Jessica L. Borelli is at the University of California, Irvine.

ARTICLE INFORMATION

Conflict of interest disclosures

Each author signed a form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. No authors reported any financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the word described.

Ethical principles

The authors affirm having followed professional ethical guidelines in preparing this work. These guidelines include obtaining informed consent from human participants, maintaining ethical treatment and respect for the rights of human or animal participants, and enduring the privacy of participants and their data, such as ensuring that individual participants cannot be identified in reported results or from publicly available original or archival data.

Role of the funders/sponsors

None of the funders or sponsors of this research had any role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Conflict of interest disclosures

Each author signed a form for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. No authors reported any financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the word described.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the undergraduate and graduate student members of the Child Attachment Emotions and Relationships (CARE) Laboratory at Pomona College for their assistance and enthusiasm throughout the study, and to the parents and children who graciously participated. The ideas and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors alone, and endorsement by the authors’ institutions or funders is not intended and should not be inferred.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by internal faculty research grants from Pomona College.