Emotion regulation and resilience in parent–adolescent interactions among families of harmful versus non-harmful parental alcohol use

ABSTRACT

This study applied emotion regulation theory to examine parental communication that predicts possible markers of adolescent resilience in families of harmful versus non-harmful parental alcohol use. Parent-adolescent dyads (30 with and 30 without harmful parental alcohol use) participated in video-taped interactions rated for parents' emotion coaching and emotion dismissing communication and adolescents' emotion regulation and behavioral impulsivity. Emotion coaching was positively associated with adolescent emotion regulation and behavioral impulsivity. Emotion dismissing was only positively associated with adolescent behavioral impulsivity. Adolescents in families of harmful alcohol use demonstrated more impulsivity but also showed more emotion regulation in the presence of emotion dismissing communication. Findings suggest that dimensions of parental communication are uniquely associated with potential markers of adolescent resilience. For families of harmful parental alcohol use, results point to a need for greater consistency in parental communication behavior and efficacy in modeling desired expressions of emotions to foster adolescent resilience.

KEYWORDS:

• Parental communication
• resilience
• emotion regulation
• behavioral impulsivity
• harmful alcohol use

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Marie C. Haverfield http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2949-0229

Jennifer A. Theiss http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7991-7791

Notes

1 We did not require that the participating parent have an alcohol use disorder because we did not want to put the adolescents in situations that might cause discomfort. Evidence suggests that parent’s harmful alcohol use can affect communication dynamics in relationships across the entire family system (Johnson & Ray, 2016; Straussner & Fewell, 2011); thus, participating parents from these families are likely to demonstrate unique parental communication patterns regardless of whether they or their partner had the harmful alcohol use.

2 The 5-minute duration for each interaction follows procedures established by McLaren and Pederson (2014) who found that a 5-minute conversation was of sufficient length to document patterns of interaction among adolescents.

3 Prior research has shown 30-second intervals to be a sufficient amount of time to capture multiple conversational turns reflecting a shift in emotional tone (McLaren & Pederson, 2014). Also, using 30-second intervals produced 10 conversational ratings for each interaction, which was desirable for capturing variability in communication behavior across the interaction.

Additional information

Funding

Study partly funded through a Dissertation Grant courtesy of the Family Process Institute.