Vagal Suppression Buffers Against the Negative Effects of Psychological Inflexibility on Parenting Behaviors in Combat Deployed Fathers

SYNOPSIS

Objective: Vagal suppression is a parasympathetic physiological indicator of emotion regulation and social engagement behaviors, often measured via heart rate variability. Experiential avoidance reflects psychological inflexibility or poor emotion regulation. We tested the interaction effects of parental vagal suppression and experiential avoidance on observed parenting behaviors among combat deployed fathers. Design. We analyzed data from 92 male National Guard/Reserve members who had returned from a deployment to Iraq and/or Afghanistan since 2001. They were mostly European American, in their 30s, middle-class, and married. All fathers participated in home-based assessments with their spouses (if married) and a target child aged 4–13 years. Fathers’ vagal suppression was measured as the decrease in cardiac vagal tone (i.e., high frequency heart rate variability) from a neutral reading task to a father-child conflict resolution task. Experiential avoidance was self-reported. Parenting behaviors were observed during family interaction tasks and coded into positive engagement and withdrawal avoidance using a macro-level coding system. Results. Multiple regression analysis showed no main effects of vagal suppression on observed parenting, but interaction effects of experiential avoidance by vagal suppression on observed parenting. Specifically, among fathers with higher vagal suppression, we found no relations between experiential avoidance and observed parenting; among fathers with lower vagal suppression, we found an inverse association between experiential avoidance and positive engagement as well as a positive association between experiential avoidance and withdrawal avoidance. Conclusions. The effect of psychological inflexibility on military fathers’ parenting behaviors was moderated by vagal suppression. The findings have implications for the linkage between emotion regulation and parenting in military fathers.

ADDRESSES AND AFFILIATIONS

Na Zhang, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Connecticut. John Hoch, Ph.D., is psychologist and clinical researcher at Fraser and Research Associate at the University of Minnesota. Abigail Gewirtz, Ph.D., is  Professor in the Department of Family Social Science & Institute of Child Development, & Institute for Translational Research in Children's Mental Health, University of Minnesota. Andrew Barnes, M.D., M.P.H., is Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota. James Snyder, Ph.D., (deceased) was Distinguished Professor, Department of Psychology, Wichita State University, KS.

ARTICLE INFORMATION

Conflict of Interest Disclosures

No authors reported any financial or other conflicts of interest in relation to the work described.

Ethical Principles

The authors affirm having followed professional, ethical guidelines in the study. These guidelines include obtaining informed consent from human participants, maintaining ethical treatment and respect for the rights of human participants, and ensuring 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

None of funders had any role in the design 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.

SUPPLEMENTAL ONLINE MATERIAL

To demonstrate the psychophysiological data processing procedures used in this study, the authors provided supplemental materials including exemplar cardiac data files, a time-stamp file, and RHRV scripts, which are available online.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by grants from NIDA as follows: R01-DA-030114 to Abigail Gewirtz, and R03-DA-034166 to James Snyder. Na Zhang’s work on this paper was supported in part by a National Research Service Award (NRSA) in Primary Prevention by NIDA T32DA039772-03.