Maternal emotion socialization in healthy children and children with food allergies
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Date
2017-01-01
Department
Psychology
Program
Psychology
Citation of Original Publication
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This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
Distribution Rights granted to UMBC by the author.
Distribution Rights granted to UMBC by the author.
Abstract
Mothers caring for children with food allergies face additional stress, anxiety, and parental responsibility for a child at constant risk of allergic exposure. The present study examined how maternal anxiety and protective parenting relate to mothers? supportive and nonsupportive responses to their children'semotions. Observational and self-report data were collected from 132 mother-child dyads, including 65 children with diagnosed food allergies and 67 healthy children, ages 3 to 6 years old. Protective parenting, state anxiety, and trait anxiety predicted differences in how mothers of children with food allergies responded to their children'semotions. In particular, mothers in the food allergy group were less likely to issue supportive responses and more likely to issue nonsupportive responses to children'spositive and internalizing affect than mothers of healthy children. This is the first study to demonstrate that parents may respond differently to medically vulnerable children'semotions.