(PS4-D79) Parenting Self-efficacy as Embodied Cognition: Interactive Effects of Parent and Child Arousal on Parenting Confidence

Parenting is difficult, especially when children enter adolescence and parent-child conflict increases (Hollenstein & Lougheed, 2013). According to basic social cognitive theory, self-efficacy (i.e., self-confidence) arises from experiences of mastery, including successfully managing emotional arousal (Bandura, 1977). By extension, parenting self-efficacy (PSE; confidence in one’s parenting ability), might reflect parents’ success in managing arousal during challenging parenting interactions (Skowron et al., 2010; Strahan et al., 2017). Furthermore, given that parents implicitly sense their children’s arousal (Perlman et al., 2022), we predicted that the link between parent arousal and PSE may be moderated by the child’s arousal during challenging interactions, such that higher child arousal during the conflict task would suppress the relationship between parent arousal and PSE.   

This study draws on a sample of 162 youth oversampled for emotion dysregulation (ages 10-13; 47% female; 60% racial/ethnic minority) and their primary caregivers (94% female). Parents reported on their trait-level PSE (PSOC; Johnston & Mash, 1989). The dyad engaged in a series of laboratory tasks, including a baseline and an 8-minute conflict discussion. Parent and child arousal was estimated during each task using respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a marker of parasympathetic regulation (high arousal indexed inversely by low RSA; Porges, 2007). We examined the interactive effects of parent and child arousal during conflict on PSE using hierarchical linear regression. The interaction of parent and child RSA during conflict, with main effects, were entered in Step 1. Relevant covariates were added sequentially to probe robustness (parent age and SES in Step 2; parent and child baseline RSA in Steps 3 and 4, respectively.

As predicted, PSE was associated with the interaction of parent and child RSA during conflict. This effect was not significant in Step 1 (b = 1.61, p = .059), but became significant in Step 2 when controlling for age and SES (b = 1.69,  p = .045) and remained significant in Step 3, controlling for parents’ baseline RSA (b = 1.67, p = .048). The pattern was as expected, such that when child RSA was low during conflict (-1 SD), that is when children were more aroused, parent RSA during conflict was inversely related to PSE (b = -2.40, p = .047). When child RSA was high (+1 SD), that is when children were less aroused, high parent RSA was unrelated to PSE (b = 0.76, p = .448). Interestingly, adding child baseline RSA in Step 4 weakened the interaction (b = 1.47, p = .088), perhaps because children were already anxious at baseline. Overall results suggest that for parents of children with higher arousal during conflict, PSE may be related to exhibiting corresponding levels of high affective arousal. Findings support conceptualizations of self-efficacy as an embodied cognition, an inference made by reading one’s own arousal and, in a parenting context, by reading arousal in one’s child. Ultimately, the dynamic interplay of parent-child affective responses, and their perception, may help foster or impair parenting self-efficacy, with clinical implications.