The Protective Effects of Parent-Child Emotion Dialogues for Preschoolers Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence

ABSTRACT

Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) during early childhood is associated with self-regulation difficulties. Caregivers can facilitate children’s self-regulation through emotion-focused conversations about past experiences, buffering downstream effects. However, caregivers experiencing violence may avoid distressing emotions activated by such conversations. This paper explores two different models of relational stress responses, one involving indirect effects (i.e. spillover effects) and the other moderation (i.e. buffering effects). Mothers (n = 117), oversampled for violence exposure, self-reported on IPV and participated in an emotional reminiscing task with children (aged 3–5 years); narratives were coded for maternal sensitive guidance. Maternal sensitive guidance was related to children’s self-regulation. Sensitive guidance did not have indirect effects in the association between IPV exposure and children’s self-regulation, but did buffer the association between physical IPV and self-regulation; this pattern did not hold for psychological IPV. Results suggest sensitive guidance during reminiscing may promote self-regulation in contexts of high IPV.

KEYWORDS:

• Intimate partner violence
• domestic violence
• sensitive guidance
• self-regulation
• parenting
• early childhood

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Brain & Behavior Foundation NARSAD Young Investigator Program, the Louisiana Board of Regents Research Competitiveness Subprogram, and the National Institutes of Health K23MH119047 (SG). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent official views of funding agencies. The authors have no other conflicts of interest to report. We would like to acknowledge the contributions of Rebecca Lipschutz, Hannah Swerbenski and Victoria Parker in their roles coordinating data collection.