Maternal emotion regulation and mother-infant interactions

Abstract

Background Poor maternal emotion regulation is associated with poor maternal mental health. In turn, poor maternal mental health is related to disrupted mother- infant interactions and risks for poor child socio-emotional outcomes. There is limited research examining the impact of different emotion regulation strategies on mother- infant interactions. This study examined the relationship between two emotion regulation strategies, self-compassion and suppression, on a mother’s ability to display mind-mindedness in interactions with her infant. It was hypothesised a self- compassion induction would increase maternal mind-mindedness relative to a suppression induction, and this would be intensified following a challenging task. Method A mixed (pre-post, between groups) design was utilised whereby 42 mother- infant dyads took part. Mothers were asked to complete a range of self-report measures assessing maternal mood, maternal responsiveness and emotion regulation abilities, as well as two (pre-post induction) mother-infant interaction play sessions. Participants were randomly assigned to either a self-compassion or suppression induction to assess the impact of maternal emotion regulation on maternal interactions. Videos were coded for mind-mindedness using ratio scores for both appropriate and non-attuned comments. Results Consistent with hypotheses, the self-compassion induction had higher appropriate mind-related comments relative to the suppression induction. No differences were found between groups for non-attuned comments. Self-compassion was also associated with larger increases in pleasant mood and arousal, and decreases in negative mood compared to the suppression condition. Mothers in the self-compassion condition showed a greater desire to want to comfort distressed MATERNAL EMOTION REGULATION AND MIND-MINDEDNESS 79 infant faces and were less likely to turn away or feel anxious, relative to mothers in the suppression condition. Conclusions Findings demonstrated that relative to suppression, self-compassion improved maternal mood and approach-oriented aspects of mother-infant interactions, including appropriate comments and responsiveness to distressed infants, but did not affect non-attuned comments. Clinical implications and future research are discussed. Keywords: emotion regulation, self-compassion, suppression, mother-infant interaction, maternal mind-mindedness