The Child and Parent Emotion Study, led by Associate Professor Dr Elizabeth Westrupp, is an age-stratified longitudinal cohort study that examined parenting, parent/child mental health, and emotion regulation in an international sample of families.
The Child and Parent Emotion Study recruited 1,992 parents of children aged 0–9 years and 264 prospective parents (i.e., pregnant parents of their first child) in 2018–2019. Parents were residents of Australia, New Zealand, US, Canada, UK, and Ireland. Between 2018 and 2022, parents completed annual self-report surveys online.
The Child and Parent Emotion Study is the first multicountry and large-scale longitudinal study investigating mother and father emotion socialisation and child development from pregnancy and across early and middle childhood. CAPES included longitudinal, repeated measurement of a range of parent, family and environmental factors, allowing investigation of the nature and direction of associations between emotion socialisation and child outcomes. Data collection with first-time pregnant parents allowed investigation of how parents’ pre-existing emotion regulation skills and beliefs about emotions influence their subsequent emotion socialisation practices after becoming a parent.
Key findings and takeaways from published CAPES papers are the following:
- Children of parents with maladaptive parenting patterns are at greater risk for negative outcomes, such as negative affect, internalising and externalising problems, and lower levels of emotion regulation.
- Parent, child, and contextual factors play an in important role in shaping parenting. For instance, fathers measured higher for maladaptive parenting compared to mothers, such as difficulties with reflective functioning and emotion dismissing parenting.
- Short-form versions of the ‘Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale’, a widely used parent-report measure of emotion-related parenting, were created with data collected from CAPES. These measures have strong construct validity and reliability and are viable alternatives to the original measure.
Investigators
Study focus
Emotion regulation refers to the ability to understand emotions and to control their expression. These skills are foundational and underpin lifelong wellbeing and mental health by determining our ability to form and maintain relationships, manage conflict, and navigate the challenges of daily life. Difficulties with emotion regulation are linked to child internalising and externalising problems, and to peer rejection, antisocial behaviour, and suicide attempts in later life.
Sampling frame
Participants were eligible to participate in the current study if they were pregnant with their first child and in the second or third trimester of pregnancy, the partner of a person currently pregnant with their first child and in the second or third trimester of pregnancy; or a current parent of a child aged 0–9 years. Participants were required to be between the ages of 18 years and 65 years, and reside in one of the following English-speaking countries: Australia; New Zealand; UK; Ireland; USA; or Canada. A pilot sample of parents were recruited in 2018, and a second larger sample of parents were recruited in 2019.
Data access
Data collected by CAPES can be accessed by eligible individuals (persons involved in parenting research) on the Australian Data Archive, for participants who provided additional consent to have their data shared for research-related purposes.
Time period
2019 - 2022Original sample size
2,256Intergenerational
NoImaging
NoLinkage
NoBiosamples
NoEthics approvals or requirements
Ethics approval was granted by the Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee (Project: 2018–144, concerning the cohort of prospective/pregnant parents) and the Deakin University Faculty of Health Human Research Ethics Committee (Project: HEAG-H 75_2018, concerning the cohort of current parents). Any protocol modifications will be submitted for approval to the respective committees.Key references
Bennett, C., Regan, D., Dunsmore, J. C., King, G., & Westrupp, E. M. (2023). Social and emotional determinants of parental reflective functioning in a multinational sample. Journal of Family Psychology, 37(6), 818–829. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0001132
King, G. L., Macdonald, J. A., Greenwood, C. J., Kehoe, C., Dunsmore, J. C., Havighurst, S. S., Youssef, G. J., Berkowitz, T. S., & Westrupp, E. M. (2023). Profiles of parents' emotion socialization within a multinational sample of parents. Frontiers in psychology, 14, 1161418. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1161418
Frogley, W. J., King, G. L., & Westrupp, E. M. (2023). Profiles of parent emotion socialization: Longitudinal associations with child emotional outcomes. Mental Health and Prevention, 30, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mhp.2023.200274
Westrupp, E. M., Macdonald, J. A., Bennett, C., Havighurst, S., Kehoe, C. E., Foley, D., Berkowitz, T. S., King, G. L. & Youssef, G. J. (2020). The Child and Parent Emotion Study: protocol for a longitudinal study of parent emotion socialisation and child socioemotional development. BMJ open, 10(10), e038124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-038124
King, G. L., Kehoe, C. E., Havighurst, S. S., Youssef, G. J., Macdonald, J. A., Dunsmore, J. C., Berkowitz, T. S., & Westrupp, E. M. (2022). Creation of a Short-Form and Brief Short-Form Version of the Coping With Children’s Negative Emotions Scale. Assessment, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/10731911221126919
Primary institution
Major funding sources
Contact
Cohort Representative
Address
School of PsychologyFaculty of Health, Deakin University