The interplay between parenting stress, parental self-compassion, and parent sex in parental emotion socialization

Parents play a crucial role in the development of children's emotion regulation skills, making it essential to understand the parental factors that influence this process. While parenting stress and self-compassion are known to impact general parenting practices (e.g., responsivity), less is known about how these factors shape parental support with specific emotion regulation strategies, especially in fathers and children in middle or late childhood. This study aimed to investigate the moderating effects of self-compassion and parent sex on the relation between parenting stress and parental assistance with child emotion regulation. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted using data from parental self-report questionnaires, collected from a sample of Dutch parents ( N  = 198 parents, M _age = 42.8, 60.6% mothers) of children aged 6–12 ( M _age = 9.1, 52% girl). The results revealed that higher parenting stress was associated with reduced parental support for adaptive emotion regulation strategies (e.g., reappraisal) and greater encouragement of maladaptive strategies (e.g., expressive suppression). Self-compassion buffered the relation between parenting stress and expressive suppression and positively predicted several adaptive strategies (e.g., acceptance). Lastly, fathers reported providing less support with five out of the 10 emotion regulation strategies (e.g., reappraisal) compared to mothers. These findings demonstrate a negative relation between parenting stress and parent-child co-regulation processes, while pointing to self-compassion as a potential protective factor. Interventions aimed at improving parental emotion coaching might benefit from incorporating self-compassion to enhance psychosocial outcomes for both parents and children.