Emotion Regulation and Profiles of Parental Academic Involvement: A Longitudinal Person-Centered Study of Parenting Dynamics and Their Impact on Children and Parents

This study aimed to deepen our understanding of parental academic involvement by examining the quality of parental involvement, its underlying emotional processes, and its impact on children and parents themselves from an organismic perspective. Using latent profile and latent transition analyses with a two-wave sample of 1,059 U.S. parents (52% mothers) of 6th–9th graders, five parental involvement profiles were identified based on four involvement dimensions (i.e., autonomy support, psychological control, provision of structure, and warmth): Need-Supportive (~ 8%), Autonomy-Supportive Warm (~ 10%), Low Involved (~ 20%), Controlling (~ 27%), and Mixed (~ 35%). The Controlling profile showed the highest stability (82%), while the Need-Supportive profile demonstrated the highest dynamics (53%). Parental integrative emotion regulation predicted the highest probability of membership in the Need-supportive profile, whereas parental emotional dysregulation was associated with the highest likelihood of belonging to the Controlling profile. Overall, time-invariant sociodemographic factors and parental health-related problems (e.g., feeling depressed, physical pain) had minimal effects on profile probabilities. Findings regarding outcomes suggest that the Need-supportive profile is the most adaptive, contributing to a sense of self-determination in parenting, whereas the Controlling profile is the most dysfunctional, linking to the highest levels of exhaustion and need frustration in parenting. However, no differences in offspring’s school performance were found to be associated with profile membership. The study has important implications for understanding parental involvement quality and suggests ways to support parents.