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Fathers’ parenting, adverse life events, and adolescents’ emotional and eating disorder symptoms: the role of emotion regulation

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Abstract

Purpose

To investigate the role of emotion regulation in the relation between fathers’ parenting (specifically warmth, behavioral control and psychological control) and adolescents’ emotional and eating disorder symptoms, after adjustment for controls.

Methods

A total of 203 11–18 year-old students from a school in a socio-economically disadvantaged area in North-East London completed questionnaires assessing emotional symptoms (measured with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire’s (SDQ) Emotional Symptoms Scale), eating disorder symptoms (measured with the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26)), difficulties in emotion regulation (measured with the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS)), and fathers’ overprotection and warmth, measured with the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI), as well as behavioral and psychological control. The confounding variables considered were number of proximal (i.e., during the last year) adverse life events experienced, gender, age, and socio-economic status (eligibility for free school meals).

Results

Adolescents’ difficulties in emotion regulation mediated the link between fathers’ psychological control and adolescents’ emotional symptoms, but not the link between fathers’ parenting and adolescents’ eating disorder symptoms, which appeared to be more directly linked to fathers’ psychological control and number of proximal adverse life events experienced. Proximal adverse life events experienced were also strongly associated with difficulties in emotion regulation.

Conclusions

The study findings have implications for intervention programs which may prove more fruitful in addressing adolescent emotional problems by targeting underlying emotion regulation abilities, and in addressing adolescent eating disorder symptoms by protecting adolescents with a recent experience of multiple adverse life events. Parenting programs also stand to benefit from the evidence presented in this study that paternal psychological control may have uniquely harmful consequences for adolescent development through the hampering or atrophying of emotion regulation abilities and the encouragement of eating disorders.

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Acknowledgments

The data used in this study were collected by the first author for the dissertation she submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MSc in Child Development. The dissertation was supervised by the second author. The authors gratefully acknowledge Rachel Hodgins and Anna Walton who helped with the data collection, and the British Academy and the UK Economic and Social Research Council for supporting the second author.

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  1. Dept. of Psychology and Human Development, Institute of Education, University of London, 25 Woburn Square, London, WC1H 0AA, UK

    Ciara McEwen &  Eirini Flouri

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Correspondence to Eirini Flouri.

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McEwen, C., Flouri, E. Fathers’ parenting, adverse life events, and adolescents’ emotional and eating disorder symptoms: the role of emotion regulation. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 18, 206–216 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-008-0719-3

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