Maternal coping and emotion regulation processes are differentially associated with dynamic mother-child affect...

Both maternal coping and emotion regulation (ER) encompass responses to emotional and environmental demands and have been associated with the parent-child relationship broadly. Less is known about how coping and ER strategies are associated with dynamic mother-child affect expression specifically, which lays the foundation for the parent-child relationship and children's socioemotional development. In a sample of 80 mothers (M_age = 35.97 years, SD = 5.46 years) and their children (M_age = 5.88 years, SD = 0.80 years; 54% girls; 46% boys), the present study examined relations between maternal coping and ER with four indicators of dynamic mother-child affect expression: transitions, dispersion, shared positive affect cell duration, and shared negative affect cell duration. Mothers reported on their coping and ER. Dyads engaged in a video-recorded stress task that was later microcoded for affect expression then calculated into dynamic affect indices using a state space grid. Coping and ER were differentially related to indicators of mother-child affect expression. For mothers reporting higher approach coping, dyads displayed fewer affect shifts (transitions), less shared negative affect, and less range of expressed affect (dispersion), whereas mothers with greater cognitive reappraisal had marginally, higher dyadic dispersion. Conversely, dyads of mothers reporting elevated emotional suppression demonstrated higher dispersion as well as, marginally, greater transitions. Interestingly, neither coping nor ER processes were related to shared positive affect duration. Together, results highlight the importance of understanding maternal coping and ER processes as predictors of mother-child dynamic affect expression within the early school-age period. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).