However, given the major differences in social knowledge
and skills and the imbalance of power between parents
and children, parents’ ineffective regulation of
emotion is likely to have a greater influence on both shortand
long-term outcomes than children’s ineffective regulation.
Research has shown that children are as sensitive to
nonverbal anger or to distressed emotions as they are to
overt or verbally expressed anger (Cummings et al. 1991).
Indeed, considerable research demonstrates the signifi-
cance of high parental negative emotion to dysfunctional
family processes and to various developmental problems in
children (Leung and Slep 2006). Parents who display high
levels of negative emotion also engage in harsher and overreactive
discipline (Leung and Slep 2006) and in more
coercive exchanges with their children (Patterson 2002).
These negative parenting behaviors may, in part, explain
associations between parents’ negative emotion and children’s
poor socioemotional adjustment (Dix 1991). Further,
parents’ displays of negative emotion in response to
their child’s negative emotion have been specifically linked
to children’s impaired emotional regulation and social
skills and to heightened behavior problems (Schultz et al.
2001).