Parenting practices and emotion regulation in national guard and reserve families: Early findings from the after deployment adaptive parenting tools/ADAPT study

Abigail Gewirtz, Laurel Davis

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

While a caregiver's military status per se is not a risk factor for children's adjustment, deployment is a signifi cant family stressor, which places children at risk for behavior and emotional problems. We hypothesize that deployment (i.e. separation from spouse and child(ren), exposure to combat, reintegration, and further deployment) may impair parenting by infl uencing parents' emotion regulation capacities. We report baseline data from the After Deployment: Adaptive Parenting Tools study, an NIH-funded effectiveness study of a parenting program for Reserve component families. Data were gathered from N = 89 military and civilian parents in families where a parent had deployed to the current confl icts. Parents completed self-report measures of emotion regulation, and parenting. On average, deployed individuals (N = 52) reported more diffi culties in emotion regulation than civilian parents. Across gender, mothers reported more diffi culties than fathers with deployed mothers reporting the most diffi culties. Emotion regulation explained a signifi cant proportion of the variance in parenting practices, and associations of deployment to parenting and emotion regulation approached signifi cance in a regression analysis. Results are discussed in the context of the challenges facing deployed parents-particularly mothers-and the potential for programs targeting parenting in military families experiencing deployment.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationMilitary Deployment and its Consequences for Families
PublisherSpringer New York
Pages111-131
Number of pages21
ISBN (Electronic)9781461487128
ISBN (Print)9781461487111
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2014

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014.

Keywords

  • ADAPT (after deployment, adaptive parenting tools)
  • Child adjustment
  • Deployment
  • Emotion regulation
  • Intervention
  • Military families
  • Parental adjustment
  • Parenting
  • Prevention

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