As parents, you want to protect your children from the big, tough feelings you experience. It seems natural to hide your frustration after a long day or keep your sadness hidden, believing your shielding them from stress. A fascinating study reveals that when we bottle up our emotions, it can actually backfire – and not just for you as parents, but for your children too!
Researcher Wendy Mendes and colleagues explored this in their 2018 study, “Not in Front of the Kids: Effects of Parental Suppression on Socialization Behaviours During Cooperative Parent-Child Interactions.” The findings are eye-opening! They found that when parents suppress their emotions, it does not just affect their own mood – it also impacts how children respond and feel during interactions.
How did they study emotion suppression in parents?
In the study, parents and children (ages 7-11) were asked to work together on a fun Lego-building task. Some parents were instructed to hide their feelings (especially if they were stressed), while others were free to express themselves naturally. The results found that parents who hid their emotions were less warm, less responsive, and overall, not as engaged. This trickled down to the children, who also showed fewer positive emotions, less warmth, and were less responsive.
Are there differences between mom and dad hiding emotions?
Now, here is where it gets even more interesting. The study uncovered some gender differences. When fathers suppressed their emotions, they were noticeably less warm and responsive, and the children of those fathers did not show a dramatic drop in positive behaviors. On the contrary, when mothers were asked to suppress their emotions, the mothers themselves did not lose their warmth or responsiveness as much, but their children did. Children of these mothers were less warm and engaged in response. Furthermore, a study conducted by Morelen & Suveg (2012) found that supportive and unsupportive emotion parenting influence children’s adaptive or maladaptive emotion regulation, finding that supportive parenting is linked to better child emotional functioning, while unsupportive interactions are tied to negative psychological outcomes.
How can you apply this in your home?
So, what does this mean for you as a parent? The message is clear: being open about your emotions might be the key to fostering stronger, more positive interactions with your children. Suppression may create an emotional distance that may affect the overall relationship.
This does not mean you should vent every frustration in front of your child, rather, it is about finding a balance and modelling healthy emotional expression. When you show your children that it is okay to feel and talk about their emotions, you are helping them develop crucial emotional intelligence.
Remember, your children learn from you! So next time you are feeling overwhelmed, instead of masking it, try acknowledging it in an age-appropriate way. It might just lead to better connections and a stronger parent-child bond.
References
Karnilowicz, H. R., Waters, S. F., & Mendes, W. B. (2019). Not in front of the kids: Effects of parental suppression on socialization behaviors during cooperative parent–child interactions. Emotion, 19(7), 1183.
Morelen, D., & Suveg, C. (2012). A real-time analysis of parent-child emotion discussions: the interaction is reciprocal. Journal of Family psychology, 26(6), 998.
