It is becoming increasingly clear that emotion regulation (ER) plays a crucial role in parenting. In this chapter, we consider the role of parental ER in parental stress and parental burnout. In the first section, we define ER and its various facets in the parenting domain. In the second section, we focus on the protective role of parent’s self-focused (intrinsic) ER vis-à-vis parenting stress and burnout. Specifically, we show how parents’ efficient regulation of their own emotions mitigates parenting stress levels and reduces the risk for parental burnout. In the third section, we focus on the protective role of parent’s child-focused (extrinsic) ER vis-à-vis parenting stress and burnout. Specifically, we show how parents’ efficient regulation of their child(ren)’s emotions reduces their own parenting stress. Because perfect is often the enemy of good in the parenting domain, the fourth section presents recent evidence showing that too much ER may backfire and lead to increased parenting stress and burnout in the long run. Finally, we conclude with the most pressing research directions emerging from the evidence reviewed in this chapter.

The concluding chapter takes stock of findings and trends in the field, identifies key challenges, and highlights directions and methods for research. It focuses on the imbalance between the three elements comprising the field of emotion regulation in parenting: how parents regulate their own emotions, how parents regulate their own emotions in the context of parenting, and how parents regulate the child’s emotions during parent–child interaction. The most documented of the three is the regulation of the child’s emotions by the parent and its effect on child development. The chapter highlights other shortcomings, such as the importance given to parent-driven effects over child-driven effects, the predominance of correlational studies, and a tendency to simplify by considering the relationships between emotion regulation, parenting, and child development as linear and homogeneous. This chapter proposes future directions focusing on content and methodological issues to overcome the current limitations. Although much work has been done at the intersection of emotion regulation and parenting, much remains to be done. The perspectives proposed should stimulate research in this area.

INTRODUCTION

Parent – child relationships are something natural that perpetuates the human species, not only for the purpose of reproduction but also because human babies are born into a state of great dependence. They are ‘altricial’ mammals, i.e. being born in a very immature and helpless condition. In the absence of care, human babies cannot survive. They therefore have to be related to adults who take care for them. As we will see in the current chapter, these relationships that seem to stem from biological evidence are nowadays complex, due to the diversification of family groups, the emergence of medically assisted procreation techniques and the influence of cultural backgrounds. Of course, we must recognise that alloparenting, i.e. any form of parental care provided by an individual towards a non-descendent young, has always existed in most societies. In the past centuries, children of upper-class families were raised and even breastfed by nurses. And collective arrangements were frequent in the kibbutz or in polygamous families. But the reason why parent – child relationships became a matter of concern at the end of the twentieth century is that children's social status has profoundly changed. During the greatest part of history, until the end of the twentieth century actually, the child had been regarded as a sort of miniature adult, an unfinished being, a subject to be re-educated. Childhood was considered a bad time to pass. Children were subjected to exploitation, neglect and maltreatment in many societies. The idea that children must be given special protection emerged in the twentieth century with the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and finally, in 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child. And the notion of ‘best interests of the child’ appeared in this context. From that moment on, parent – child relationships were not only considered as a mean to ensure the survival of the human species, but as a setting to achieve child positive development.

Interestingly, psychology which is a young academic field compared to law, arose at the end of the nineteenth century. The study of the human mind and behaviour was firstly focused on adults. Scientific works concerning children emerged later.