The Impact of Parental Alcohol Use on Child Emotion Socialization Across the Transition to Formal Schooling

Led by Becca Brock
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Study Overview:

Parental alcohol use has the potential to negatively impact child development by undermining adaptive emotion regulation, a transdiagnostic predictor of later psychopathology. For example, acute alcohol intoxication can undermine a parent’s sensitivity and responsiveness when a child is distressed, compromising a parent’s ability to teach adaptive emotion regulation skills.

Parents who use alcohol to regulate their own emotions might also model alcohol use as a way of coping with distress, which could shape a child’s own alcohol expectancies and motives for drinking. However, few studies have directly investigated the potential for parental alcohol use—even use that does not rise to the level of abuse—to undermine the process through which parents socialize their children to their emotions and, in turn, the development of emotion regulation skills in children.

The objective of this project is to determine the impact of parental alcohol use on emotion socialization across the transition to formal schooling, a key developmental period when children depend on emotion regulation skills to confront new academic and socioemotional challenges in the context of increasing autonomy. The central hypothesis to be tested is that parental alcohol use patterns across this transition will undermine key dimensions of emotion socialization (i.e., modeling of adaptive emotion regulation skills, a safe and secure family emotional climate, supportive parenting behaviors in response to child distress).

 

Specific Aims:

(Aim 1): Determine the impact of parental alcohol use on emotion socialization of the child following the transition into formal schooling. We will use lab-based paradigms, behavioral observations, and surveys to assess emotion socialization. We hypothesize that more frequent and heavy alcohol consumption and more alcohol-related impairments, such as failing to meet responsibilities, when children are three to eight will be associated with greater deficits in emotion socialization at age eight. We also expect that greater parental motives and expectancies for drinking alcohol to avoid emotions will correlate with poorer emotion socialization.
 

(Aim 2): Establish the accuracy, feasibility, and validity of a next-generation continuous-time interaction and responsive ecological momentary assessment to assess real-world and real-time emotion socialization. We will pilot an adaptation of the RDAR Center’s Open Dynamic Interaction Network (ODIN) technology to measure emotion socialization processes to determine the impact of long-term patterns of parental alcohol use on these dynamic, daily socialization processes. We will examine (a) accuracy in detecting parent-child interactions by tracking proximity using Bluetooth capabilities (i.e., true positive rates), (b) feasibility, as indicated by response rates to survey prompts following detected interactions, and (c) incremental predictive validity of ODIN scores in explaining child emotion regulation beyond established measures of emotion socialization.

 

Study Sample Population:

An existing cohort of 151 families who have participated in a long-term longitudinal study spanning pregnancy to preschool will be leveraged.

 

Unique Study Procedures:

Longitudinal, Responsive Ecological Momentary Assessments, Child Narratives of Family Experiences, Behavioral Observations

 

Long-Term Goals:

Our long-term goal is to identify modifiable factors within the family, including parental behaviors such as alcohol use, that impact child development and self-regulation.

 

Becca Brock
PROJECT Director

Dr. Brock received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Iowa. She is a faculty member in the Clinical Psychology Training Program, the Quantitative Training Coordinator in the Department of Psychology, and the director of the UNL Family Development Lab. She is also associate editor for the journal Family Process. Broadly speaking, her research is aimed at understanding how couple and family relationships impact depression, anxiety, and alcohol use. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health. She was a recipient of the UNL Dean's Award for Excellence in Graduate Education for teaching and mentoring.

Full Becca Brock bio