Children Can “Catch” Their Mother’s Stress — Particularly If She Tries To Hide It

By Emily Reynolds The way parents feel and behave often rubs off on their children. Kids’ own life paths can be influenced by the strength of their parents’ romantic relationship, for example, or how often their parents lie to them. We may also pick things up as our parents try to hide them, as new research published in the Journal of Family Psychology suggests. Even when parents try to hide their stress, the team finds, they can still pass on those feelings to their children anyway. To examine how stress is passed on from parent to child, Sara Waters from Washington State University Vancouver and colleagues looked at the physiological responses that occur when parents suppressed their anxiety. A total of 107 parents and their children aged between 7 and 11 were first fitted with ECG sensors to measure the heart’s  “pre-ejection period” (PEP), a measure of sympathetic nervous system activation, before spending five minutes listening to soothing music through headphones. Parents were then separated from their children and completed a stress test, in which they were asked to give a five minute speech about themselves and then answer five minutes of questions in front of two evaluators. During the test, evaluators provided negative, non-verbal feedback, shaking their heads, crossing their arms and frowning. The stressed-out parents were then assigned to either a “suppression” or control condition, before being reunited with their children. Those in the suppressio...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Developmental Emotion Source Type: blogs