4 - (SYM 100) All in the Family: Exploring Emotion Regulation, Parenting Stress, and Daily Romantic Relationship Functioning Among Mothers with PTSD

Substantial research demonstrates that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can negatively impact parenting in a variety of ways, including via increased parental stress and use of less effective parenting strategies (Christie et al., 2019). Similarly, PTSD can detrimentally impact romantic relationships via decreased intimacy and conflict resolution challenges (Campbell & Renshaw, 2018). While the literature sheds light on PTSD in different contexts of parenting and relationships, less research is focused on understanding the processes through which the mental health of one family member may spill over into both parenting and intimate relationship domains. Additionally, research tends to rely on one-time measures of relationship functioning, which may be biased and less ecologically valid, as well as racially and ethnically homogenous samples, which limit generalizability of findings. To address these gaps, the present study explored whether higher emotion dysregulation in mothers with PTSD predicted greater daily relationship problems indirectly via higher parenting stress in a diverse sample of mothers.
A total of 51 partnered mothers (half identifying as racial/ethnic minorities) meeting diagnostic criteria for PTSD from interpersonal trauma completed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-16 (DERS-16; Bjureberg et al., 2016) and the Parental Stress Scale (Berry & Jones, 1995) to measure current emotion regulation problems and parental stress, respectively. Next, participants rate four aspects of couple functioning, including closeness, cooperation, anger towards partner, and amount of arguing, on a Likert scale every day on their phones for seven days; scores were averaged across the week with higher scores representing more relationship problems. Results revealed direct effects of emotion regulation problems on higher parental stress, b = 0.333, 95% CI [0.150, 0.517] and higher parental stress on poorer daily couple functioning, b = -0.062, 95% CI [-0.110, -0.013]. Further, parental stress mediated the association between emotion regulation problems and daily relationship functioning, b = -0.021, 95% CI [-0.045, -0.004].  Results suggest that parents with PTSD might benefit from additional support with emotion regulation and parental stress management to reduce negative impacts on daily relationship functioning. Future work could focus on teaching mothers with PTSD effective emotion regulation strategies, such as reappraisal and acceptance, to reduce parenting stress and improve couple functioning.