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Parenting Practices and Emotion Regulation in National Guard and Reserve Families: Early Findings from the After Deployment Adaptive Parenting Tools/ADAPT Study

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Military Deployment and its Consequences for Families

Part of the book series: Risk and Resilience in Military and Veteran Families ((RRMV))

Abstract

While a caregiver’s military status per se is not a risk factor for children’s adjustment, deployment is a significant family stressor, which places children at risk for behavior and emotional problems. We hypothesize that deployment (i.e. separation from spouse and child(ren), exposure to combat, reintegration, and further deployment) may impair parenting by influencing parents’ emotion regulation capacities. We report baseline data from the After Deployment: Adaptive Parenting Tools study, an NIH-funded effectiveness study of a parenting program for Reserve component families. Data were gathered from N = 89 military and civilian parents in families where a parent had deployed to the current conflicts. Parents completed self-report measures of emotion regulation, and parenting. On average, deployed individuals (N = 52) reported more difficulties in emotion regulation than civilian parents. Across gender, mothers reported more difficulties than fathers with deployed mothers reporting the most difficulties. Emotion regulation explained a significant proportion of the variance in parenting practices, and associations of deployment to parenting and emotion regulation approached significance in a regression analysis. Results are discussed in the context of the challenges facing deployed parents—particularly mothers—and the potential for programs targeting parenting in military families experiencing deployment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Twenty-five percent of the deployed individuals in our sample are female (13 out of 52 deployed individuals); significantly higher than the proportion of women in the deployed military population as a whole (15 %).

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Acknowledgements

The research reported in this chapter was supported by grant # R01DA030114 from the Division of Epidemiology, Services, and Prevention Research at NIDA, to Abigail H. Gewirtz, Ph.D. We gratefully acknowledge the military families who have allowed us to learn from them by participating in the ADAPT study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Family Social Science & Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, 290 McNeal Hall, 1985 Buford Ave, St. Paul, MN, USA

    Abigail Gewirtz Ph.D., L.P.

  2. Department of Family Social Science, University of Minnesota, 290 McNeal Hall, 1985 Buford Ave, St. Paul, MN, USA

    Laurel Davis M.A.

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  1. Abigail Gewirtz Ph.D., L.P.
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  2. Laurel Davis M.A.
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Correspondence to Abigail Gewirtz Ph.D., L.P. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Development & Family Studies, Military Family Research Institute, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

    Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth

  2. Dept. Medical & Clinical Psychology, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

    David S. Riggs

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Gewirtz, A., Davis, L. (2014). Parenting Practices and Emotion Regulation in National Guard and Reserve Families: Early Findings from the After Deployment Adaptive Parenting Tools/ADAPT Study. In: MacDermid Wadsworth, S., Riggs, D. (eds) Military Deployment and its Consequences for Families. Risk and Resilience in Military and Veteran Families. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8712-8_7

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