This study examined the roles of parental emotion regulation strategies and child temperament in children’s socioemotional functioning. In this study, children’s socioemotional functioning is defined through five key dimensions: emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, peer problems, and prosocial behavior (Goodman, 1997). Adaptive socioemotional functioning enables children to understand and regulate their emotions, build positive relationships, adopt socially appropriate behaviors, and cultivate empathy, all of which enhance their ability to engage effectively in social interactions (Hirvonen et al., 2018). Parents play an important role in this developmental process (Denham et al., 2009).  Previous research has indicated that difficulties in parental emotion regulation and alexithymia associated with higher levels of emotional symptoms, conduct problems, and hyperactivity/inattention in children (Davodi-Boroujerd et al., 2021; Scarzello, 2023; Wang et al., 2025).

According to the emotion socialization theory (Eisenberg et al., 1998), the way parents regulate their emotions influences their parenting behaviors, which in turn affects their children’s emotional arousal. Furthermore, within the framework of the role of parental emotion regulation in emotional socialization, the strategies parents employ, which include differentiating between adaptive and maladaptive approaches, impact children’s internalization and externalization issues (Havighurst & Kehoe, 2017). Despite this knowledge, there remains a gap in understanding how different parental emotion regulation strategies relate to specific aspects of children’s socioemotional functioning. Notably, strategies such as cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, rumination, problem-solving, seeking social support, overall emotion regulation difficulties, and alexithymia (Preece et al., 2022) have not been examined collectively in relation to children’s socioemotional outcomes.

Children’s individual characteristics may further influence these associations. According to the child-environment model of adaptation, the type of environmental support best suited to children, as well as the types of environmental risks to which they are particularly vulnerable, depends on their individual characteristics (Nigg, 2006). The goodness-of-fit theory (Thomas & Chess, 1977) suggests that the relationship between children’s temperament and their socioemotional functioning is affected by the compatibility between their temperament and their developmental environment. although child temperament has been shown to moderate the relationship between personal or caregiving aspects of parenting and children’s socioemotional functioning (Çelebi & Acar, 2024; Hirvonen et al., 2018), little is known about how different temperament traits influence the associations between parental emotion regulation strategies and children’s socioemotional functioning. To address the limitations of previous research, this study aimed to explore how various parental emotion regulation strategies relate to the socioemotional functioning of children aged 4–17 years and how temperament may moderate these relationships.

This study’s research questions are:

1. How do parental emotional regulation strategies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, rumination, problem-solving, social support seeking, overall emotion regulation difficulties, and alexithymia) relate to their children’s socioemotional functioning?
2. How does a child’s temperament relate to socioemotional functioning?
3. To what extent does a child’s temperament moderate the associations between parental emotion regulation and children’s socioemotional functioning?

The data used for the present study is part of a broader ongoing international research project International Investigation of Parental Burnout (IIPB) involving more than 50 countries around the world (https://www.burnoutparental.com/international-consortium). The Finnish data used in the present study (the webpage of the research project: https://www.jyu.fi/en/projects/voiku-2018-2024). Data in this study were analyzed from 623 children whose parents indicated that their most challenging child was between the ages of 4 and 17 years (mean age = 9.15). Furthermore, a subgroup of parents (n = 478) provided information about their emotional regulation strategies. Parental emotion regulation strategies were assessed through a self-reported questionnaire consisting of 7 items related to individual emotion regulation approaches. These items were developed by David Preece and James Gross, drawing on their expertise in previous emotion regulation research (Gross, 2015; Preece et al., 2022). Moreover, children’s socioemotional functioning was evaluated using parent reports on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) (Goodman, 1997). The SDQ is a 25-item questionnaire designed for parents to evaluate their children’s, aged 4–17 years, scoring each item between one and three points. Child temperament was assessed through parent reports using an adaptation of the Children’s Behavior Questionnaire Very Short Scale (Sleddens et al., 2012). This study controlled parental status (i.e., father or mother), parental educational level, child’s age and whether the parents considered that their children had special needs. General Linear Modeling (GLM) was used to investigate the relationships between parental emotion regulation strategies and children’s socioemotional functioning, as well as between child temperament and socioemotional functioning. Furthermore, GLM was used to analyze the interaction effects of parental emotion regulation strategies and child temperament on children’s socioemotional functioning. Follow-up analyses were conducted separately for the surgency/extroversion, negative affectivity, and effortful control temperaments where necessary.

The present study provides promising evidence that parental alexithymia, especially parents’ difficulties in identifying their negative emotions, plays a significant role in children’s emotional symptoms, conduct problems, and hyperactivity/inattention, while other parental emotion strategies did not show similar associations. More importantly, the current study demonstrated that a child’s temperament can moderate the relationship between parental emotion regulation and children’s socioemotional functioning, with the surgency/extroversion temperament being the most sensitive to parental emotion regulation strategies. Among children with surgency/extroversion and effortful control, higher parental expressive suppression was associated with more peer problems. Additionally, among surgency/extroversion children, higher parental cognitive reappraisal was related to greater prosocial behavior. Conversely, among children with negative affect, higher parental social support seeking was related to more emotional symptoms. These findings suggest that it is important for parents to be aware of their emotion regulation styles, as they can impact children’s socioemotional functioning. These results should encourage the design of interventions for children’s socioemotional functioning that not only strengthen parents’ emotion regulation strategies but also consider the child’s temperament in the parent–child interaction.

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