Child Effortful Control Moderates the Link Between Parenting Stress and Child Parasympathetic Regulation: Interactions Across Contexts and Measures

Abstract

Parenting stress—psychosocial challenges from the parental role—is strongly tied to children's self-regulatory abilities. Although cognitive and physiological facets of self-regulation are integrated, research on parenting stress and children's parasympathetic activity is virtually absent. Additionally, few studies have examined changes in children's parasympathetic regulation across settings with and without a parent present. This study examined whether parenting stress is differentially associated with children's parasympathetic activity, indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), as a function of their effortful control (EC). We tested whether interactions varied across EC measures (parent-reported vs. task-assessed) and the context of children's physiology assessment (child vs. parent–child). Parents (N = 67, M = 38.01 years) and children (N = 70, M = 51.41 months) provided data during a 2-h lab visit. Results showed that parent-reported EC moderated the association only in the parent–child context, whereas the task-assessed EC moderation effect was present in both contexts. However, the effect of parenting stress on child RSA at levels of task-assessed EC differed across contexts. Parallels in patterns of findings are discussed with reference to ecological affinity and whether a similar adaptive process emerges when both cognitive and physiological self-regulation are assessed under comparable contextual demands.