Mothers’ Tolerance of Own and Child Distress: Associations with Discipline Practices

SYNOPSIS Objective. To evaluate the associations among negative affect, mothers’ tolerance of her own and her child’s distress, and dysfunctional disciplinary practices. Design. In Study 1, 71 mothers of children ages 2–5 years completed concurrent measures of discipline, distress tolerance, tolerance of child distress, and parenting-specific anger. In Study 2, 91 mothers of children ages 2–5 years completed concurrent measures related to parent disciplinary behavior, distress tolerance, tolerance of child distress, and measures of trait anger and trait anxiety. Results. In both studies, anger was associated with overreactivity, and own and child distress tolerance were associated with overreactive and lax discipline. In Study 1, own and child distress tolerance evidenced differential patterns of association with discipline. Moreover, there were significant indirect effects of anger on overreactive discipline via tolerance of own distress, and of anger on lax discipline via tolerance of child distress. In the second study, trait anger and anxiety were associated with lax discipline via its association with tolerance of child distress. Conclusions. Dysfunctional discipline may serve, at least in part, as an attempt to terminate or avoid emotional distress; that is, some parents may engage in less effective discipline that works to quickly reduce overwhelming emotions perceived as intolerable. As such, incorporating distress tolerance skills into parenting interventions, with an emphasis on the type of distress tolerance (own or child), may improve outcomes for parents who find implementing learned skills challenging. Notably, the correlational and concurrent nature of this study precludes causal interpretations.