Maternal ADHD and parenting: The moderating role of maternal emotion regulation

Abstract

Separate literatures have examined the associations between maternal attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and parenting and maternal emotion regulation (ER) and parenting. This study used a multi-method evaluation of parenting to examine the independent and interactive effects of maternal ADHD symptoms and ER on self-reported and observed parenting among families of school-aged children. We hypothesized that maternal ADHD symptoms and ER difficulties would be positively associated with negative parenting and negatively associated with positive parenting. We also hypothesized that maternal ADHD symptoms and ER difficulties would interact to predict the strongest association with negative parenting behavior. There were significant main effects of maternal ER difficulties on self-reported negative parenting and maternal ADHD symptoms on self-reported harsh responses to children’s negative emotions. Maternal ADHD symptoms and ER were not significantly associated with positive parenting or observations of parenting.