The kinds and patterns of emotions expressed by parent and child, the circumstances and functions of these emotions, and their effects on the child are investigated in four studies that approach related issues. The objective of Study 1 is to obtain profiles of mother's and child's emotions in the normally occurring events of rearing. In Study 2, an experimentally-introduced mild stress is used to study the child's response to stress and mother's method of regulating the child's emotions. The regulation of children's affect in conditions of stress may be a particularly sensitive childrearing function that may be impaired by affective disorders in parents who have difficulty regulating their own emotions. The socialization of affection is examined in Study 3. Study 4 examines mother's patterns of responding to the child's emotions and the effects on the child. This process is also examined in the reverse: the child's handling of the mother's moods and emotions. Observations of mother and child over a range of rearing circumstances are the data source. Mothers with diagnoses of major depression, bipolar depression, or normal, toddlers (1-1/2- to 2-1/2-years-old) and school-age siblings (5- to 8-years-old) are the sample.
