Emotion Regulation, Coercive Parenting, and Child Adjustment: A Serial Mediation Clinical Trial

Objective: Prior intent to treat evaluation of the Fathering Through Change (FTC) online interactive behavioral parent training program demonstrated a causal link from the FTC intervention to reductions in pre-post changes in fathers' coercive parenting and, in tum, reductions in pre-post changes in child behavioral problems (a moderate indirect effect size d = .30). The present study expands on this work by investigating mediational mechanisms. Method: The present study employed a sample of 426 recently divorced or separated fathers who were each randomly assigned to either the FTC program or to the wait-list control. We tested a set of intent-to-treat serial mediation hypotheses positing that effects of the FTC on fathers' reductions in coercive parenting would be mediated through reductions in emotion regulation problems. To be included in this intervention, fathers had to have been separated or divorced within the past 2 years and also had to have children between the ages of 4 and 12. Results: The intervention obtained a significant total and set of unique pathways linking the FTC intervention to improved child adjustment. This supports a causal experimental link to reduced child behavior problems (d = .39). Emotion regulation did not fully mediate the intervention effect on parenting. Conclusions: Emotion regulation added both direct and indirect experimental explained variance over and above parenting alone. Clinical implications are discussed for the application of online training through pediatric settings.