Research shows mothers experience a variety of emotions associated with parenting. They are also particularly vulnerable to emotional distress due to responsibilities associated with caring for an infant. Significant research attention, therefore, has been given to the disruptive effects of emotional distress (e.g., anxiety) and affective disorders (e.g., depression) on maternal parenting behaviors during social interaction. Comparatively little is known about how mothers' experience, expression, and regulation of negative emotions in everyday life are related to the quality of mother-infant interaction indexed by reciprocity and mutual delights.  I am particularly interested in researching the following questions:
    (1) Individual differences in mothers’ emotional experience and expressivity and their associations with the quality of mother-infant interaction: The social-constructive theory of emotion (e.g., Averill, 1994; Oatley, 1993) asserts that emotional experience and expression are flexible and creative because they emerge from individuals’ interactions with their environment.  The functionalist theory of emotion further suggests that emotional experience and expressivity have both intrapersonal and interpersonal regulatory consequences. It is proposed that variations in maternal emotional experience and expressivity emerge from individual differences in mothers’ abilities to construct their emotions in everyday life, which exert influences on their parenting behaviors with their infant during social interaction. It is hypothesized that individual differences in maternal emotional experience and expressivity are associated with variations in the quality of mother-infant interaction.
    (2) The role of emotion regulation in the associations of maternal emotional experience and expressivity with the quality of mother-infant interaction:  In previous research, a main-effect model has been adopted to examine the relations of maternal emotional experience and expressivity with maternal parenting behaviors during social interaction with their infant. Typically, a negative linear causal relation is assumed between maternal negative emotions and the quality of interaction between mother and infant. The role of emotion regulation has never been explicitly examined. Based on an emotion regulation model of social competence (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1992; Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & Reiser, 2000), it is proposed that individual differences in emotion regulation serve as a proximal variable linking mothers' emotional experience and expressivity with the quality of mother-infant interaction. Three alternative models, a main-, a mediating-, and a moderating-effect model, will be tested. Further, a theoretical model with an optimal level of emotion regulation is proposed, in which a curvilinear relation between emotion regulation and the quality of mother-infant interaction is suggested.  Under- (e.g., exhibit excessive anger openly) or over-regulation (e.g., exhibit no or ver little emotional response) of emotion is expected to be related to mother-infant interaction with a poorer quality.
    (3) The role of infant characteristics in the relations of mothers' emotional experience, expressivity, and regulation to the quality mother-infant interaction: Mother-infant interaction is a reciprocal and co-regulated process.  Mothers are not only exerting influence on their infant, but also influenced by the characteristics of their infant (e.g., difficult temperament).  The quality of mother-infant interaction is best conceptualized as the interplay between the characteristics of both mothers and their infant.  Based on a model of 'goodness-of-fit' (see Mangelsdorf, Gunnar, Kestenbaum, Lang, & Andreas, 1990), it is expected that infant temperamental characteristics moderate the effects of maternal experience, expression, and regulation of negative emotions on the quality of mother-infant interaction.