Family emotional communications as a factor of coping strategies fostering in intergenerational interaction

Introduction. The article is devoted to the study of the family as the primary environment in which ways of coping with difficulties are formed and transmitted across generations; the authors consider emotional communication between parents and children as a channel of such transmission. Purpose setting. The discourse of the research field is the intergenerational transmission of coping strategies. The purpose of the work is to establish the relationship between the characteristics of family emotional communications in the parental family and the coping strategies of adult children and to assess the extent to which emotional communication acts as a link in such transmission. Methodology and methods of the study. The study was conducted on 132 parent – adult child dyads (264 individuals) on the basis of the cognitive theory of stress and the concept of family emotional communications; the Family Emotional Communications questionnaire by A. B. Kholmogorova, S. V. Volikova, M. G. Sorokova, the Brief COPE scale by C. Carver in the author’s family modification, and a socio-demographic questionnaire were applied; the data were processed using correlation, regression and mediation analysis. Results. Intergenerational continuity was established for the scales criticism, fixation on negative experiences, family perfectionism and the overall index. An increase in the overall dysfunctionality of family communications is associated with the strengthening of dysfunctional coping and the weakening of problem-oriented coping in adult children, while the prohibition on expressing emotions complicates seeking emotional support. A diagonal similarity of the coping profiles of parent and child within dyads was found, and mediation analysis confirmed the partial mediation of the transmission of dysfunctional coping by the characteristics of family communications. Conclusion. The data clarify the psychological mechanism of coping behavior fostering in the family  context.

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