Emotional regulation skills are a critical piece of socioemotional development and are related to a host of positive life outcomes. However, boys face additional societal pressures to suppress or mask emotions, which can lead to emotional dysregulation and externalizing behaviors like aggression. Both emotional dysregulation and externalizing behaviors are linked to larger concerns, such as intimate partner violence. Despite extensive research on parental regulation strategies, a key piece of the development of emotion regulation, little is known about whether or how the strategies parents use to help manage their children’s emotions vary by gender, especially in toddlerhood.This study explores the strategies that mothers and fathers use to help their toddlers manage their emotions and whether these strategies differ based on perceived child gender. The goals were to identify the types and frequencies of strategies used, if some strategies were used more frequently than others, and if so, which ones, and if gender differences in parental strategy use can be observed as early as toddlerhood. Participants included 166 primarily white, highly educated parents (83 mother-father pairs) and 112 mother-toddler pairs, who were videotaped and observed during a frustrating wait task. The results revealed that both mothers and fathers predominantly used Distraction to help their toddlers cope with frustration, accounting for 38% (SD = 0.28) of mothers' and 37% (SD = 0.16) of fathers' regulatory attempts. No significant differences in strategy use were found based on child gender (p = > .05). Although minor differences were observed, they were nonsignificant and of negligible effect size. These findings suggest that parental emotion regulation strategies are consistent across child gender in toddlerhood. However, gendered emotional norms may emerge later as children enter peer environments. Future research should explore how these strategies evolve as children grow, particularly during adolescence when boys may face more intense social pressures.
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