Use of emotion regulation strategies across family systems

Family is an exclusive institution for the development of healthy or unhealthy emotion management skills of its members. The present study aimed to compare emotion regulation strategies used by the adolescents from nuclear and joint family systems. For this cross-sectional study 400 adolescents, 12-18 years of age were involved through purposive sampling. The scale used for the present study was Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) and a demographic data sheet. For result analysis, SPSS version 21 was used to apply t-test. There were 200 (50%) males and 200 (50%) females with a mean age of 15 +/- 2.16 years. The family structure descriptive analysis revealed that 181 (45.3%) were from joint family structure, 193 (48.3%) from nuclear family structure, and 26 (6.5%) from extended family structure. T-test indicated that the Mean values of cognitive reappraisal for joint and nuclear family structures were 29.30 +/- 7.44 and 29.57 +/- 6.28, respectively, and the difference was insignificant. The mean values for expressive suppression for the two family structures were 15.82 +/- 6.41 and 17.61 +/- 6.31, respectively, with significant difference between the means (p < 0.01). In nuclear families, the adolescents use expressive suppression. The more the family members, the more attention will be paid to the development of children as in the joint family system. The joint families, having the traditional values can cater the emotional needs better than the nuclear families.