Exploring the Complexity of Mothers' Real-Time Emotions While Caregiving

Existing research suggests that parenthood is both emotionally rewarding and demanding, yet little work has examined multiple facets of parents' emotions. The current study examines the complexity of parents' emotions by examining the intensity, variability, and emodiversity of mothers' positive and negative emotions across caregiving and noncaregiving contexts. Data were collected from 136 mothers of young children using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to measure their real-time experiences of positive and negative emotion during a 10-day period. Results demonstrated that mothers reported higher intensity in positive emotion, and greater emodiversity in both positive and negative emotion when caring for their children compared with times when they were not caring for their children. As the first study to explore the complexity of parents' real-time emotional experiences, this work has important implications for interpreting the existing literature, and for developing interventions that enhance parents' emotional experiences in the service of improving the quality of the parent-child relationship.