Affect Management and the Family

Affect management (AM) refers to the need for children to learn to regulate their emotions in order to function in a flexible, adaptive manner in the face of the stimulations and stresses of their life. Affect refers to the nonverbal expression of one's emotions in facial expressions, voice prosody, gestures, and movements. When children are able to manage their emotions, they have developed a thermostat whereby their emotions are now able to be regulated.

The family is the primary-and most effective-setting for the development of AM. Children raised in orphanages manifest very poor AM. Understanding the family environment is crucial in understanding how to provide interventions that are helpful in facilitating AM. This entry focuses on the development of AM and parental factors that influence such ...