Investigating and Comparing Child Attachment, Mother's Emotion Regulation and Mother-child Relationships in Children with Asthma and Children with Eczema: A Cross-sectional Study

Childhood asthma and eczema are common chronic diseases that significantly affect the health of children and parents. These children experience physical and psychosocial problems, including behavioral and emotional disturbances. This study was conducted to identify the psychological issues such as children's attachment, maternal emotion regulation, and child-parent relationship in children with autoimmune disorders, especially asthma and eczema. This cross-sectional study included80 mother-child pairs (40 with asthma and 40 with eczema) recruited from Yazd autoimmune clinics between 2022 and 2023. Exclusion criteria included additional physical or psychiatric illnesses in parents and parental drug addiction. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire and three validated questionnaires: Children's Attachment Questionnaire, Gross Emotion Regulation Strategies Questionnaire, and Pianta Mother-Child Relationship Questionnaire. Results analysis and comparison showed that both the asthma and eczema groups have moderate levels of secure attachment with a 25% achieving favorable score. Emotion regulation showed very low desirability (up to 25% for its subscales). Geographical location had a slight but significant effect on attachment and emotion regulation. Scores of the Pianta mother-child relationship scale were generally positive. No significant effects were observed in relation to the child's gender, occupation, and educational status of the mothers. This study found moderate levels of children's secure attachment and maternal emotion regulation in both groups and favorable mother-child relationships in children aged 5 to 12 years with asthma and eczema. Only a small percentage of children demonstrated secure attachment, reflecting existing research linking childhood illness to parental distress and impaired child development.