<p>Despite evidence of relationships between goals for emotion regulation with various indices of mental health, still little is known about the origin of these emotion-related beliefs and goals. Drawing from research on the implicit theory framework as it has been applied to other domains of self-regulation, this study explored 439 young adults’ retrospective reports of their parents’ responses to their negative emotions during childhood in relation to their emotion-related goals in young adulthood. Perceived parental (i.e., maternal and paternal) emotion coaching was positively associated with learning goals for emotion regulation, whereas parental emotion dismissing was positively associated with performance-avoidance and performance-approach goals for emotion regulation. Notably, learning and performance-avoidance goals for emotion regulation, but not performance-approach goals, mediated the relations between perceived maternal emotion coaching and dismissing during childhood and emotion regulation difficulties in young adulthood. Meanwhile, only learning goals for emotion regulation mediated the relations between perceived paternal emotion coaching during childhood and emotion regulation difficulties in young adulthood. Findings suggest that perceived emotion-related feedback from important socialization figures during childhood may be related to the way in which a person comes to approach, and subsequently regulate, their emotions in young adulthood.</p>