Maternal socialization of child emotion and adolescent adjustment: Indirect effects through emotion regulation (original) (raw)
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Research Square (Research Square), 2023
A child's ability to cope with stress is shaped by experiences in the parent-child relationship. The direct effect of a parent's response to anger and happiness in childhood on adolescents' and emerging adults' psychological distress, and the indirect effect through the mediating role of emotion regulation strategies, speci cally cognitive reappraisal and emotional suppression, were measured. To achieve our research aim we tested four parallel mediation models, using the bootstrapping method. A group of 497 participants, aged between 14 and 35 years (M = 18.62; SD = 3.32), 66% female (n = 332) and 34% male (n = 165), completed a questionnaire comprised of self-reporting measures. The results indicate direct effects between emotion socialization and distress for seven independent variables. The mother's and father's positive responses to anger and happiness are signi cant negative predictors of distress, the negative responses of both parents to happiness, and the mother's negative response to anger, but not the father's, are signi cant positive predictors of distress. The ndings also provide support for the mediating role of expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal for the mother's positive response to both, anger and happiness, as well as for the mother's negative response to the child's expression of happiness. None of father's responses, positive or negative, in relation to anger or happiness, are mediated by emotion regulation strategies in relation to distress. The ndings have some important theoretical and clinical implications for distressed adolescents and emerging adults. Theoretical and conceptual framing Developmental studies consistently indicate that parents have the primary role in shaping a child's emotional development, by their direct and indirect, verbal or nonverbal messages addressed to their children. Dealing with anger, happiness, fear or sadness are emotional and social daily lessons that put together parent and child in a positive or negative interaction with implications for their development and wellbeing. According to the tripartite model of parental in uences (Morris et al., 2007), the family context impacts emotional development through three pathways: the emotional climate, the parenting style and the emotional quality of marital relationships. Parent-child interactions, with all its components, (parents' reactions to the child's emotions), whether supportive (e.g. reward) or unsupportive (e.g. punishment, neglect) are re ected in their emotional life and represent an important predictor for the development of emotion regulation (Kullik & Petermann, 2013) and wellbeing (Root & Denham, 2010; Houltberg et al., 2012). Thus, parental emotion socialization is a process that helps a child to identify and appropriately express and manage their emotions, due to the parents' reactions to their child's emotions. Retrospective reports of adolescents have shown that parental socialization emotional strategies project emotional effects into adulthood. The Malatesta-Magai model of parental style of emotion socialization (Malatesta-Magai, 1991), that de ned the concepts and variables of this study, delimits ve strategies, used by parents when it comes to emotion socialization: reward, punishment, override, neglect and magnify. From a functionalist approach, emotion socialization implies responses to concrete emotions. In this research, we will analyze anger and happiness, because a number of studies have identi ed the existence of core emotions relevant for emotional development, frequently implied in internalization or externalization problems (Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007; Zeman et al., 2010). Anger is an emotion that communicates a need for limits and rules and activates a defense system. Happiness functions as a signal to make some activities that bring personal satisfaction, promote positive relationships through emotional contagion and wellbeing ((Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007). According to a processual model of emotion regulation, (Gross, 1998) there are lots of strategies that can intervene in different moments of emotional experience: anterior-focused, like situation selection, situation modi cation, attentional deployment and cognitive change or response-focused that can be a response modulation. A speci c type of cognitive change is cognitive reappraisal (CR) and, for response modulation, there is expressive suppression (ER). CR and ES are two strategies with multiple implications for mental health and wellbeing. A person who activates CR tends to negotiate stressful events by interpreting them in an optimistic manner (John & Gross, 2004; Haga et al., 2009) and have a high level of life satisfaction and self-esteem, a lower level of anxiety, depression or posttraumatic stress disorder (Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2022); Miklósi et al., 2014; Kullik & Petermann, 2013). ES involves the inhibition of emotion expression and leads to a series of psychological consequences, like both externalizing and internalizing problems in early childhood, through adolescence and emerging adulthood (Buckner et al., 2003; (Cheung et al., 2019). Although together, all these theories and models explain the emotional impact of parents with regards their child's development; it is important to extend knowledge by examining the role of emotion regulation strategies, like protective factors, between parental in uences and distress (Cloitre et al., 2019). Problem statement Parental emotion socialization and its emotional consequences Signi cant correlations between negative emotions socialization and internalization issues are a constant of several studies; thus, sadness or fear, punishment or neglect, were associated with high levels of psychological distress in adulthood (Brand & Klimes-Dougan, 2010); Silk & House, 2011; Klimes-Dougan et al., 2007). Punishment of positive emotions correlates with high levels of distress, while reward is associated with lower levels of distress (Ramakrishnan et al., 2019). Although the topic of emotion socialization is important and relevant in multiple areas of psychology, there are few studies that have examined the socialization process of speci c negative (e.g. fear, anger) or positive emotions (e.g. happiness), separately by the mother and father (Root & Denham, 2010). Furthermore, there is relative extensive research on negative emotions and a lack of research in positive socialization emotions (Ramakrishnan et al., 2019).
Healthcare
A child’s ability to cope with stress is shaped by experiences in a parent–child relationship. In this study, the direct effect of a parent’s response to anger and happiness in childhood on adolescents’ and emerging adults’ psychological distress and the indirect effect through the mediating role of emotion regulation strategies—specifically, cognitive reappraisal and emotional suppression—were measured. To achieve our research aim, we tested four parallel mediation models using the bootstrapping method. A group of 497 participants aged between 14 and 35 years (M = 18.62; SD = 3.32), 66% female (n = 332) and 34% male (n = 165), completed a questionnaire comprising self-reporting measures. The results indicate direct effects between emotion socialization and distress for seven independent variables. The mother’s and father’s positive responses to anger and happiness are significant negative predictors of distress; the negative responses of both parents to happiness, and the mother’s ...
Journal of abnormal child psychology, 2016
Anxious youth exhibit heightened emotional reactivity, particularly to social-evaluative threat, such as peer evaluation and feedback, compared to non-anxious youth. Moreover, normative developmental changes during the transition into adolescence may exacerbate emotional reactivity to peer negative events, particularly for anxious youth. Therefore, it is important to investigate factors that may buffer emotional reactivity within peer contexts among anxious youth. The current study examined the role of parenting behaviors in child emotional reactivity to peer and non-peer negative events among 86 anxious youth in middle childhood to adolescence (Mean age = 11.29, 54 % girls). Parenting behavior and affect was observed during a social-evaluative laboratory speech task for youth, and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods were used to examine youth emotional reactivity to typical daily negative events within peer and non-peer contexts. Results showed that parent positive behavi...
Mothers' and Fathers' Emotion Socialization and Children's Emotion Regulation: A Within-Family Model
Social Development, 2014
In the current study, we examined whether mothers' and fathers' reactions to young children's positive and negative emotions were associated with children's negativity and emotion regulation. We utilized a within-family design with 70 families (mother, father, and two siblings between the ages of 2 and 5 years). Mothers and fathers completed questionnaires about their emotion socialization as well as children's negativity and emotion regulation. Results indicated that mothers' and fathers' unsupportive reactions to children's positive emotions were associated with children's negativity. Fathers' unsupportive reactions to children's emotional displays were differentially associated with older and younger siblings' emotion regulation. Fathers' unsupportive responses to children's positive and negative emotions also contributed jointly to children's emotion regulation. The results suggest that exploring the withinfamily correlates of children's emotion regulation and negativity is useful for understanding children's emotional development.
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During the toddler period, children begin to shift from being primarily dependent on parents to regulate their emotions to managing their emotions independently. The present study considers how children's propensity towards negative emotional arousal interacts with mothers' efforts to socialize emotion regulation. Fifty-five low income mothers and their 2-year-old children completed observational assessments measuring mothers' socialization of emotion regulation, children's reactivity propensity, and children's emotion regulation. Children's propensity towards negative reactivity significantly interacted with mothers' use of physical soothing. That is, mothers with less reactive children who used more soothing had children who were more likely to use interactive, distraction-based regulatory behaviors during a frustration situation. Theoretical and child care implications of the finding are discussed.
Social Development, 2017
Parents’ supportive reactions to children's negative emotions are thought to promote children's social adjustment. Research heretofore has implicitly assumed that such reactions are equally supportive of children's adjustment across ages. Recent findings challenge this assumption, suggesting that during middle childhood, socialization practices previously understood as supportive may in fact impede children's social adjustment. We explored this possibility in a sample of 203 third‐grade children and their mothers. Using structural equation modeling, we tested associations between mothers’ supportive (i.e., problem‐ and emotion‐focused) reactions to children's negative emotions and children's social skills and problems as reported by mothers and teachers. Mothers’ supportive reactions predicted greater social adjustment in children as reported by mothers. Inverse associations, however, were found with teachers’ reports of children's social adjustment: moth...
This study tested a model of children's emotionality as a moderator of the links between maternal emotion socialization and depressive symptoms and child emotion regulation. Participants were 128 mother-preschooler dyads. Child emotion expression and emotion regulation strategies were assessed observationally during a disappointment task, and a principal component analysis revealed three factors: passive soothing (including sadness and comfort seeking), negative focus on distress (including anger, focus on distress and low active distraction) and positive engagement (including positive emotion, active play and passive waiting, which was loaded negatively). Hierarchical linear regression models revealed that child positive emotionality (PE) and negative emotionality (NE) moderated the links between maternal support/positive emotion expression and child emotion regulation strategies. In particular, children's low PE exacerbated the association between lack of maternal support and child passive soothing, whereas high PE enhanced the association between maternal positive expression and reduced negative focus on distress. Furthermore, the associations of mothers' support and reduced passive soothing and negative focus on distress, as well as the association between mothers' positive expression and child positive engagement, were stronger for children with low levels of NE, compared with those with average and high levels of NE. Findings partially support a diathesis-stress model in understanding the effects of both child characteristics and the familial influence on child emotion regulation.
2017
Emotion regulation in children is associated with various aspects of developmental outcomes. In recent decades, researchers have paid considerable attention to its socialization to identify the manner in which children’s emotion regulation may be facilitated by interaction with adults. Supportive reaction to children’s negative emotions has been found to play a crucial role in enabling children’s emotion regulation. Knowledge of the precursors of adults’ supportive reactions can help control or direct their supportive reactions in a more efficient and productive manner. We conducted this study to examine the effects of young children’s temperament on primary caregivers’ supportive reactions to the children’s negative emotions. In the first year of study (children’s mean age = 11.8 months, SD = 3.58, n=191), both the mothers and the children’s day-time caregivers completed a shortened version of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire to assess child temperament on three broad dispositiona...
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International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2014
There is considerable knowledge of parental socialization processes that directly and indirectly influence the development of children's emotion self-regulation, but little understanding of the specific beliefs and values that underlie parents' socialization approaches. This study examined multiple aspects of parents' self-reported emotion representations and their associations with parents' strategies for managing children's negative emotions and children's emotion self-regulatory behaviors. The sample consisted of 73 mothers of 4-5-year-old children; the sample was ethnically diverse. Two aspects of parents' beliefs about emotion -the importance of attention to/acceptance of emotional reactions, and the value of emotion self-regulation -were associated with both socialization strategies and children's selfregulation. Furthermore, in mediational models, the association of parental representations with children's emotion regulation was mediated by constructive socialization strategies. These findings are among the first to highlight the specific kinds of emotion representations that are associated with parents' emotion socialization, and their importance to family processes shaping children's emotional development.