Parents’ Beliefs about Children’s Emotions and Children’s Social Skills: The Mediating Role of Parents’ Emotion Regulation (original) (raw)
Related papers
Developmental Psychology, 2011
In a sample of 153 children from preschool through second grade, relations between the use of emotion regulation strategy and children's expression of anger and sadness were coded during an observational task in which children were intentionally disappointed in the presence of the mother. Multilevel modeling was used to examine strategy use and current and subsequent expressions of anger and sadness. Results indicate that mothers' use of attention refocusing and joint mother-child cognitive reframing lead to lower intensity of expressed anger and sadness. Younger children expressed more sadness than older children, and maternal attention refocusing was less successful among older children than younger ones. Implications of these results for assessing the socialization of emotion regulation in preschool and school-age children are discussed.
Journal of Family Psychology, 2009
The present research examined parental beliefs about children's negative emotions, parentreported marital conflict/ambivalence, and child negative emotionality and gender as predictors of mothers' and fathers' reported reactions to their kindergarten children's negative emotions and self-expressiveness in the family (N ϭ 55, two-parent families). Models predicting parents' nonsupportive reactions and negative expressiveness were significant. For both mothers and fathers, more accepting beliefs about children's negative emotions were associated with fewer nonsupportive reactions, and greater marital conflict/ambivalence was associated with more negative expressiveness. Furthermore, interactions between child negative emotionality and parental resources (e.g., marital conflict/ambivalence; accepting beliefs) emerged for fathers' nonsupportive reactions and mothers' negative expressiveness. In some instances, child gender acted as a moderator such that associations between parental beliefs about emotions and the emotion socialization outcomes emerged when child and parent gender were concordant.
Parent emotion representations and the socialization of emotion regulation in the family
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.
2007
The purpose of the current research was to investigate how parents' beliefs about children's emotions are related to children's outcomes. There were three specific aims of the current research: 1) assess the direct relationship between parents' beliefs about children's emotions and children's engagement during a problem solving discussion, 2) assess the direct relationships between parents' beliefs about children's emotions and children's security in the parent-child relationship and children's perceptions of their parents emotional availability as well as the moderating effect of parents' stress on this relationship, and 3) explore the moderating and mediating relationships between parents' beliefs about children's emotions, children's perceptions of the parent-child relationship, and children's engagement behavior during a problem solving discussion with their parent. Participants were African American (n = 41), European American (n = 4), and Lumbee Native American (n = 38) parents and their 4 th or 5 th grade children. Contrary to hypotheses, parents' beliefs did not directly relate to children's engagement or children's perceptions of the parent-child relationship. However, parents' stress in the last 24 hours moderated the relationship between parents' beliefs and children's perceptions of their attachment security. The relationship between parents' beliefs that negative emotions are good and children's engagement was moderated by children's security in the parent-child relationship. In addition, parents' reported daily stress from the last 24 hours was related to children's engagement during the problem solving discussion.
Social Development, 2016
To explore how parental socialization of emotion may influence children's emotion understanding, which then guides children's interpretations of emotion‐related situations across contexts, we examined the pathways between socialization of emotion and children's adjustment in the classroom, with children's emotion understanding as an intervening variable. Specifically, children's emotion understanding was examined as a mediator of associations between mothers' beliefs about the value and danger of children's emotions and children's adjustment in the classroom within an SEM framework. Classroom adjustment was estimated as a latent variable and included social, emotional, and behavioral indices. Covariates included maternal education, and child gender and ethnicity. Participants were a diverse group of 201 third‐graders (116 African American, 81 European American, 4 Biracial; 48.8% female), their mothers, and teachers. Results revealed that emotion‐relat...
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PARENTS’ EMOTION SOCIALIZATION STRATEGIES AND CHILDREN’S SOCIAL COMPETENCE
2020
This research explores the relationship between parental emotional socialization strategies and children’s social competence level. A correlational model, a quantitative research method, was employed. The sample of the study was 343 children aged 4-6 years attending private and public preschools in Ankara. Data were collected through a Demographic Information Form, Responses to Children’s Emotions Questionnaire (RCE), and Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation-30 Scale (SCBE-30). The results suggested that mothers’ neglect strategy and children’s social competence were significantly related. However, no significant relationship was found between fathers’ emotion socialization strategies and children’s social competence. Furthermore, differences between mothers’ and fathers’ emotion socialization strategies emerged according to parents and children’s sex. The results suggest that appropriate and supportive parental emotion socialization strategies might improve children’s social competence levels. Keywords: Early Childhood Period, Children, Parents, Emotion Socialization Strategies, Social Competence.
Child Development, 1999
Research has demonstrated that parental reactions to children's emotions play a significant role in the development of children's emotion regulation (ER) and adjustment. This study compared parent reactions to children's negative emotions between families of anxious and non-anxious children (aged 7-12) and examined associations between parent reactions and children's ER. Results indicated that children diagnosed with an anxiety disorder had significantly greater difficulty regulating a range of negative emotions and were regarded as more emotionally negative and labile by their parents. Results also suggested that mothers of anxious children espoused less supportive parental emotional styles when responding to their children's negative emotions. Supportive and non-supportive parenting reactions to children's negative emotions related to children's emotion regulation skills, with father's non-supportive parenting showing a unique relationship to children's negativity/lability.
Developmental Psychology, 2001
The relations between mothers' expressed positive and negative emotion and 55-79-month-olds' (76% European American) regulation, social competence, and adjustment were examined. Structural equation modeling was used to test the plausibility of the hypothesis that the effects of maternal expression of emotion on children's adjustment and social competence are mediated through children's dispositional regulation. Mothers' expressed emotions were assessed during interactions with their children and with maternal reports of emotions expressed in the family. Children's regulation, externalizing and internalizing problems, and social competence were rated by parents and teachers, and children's persistence was surreptitiously observed. There were unique effects of positive and negative maternal expressed emotion on children's regulation, and the relations of maternal expressed emotion to children's externalizing problem behaviors and social competence were mediated through children's regulation. Alternative models of causation were tested; a child-directed model in which maternal expressivity mediated the effects of child regulation on child outcomes did not fit the data as well.
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.