Parented Emotion: A Study of Adult-Children's Emotion Socialization and Family Communication Patterns (original) (raw)
Related papers
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.
Parental Emotion Coaching and Dismissing in Family Interaction
Social Development, 2007
We observed the positive emotion socialization practice of parental emotion coaching (EC) and the negative socialization practice of emotion dismissing (ED) during a family interaction task and examined their effects on children's emotion regulation and behavior problems in middle childhood. Participants were 87 sociodemographically diverse families (children aged 8-11 years; 46 girls). Outcome measures included mother, father and teacher reports of emotion regulation and behavior problems. ED was a risk factor, contributing to poorer emotion regulation and more behavioral problems. EC did not offer direct benefits for children's emotional and behavioral outcomes, but interacted with ED such that it protected children from the detrimental effects of ED. This protective effect was found for parents' coaching of negative but not positive emotions. Findings suggested that in family emotion conversation, EC and ED interact in complex ways as risk and protective dimensions of family process.
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).
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.
Journal of Adult Development, 2019
Despite the burgeoning interest in the relationships between parental emotion socialization practices, emotion regulation (ER), and anxiety in youth, there is considerably less research focusing on the ways in which parental emotion socialization in childhood is associated with these variables in adulthood. A sample of 202 university students completed an online survey, which aimed to examine the relationships between retrospective reports of parental emotion socialization strategies in childhood, ER in adulthood, and trait anxiety. Adult perceptions of their parents' use of unsupportive emotion socialization strategies in childhood was related to lower levels of ER skills and greater use of maladaptive ER strategies in adulthood, while perceptions of parents' use of supportive strategies were related to higher levels of ER skills and greater use of adaptive ER strategies. Together, adult perceptions of unsupportive parental emotion socialization strategies in childhood and their ER skills and ER strategy use in adulthood predicted trait anxiety.
Emotions and Emotion Regulation in Family Relationships
Revista Romaneasca pentru Educatie Multidimensionala
Research shows that emotions and emotion regulation strategies are important variables for family functioning. The aim of the present article was to review the literature on the role of emotions and emotion regulation in couple relationships and parent-child interaction. The paper presents the most important theoretical models on emotions and family functioning and provides an overview of research investigating the association of positive emotions, negative emotions and emotion regulation with family relationships outcomes. First, we provided an overview on the functionality and social function of positive and negative emotions. Second, we investigated the role of positive and negative emotions in couple relationship and parent-child interaction. Third, we emphasized the role of specific intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies in couple relationships. Finally, we outlined the role of parents in child’s emotional development. The conclusions of our review suppor...
Journal of Family Psychology, 1996
This article introduces the concepts of parental meta-emotion, which refers to parents' emotions about their own and their children's emotions, and meta-emotion philosophy, which refers to an organized set of thoughts and metaphors, a philosophy, and an approach to one's own emotions and to one's children's emotions. In the context of a longitudinal study beginning when the children were 5 years old and ending when they were 8 years old, a theoretical model and path analytic models are presented that relate parental meta-emotion philosophy to parenting, to child regulatory physiology, to emotion regulation abilities in the child, and to child outcomes in middle childhood.
Factors that Influence Parents’ Meta-Emotion Approaches: Implications for Families
International Journal of Emerging Trends in Social Sciences, 2017
This quantitative study investigated the concept of meta-emotion by examining factors that were associated with specific types of metaemotion approaches parents used. The main variables included parental stress, outside support, education levels. Other variables considered were number of children in the family, age of children, and children's gender. The concept of meta-emotion as well as the inclusion of these variables were important to investigate to further understand the factors that influenced parents' thoughts and reactions to their children's emotions and emotional responses. It was determined that 143 participants were needed. These participants were gathered by emails sent to students and faculty at Texas Woman's University. Participants were also gathered by dispersing flyers advertising the study in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas metroplex. Individuals who agreed to participate gave consent and then completed the anonymous online questionnaires through PsychData. Results yielded that parental stress was the only significant predictor of meta-emotion approaches.
Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 2016
Using a multi-method approach, this study examined differences in parental meta-emotional philosophy (including, parental emotional awareness and emotion coaching) for families with anxiety disordered (AD; n = 74) and non-AD (n = 35) children (aged 7 to 15). Further, it was investigated whether children's emotion regulation (ER) varied across the AD and non-AD groups. Parent(s) were interviewed about their awareness of emotions and emotion coaching; completed a battery of questionnaires that included a measure assessing children's emotion regulation; and engaged in a parent-child discussion task. Results indicated that compared to parents of non-AD youth, parents of AD youth were less aware of their own emotions and their children's emotions, and these results varied by emotion type. Parents of AD youth engaged in significantly less emotion coaching than parents of non-AD youth. AD youth were identified as having significantly greater difficulty regulating their emotions when compared to non-AD youth. Implications for the role of parental metaemotional philosophy and AD youth's emotion regulation are discussed.