Maternal narration about parenting pride and regret is related to youth emotion regulation

As they respond to children's emotions, mothers socialize children's emerging emotion regulation. Mothers' own autobiographical narratives likely reflect in part habitual ways of expressing and managing emotions—ways that may in turn influence the way mothers respond to their children's emotions. We examined features of mothers' narratives about parental pride and regret experiences, and assessed whether these were associated with parental socialization of emotion and the emotion regulation repertoire of their children. Two hundred thirty‐seven mothers with children ranging from 8 to 17 years of age provided two narratives about parental pride and parental regret experiences. Parental emotion socialization and children's emotion regulation were assessed via self‐ and informant‐report using a multi‐measure, multi‐observer approach. We found that features of the way mothers narrated their experiences with a particular child related to their parenting of that child, and that child's emotion regulation. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for emotion‐related parenting, and the potential importance of parent narratives.     

Mother–Child Conversations about Emotions: Linkages to Child Aggression and Prosocial Behavior

We examined associations of maternal and child emotional discourse and child emotion knowledge with children's behavioral competence. Eighty‐five upper middle‐income, mostly White preschoolers and mothers completed a home‐based bookreading task to assess discourse about emotions. Children's anger perception bias and emotion situation knowledge were assessed in a separate interview. Children's prosocial behavior, relational aggression, and physical aggression were observed during a preschool‐based triadic play task. Mothers' emotion explanations were correlated with children's emotion situation knowledge and relational aggression. Both mothers' and children's emotion explanations predicted prosocial behavior whereas mothers' use of positive emotional themes was negatively associated with children's anger perception bias. Physical aggression was predicted by mothers' emotion comments, children's anger perception bias, and lack of emotion situation knowledge. Maternal emotion socialization variables were less strongly related to children's behavioral competence after accounting for demographics and child emotional competence. Implications of these findings for future research on emotion socialization are discussed.     

Parents' beliefs about children's emotions,children's emotion understanding,and classroom adjustment in middle childhood

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‐related beliefs (value and danger) had no direct influence on classroom adjustment. However, children whose mothers endorsed the belief that emotions are dangerous demonstrated less emotion understanding and were less well‐adjusted in the classroom. Mothers' belief that emotions are valuable was not independently associated with emotion understanding. Findings point to the important role of emotion understanding in children's development across contexts (family, classroom) and developmental domains (social, emotional, behavioral) during the middle childhood years.     

Parasympathetic Regulation and Parental Socialization of Emotion: Biopsychosocial Processes of Adjustment in Preschoolers

Variations in parents' emotion socialization have been linked to children's social competence (SC) and behavior problems, but parental influences do not act independently of children's characteristics. A biopsychosocial model was tested, in which children's parasympathetic regulation of cardiac function and paternal and maternal socialization of negative emotions were examined as joint predictors of young children's SC and behavior problems at daycare and preschool. Mothers and fathers responded differently to children's emotions, and cardiac vagal tone moderated the relations between parents' emotion socialization and children's behavior in early childcare settings. Both maternal and paternal emotion socialization strategies were more strongly associated with preschool adjustment for children with relatively less parasympathetic self‐regulatory capacities than for more self‐regulated children. Paternal reactions to children's anger, and maternal responses to children's sadness and fear, were particularly closely tied to variations in SC and internalizing and externalizing problems.     

Mothers' and Fathers' Emotion Socialization and Children's Emotion Regulation: A Within‐Family Model

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 within‐family correlates of children's emotion regulation and negativity is useful for understanding children's emotional development.     

Parent emotion socialization and children's socioemotional adjustment: when is supportiveness no longer supportive?

Parents' supportive emotion socialization behaviors promote children's socioemotional competence in early childhood, but the nature of parents' supportiveness may change over time, as children continue to develop their emotion‐related abilities and enter contexts that require more complex and nuanced social skills and greater autonomy. To test whether associations between parents' supportiveness of children's negative emotions and children's socioemotional adjustment vary with child age, 81 parents of 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children completed questionnaires assessing their responses to children's negative emotions and their children's emotion regulation, lability, social competence, and behavioral adjustment. As predicted, child age moderated the associations between parents' supportiveness and children's socioemotional adjustment. For younger children, parents' supportiveness predicted better emotion regulation and less anxiety/internalizing and anger/externalizing problems. However, for older children, these associations were reversed, suggesting that socialization strategies which were supportive for younger children may fail to foster socioemotional competence among 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children. These results suggest the importance of considering emotion socialization as a dynamic, developmental process, and that parents' socialization of children's emotions might need to change in response to children's developing emotional competencies and social demands.     

Maternal Emotion Socialization in Maltreating and Non-maltreating Families: Implications for Children's Emotion Regulation

This study investigated the socialization of children's emotion regulation in physically maltreating and non‐maltreating mother–child dyads (N = 80 dyads). Mother–child dyads participated in the parent–child emotion interaction task ( Shipman & Zeman, 1999 ) in which they talked about emotionally‐arousing situations. The PCEIT was coded for maternal validation and invalidation in response to children's emotion. Mothers were also interviewed about their approach to emotion socialization using the meta‐emotion interview‐parent version ( Katz & Gottman, 1999 ). The meta‐emotion interview‐parent version was coded for maternal emotion coaching. Mothers also completed measures that assessed their child abuse potential and abuse‐related behaviors as well as children's emotion regulation. Findings indicated that maltreated children demonstrated fewer adaptive emotion regulation skills and more emotion dysregulation than non‐maltreated children. In addition, maltreating mothers engaged in less validation and emotion coaching and more invalidation in response to children's emotion than non‐maltreating mothers. Finally, maternal emotion socialization behaviors mediated the relation between maltreatment status and children's adaptive emotion regulation skills.     

Emotion Knowledge Skills in Low-income Elementary School Children: Associations with Social Status and Peer Experiences

This short‐term longitudinal study examined relations between emotion knowledge and social functioning in a sample of low‐income kindergarten and 1st graders. Individual differences in spontaneous emotion naming and emotion recognition skills were used to predict children's social functioning at school, including peer‐nominated sociometric status, and child self‐reports of negative experiences with peers in school (peer victimization and rejection). Children who had greater emotional vocabulary and recognized emotions more accurately had better outcomes in all areas, and many of the associations between fall emotion knowledge skills and spring social functioning outcomes held after covarying grade and children's previous status with regard to these outcomes. Results are discussed with regard to implications for prevention and intervention programs (e.g., the PATHS curriculum) that focus on teaching emotion knowledge skills in order to foster high‐risk children's social competence.     

Low-Income Mothers' Conversations About Emotions and Their Children's Emotional Competence

This study examined the linkage between low-income mothers' conversations about emotions and their children's understanding of emotion. Forty-five low-income preschoolers and their mothers were videotaped while viewing a wordless picture book designed to elicit talk about emotions. Three maternal and child emotional language behaviors were coded from the videotapes: (a) unelaborated comments about emotions; (b) explanations about the causes and consequences of emotions; and (c) empathy-related statements. The children's questions about emotions were also coded. In a separate interview, the preschoolers were administered tasks that assessed emotional expression knowledge, emotional situation knowledge, and emotional role-taking. The results revealed that emotional situation knowledge was positively predicted by mothers' empathy-related statements. Mothers' explanations about the causes and consequences of emotions were uniquely related to emotional role-taking ability. There were very few correlations between the mothers' and children's talk about emotions. Results are discussed in terms of the functional significance of mothers' emotional language for young children's emotional competence.     

Changing tides: Mothers’ supportive emotion socialization relates negatively to third‐grade children's social adjustment in school

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: mothers’ supportive reactions predicted fewer socioemotional skills and more problem behaviors. These contrasting patterns suggest potential unperceived costs associated with mothers’ supportiveness of children's negative emotions for third‐grade children's social adjustment in school and highlight the importance of considering associations between socialization practices and children's various social contexts. The findings also highlight a need for greater consideration of what supportiveness means across different developmental periods.     

Maternal Emotion-related Socialization and Preschoolers' Developing Emotion Self-awareness

Preschoolers' ability to demonstrate awareness of their own emotion is an important socio‐emotional competence which has received increasing attention in the developmental literature. The present study examined emotion self‐awareness of happiness, sadness, and anger in response to a delay of gratification task in 78 preschool children. Maternal emotion‐related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) including reported emotional expressivity, responses to her child's emotions, and observed emotion talk, were examined as predictors of children's emotion self‐awareness skill one year later. Results show that, after controlling for receptive language ability, supportive ERSBs were predictive of high self‐awareness of happiness whereas non‐supportive ERSBs were predictive of low self‐awareness of sadness. The results demonstrate that the concordance between observed and self‐reported emotion serves as a useful index of children's awareness of their emotional experience.     

Parental Emotion Coaching and Child Emotion Regulation as Protective Factors for Children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder

We assessed linkages of mothers' emotion coaching and children's emotion regulation and emotion lability/negativity with children's adjustment in 72 mother–child dyads seeking treatment for oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). Dyads completed the questionnaires and discussed emotion‐related family events. Maternal emotion coaching was associated with children's emotion regulation, which in turn was related to higher mother‐reported adaptive skills, higher child‐reported internalizing symptoms, and lower child‐reported adjustment. When children were high in emotion lability/negativity, mothers' emotion coaching was associated with lower mother and child reports of externalizing behavior. Results suggest the role of emotion regulation and emotion lability in child awareness of socio‐emotional problems and support the potential of maternal emotion coaching as a protective factor for children with ODD, especially for those high in emotion lability.     

European‐American and African‐American Mothers' Emotion Socialization Practices Relate Differently to Their Children's Academic and Social‐emotional Competence

The current study examines whether the relation between mothers' responses to their children's negative emotions and teachers' reports of children's academic performance and social‐emotional competence are similar or different for European‐American and African‐American families. Two hundred mothers (137 European‐American, 63 African‐American) reported on their responses to their five‐year‐old children's negative emotions and 150 kindergarten teachers reported on these children's current academic standing and skillfulness with peers. Problem‐focused responses to children's negative emotions, which have traditionally been considered a supportive response, were positively associated with children's school competence for European‐American children, but expressive encouragement, another response considered supportive, was negatively associated with children's competence for African‐American children. The findings highlight the need to examine parental socialization practices from a culturally specific lens.     

Maternal and paternal reactions to child sadness predict children's psychosocial outcomes: A family‐centered approach

Parents' reactions to children's emotions shape their psychosocial outcomes. Extant research on emotion socialization primarily uses variable‐centered approaches. This study explores family patterns of maternal and paternal responses to children's sadness in relation to psychosocial outcomes in middle childhood. Fifty‐one families with 8‐ to 12‐year‐old children participated. Mothers and fathers reported their reactions to children's sadness and children's social competence and psychological adjustment. Cluster analyses revealed three family patterns: Supportive (high supportive and low non‐supportive reactions from both parents), Not Supportive (low supportive reactions from both parents), and Father Dominant (high paternal supportive and non‐supportive reactions, low maternal supportive and non‐supportive reactions). Supportive families had children with higher social competence and more internalizing symptoms whereas Father Dominant families had children with lower social competence and fewer internalizing symptoms. Not Supportive families had children with average social competence and fewer internalizing symptoms. Findings are discussed in relation to the “divergence model” which proposes that a diverse range of parental responses to children's sadness, rather than a uniformly supportive approach, may facilitate children's psychosocial adjustment.     

Maternal socialization of children’s positive affect regulation: Associations with children’s savoring,dampening, and depressive symptoms

Maternal socialization of positive affect (PA) is linked to children's regulation of positive and negative emotions and the development of psychopathology. However, few studies have examined multiple types of emotion socialization as related to children's PA regulation and depressive symptoms. The current study examined how mothers’ socialization of children's PA regulation was related to children's PA regulation, and if children's PA regulation mediated the association between maternal socialization and children's depressive symptoms. Ninety‐six mother–child dyads (children aged 7–12) completed questionnaires and a five‐minute discussion about a positive event the child previously experienced; 76 dyads completed surveys again five months later. Partial correlations, controlling for child age and gender, indicated associations between maternal PA socialization and child PA regulation. Moderated mediation models suggested that maternal modeling of savoring predicted Time 2 child depressive symptoms via children's own savoring, which was moderated by Time 1 depressive symptoms. The moderated path indicated that only for children who reported higher depressive symptoms at Time 1, higher levels of savoring predicted lower depressive symptoms at Time 2. These results underscore the importance of examining multiple types of PA socialization and child PA regulation to predict children's depressive symptoms longitudinally.     

Maternal responses to negative emotions and child externalizing behavior: Different relations for 5‐, 6‐, and 7‐year‐olds

Emotional and behavioral maturity expectations increase as children transition to primary school; thus, maternal responses that support and encourage children's expression of negative emotion may not benefit school‐age children as much as preschoolers. The current study explored a change in the utility of these maternal responses among 187 families (62 5‐year‐olds, 75 6‐year‐olds, and 50 7‐year‐olds). Mothers reported on their responses to children's negative emotions and children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors at two time points over 1 year. Multiple group analysis within cross‐lagged path models revealed a positive association between non‐supportive maternal responses and later child externalizing behaviors among 5‐year‐olds. However, non‐supportive responses were related to decreases in externalizing behaviors among the 7‐year‐olds. Discrepant findings between the 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds may represent a developmental shift in the function of mothers' emotion socialization practices.     

Mothers' Regulation Strategies in Response to Toddlers' Affect: Links to Later Emotion Self-Regulation

Recently, there has been a great deal of research on the socialization of children's emotions and self‐regulation. In the present study, the specific strategies that mothers use to help their young children regulate their emotional responses were examined using a longitudinal design. Forty‐three mother–toddler pairs were observed when toddlers were both 18 and 30 months of age, and mothers’ attempts to regulate their toddlers’ emotions during several emotion‐eliciting tasks were transcribed from videotape. When the children were 5 years old, their responses to a disappointment task were observed. Results indicated a relation between mothers’ regulation strategies in toddlerhood and children's facial and behavioral responses to the disappointment task measured at 5 years of age. Specifically, mothers’ use of regulation strategies at 30 months, but not at 18 months, was positively related to children's appropriate emotional displays in response to disappointment. Moreover, the specific types of strategies that mothers used had differential associations to children's responses to disappointment. Findings are discussed in terms of the potentially important role of mothers’ behaviors in the development of children's emotion self‐regulation.     

Social development quartet: When is parental supportiveness a good thing? The dynamic value of parents' supportive emotion socialization across childhood

This introduction to the Social Development Quartet summarizes four articles that examine age‐related and contextual shifts in the utility of parents' emotion socialization responses for children's social‐emotional development. The first two articles present evidence for age‐related changes in the benefits of parents' supportive responses and consequences of parents' nonsupportive responses to children's negative emotions between early and middle childhood. The next two articles consider contextual variations in this developmental shift by examining teacher reports of children's competence and family patterns of response among mothers and fathers. Together, these studies question the unilateral assumption that parental support of children's negative emotions is always a good thing, and provide a more nuanced understanding of when and in what contexts parents' responses are adaptive for children.     

Emotion Socialization in the Context of Risk and Psychopathology: Maternal Emotion Coaching Predicts Better Treatment Outcomes for Emotionally Labile Children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder

We examined whether maternal emotion coaching at pretreatment predicted children's treatment response following a 12‐week program addressing children's oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) symptoms. A total of 89 mother–child dyads participated. At pretreatment, mothers and children engaged in an emotion talk task. Mothers also reported their beliefs about emotions at pretreatment and their child's disruptive behavior symptoms, emotion regulation, and emotion lability/negativity at pre‐, mid‐, and post‐treatment. Clinicians reported children's symptom severity at pre‐ and post‐treatment. Children's emotion lability/negativity moderated effects of maternal emotion coaching on children's post‐treatment ODD symptoms, with stronger benefits of emotion coaching for children high in emotion lability/negativity. Results suggest that emotion coaching may promote treatment response for children with ODD who are especially at risk due to their emotionality.     

Moderators of the Relation between Shyness and Behavior with Peers: Cortisol Dysregulation and Maternal Emotion Socialization

This study investigated the relations among shyness, physiological dysregulation, and maternal emotion socialization in predicting children's social behavior with peers during the kindergarten year (N = 66; 29 girls). For shy children, interactions with peers represent potential stressors that can elicit negative emotion and physiological reactions. Behavior during these contexts can be viewed as adaptive (e.g., playing alone) or maladaptive (e.g., watching other children play without joining in) attempts to regulate the ensuing distress. Whether shy children employ adaptive or maladaptive regulatory behaviors was expected to depend on two aspects of emotion regulatory skill: (1) children's physiological regulation, and (2) maternal emotion socialization. Findings supported the hypotheses. Specifically, shy children with poorer cortisol regulation or have mothers who endorsed a higher level of non‐supportive emotion reactions engaged in more maladaptive play behaviors whereas shy children with better cortisol regulation or a high level of supportive maternal emotion reactions engaged in more adaptive play behaviors.