Mothers' interoceptive knowledge predicts children's emotion regulation and social skills in middle childhood

Interoception, often defined as the perception of internal physiological changes, is implicated in many adult social affective processes, but its effects remain understudied in the context of parental socialization of children's emotions. We hypothesized that what parents know about the interoceptive concomitants of emotions, or interoceptive knowledge (e.g., “my heart races when excited”), may be especially relevant in emotion socialization and in supporting children's working models of emotions and the social world. We developed a measure of mothers' interoceptive knowledge about their own emotions and examined its relation to children's social affective outcomes relative to other socialization factors, including self‐reported parental behaviors, emotion beliefs, and knowledge of emotion‐relevant situations and non‐verbal expressions. To assess these, mothers (N = 201) completed structured interviews and questionnaires. A few months later, third‐grade teachers rated children's social skills and emotion regulation observed in the classroom. Results indicated that mothers' interoceptive knowledge about their own emotions was associated with children's social affective skills (emotion regulation, social initiative, cooperation, self‐control), even after controlling for child gender and ethnicity, family income, maternal stress, and the above maternal socialization factors. Overall, findings suggest that mothers' interoceptive knowledge may provide an additional, unique pathway by which children acquire social affective competence.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Emotion Socialization by Mothers and Fathers: Coherence among Behaviors and Associations with Parent Attitudes and Children's Social Competence

This study examined inter‐relations among different types of parental emotion socialization behaviors in 88 mothers and 76 fathers (co‐residing with participating mothers) of eight‐year‐old children. Parents completed questionnaires assessing emotion socialization behaviors, emotion‐related attitudes, and their children's social functioning. An observed parent–child emotion discourse task and a child social problem‐solving interview were also performed. Parent gender differences and concordance within couples in emotion socialization behaviors were identified for some but not all behaviors. Fathers' reactions to child emotion, family expressiveness, and fathers' emotion coaching during discussion cohered, and a model was supported in which the commonality among these behaviors was predicted by fathers' emotion‐coaching attitudes, and was associated with children's social competence. A cohesive structure for the emotion socialization construct was less clear for mothers, although attitudes predicted all three types of emotion socialization behavior (reactions, expressiveness, and coaching). Implications for developmental theory and for parent‐focused interventions are discussed.     

Intimate partner violence and preschool self-regulation: Examining the role of maternal emotion socialization in Black families

The ways that parents respond to children's negative emotions shape the development of self-regulation across early childhood. The objective of this study was to examine child self-regulation in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure in a sample of Black, economically marginalized mothers and their young children (aged 3–5 years, N = 99). The study investigates the conditional effects of emotion socialization practices that (1) encourage expression of and problem-solving around negative affect (“supportive”), and (2) encourage suppression of affective displays (“suppressive”) on children's self-regulation. We found a significant association between higher child self-regulation and supportive parental reactions in the context of psychological IPV. We also found a significant association between higher child self-regulation and suppressive parental reactions in the context of psychological IPV. Our findings are consistent with prior research suggesting Black parents who teach varied strategies for emotional expression may promote children's adaptation in high-stress family environments. Macrosystem factors such as systemic racism and discrimination as well as the threat of family violence may shape how parents approach emotion socialization and the teaching of affective self-expression and self-regulation.     

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.     

Influence of Gender on Parental Socialization of Children's Sadness Regulation

Mothers' (N = 60) and fathers' (N = 53) perceptions of and desire for change in their 6‐ to 11‐year‐old daughters' (N = 59) and sons' (N = 54) sadness regulation behaviors (i.e., inhibition, dysregulation, coping) were examined in addition to parental responses to children's hypothetical sadness displays. Results of multivariate analyses of variance and regression analyses suggest that parental perceptions of and desired change in children's sadness behavior differ as a function of parent gender, child gender and child age (younger (grades 1, 2), older (grades 4, 5)), and predict the likelihood of contingent responses to children's sadness behavior. Overall, fathers reported being likely to respond to sadness with minimization whereas mothers reported being likely to respond with expressive encouragement and problem‐focused strategies. These parent‐reported socialization response tendencies, however, were more fully explained by the interaction between perceptions of children's sadness regulation behaviors and satisfaction with these behaviors. These findings highlight the need to include parent gender and parental cognitions as important variables in emotion socialization research.     

Chinese immigrant child and maternal reactions to disappointment: Cultural fit impacts the bidirectional associations

Culture provides a context in which emotion socialization is embedded, and the bidirectional effects between parents’ emotion socialization and children's emotional behaviors may work differently across cultures. To understand how emotion socialization may be shaped by the cultural context, we examined the moderating role of Asian cultural values in bidirectional associations between maternal emotion socialization practices and child anger and sadness. Seventy-four U.S. Chinese immigrant mothers (M_age = 40.71 years, SD = 3.61) completed measures assessing their Asian cultural values and parenting style. Children experienced a disappointment task in the lab (Cole, 1986), and mothers and their children (M_age = 6.73 years, SD = .95; 55% female) were observed at two different time intervals. Mothers’ socialization practices (emotion dismissing, emotion coaching, and moral and behavioral socialization) and children's anger and sadness responses at both intervals were coded. Mothers’ greater Asian cultural values buffered the negative effects of their emotion dismissing practices on children's anger and sadness. However, Asian cultural values did not impact the effects of children's anger and sadness on mothers’ emotion dismissing practices. When mothers endorsed fewer Asian values, their emotion coaching practices reduced children's anger and sadness. Children's anger and sadness evoked more emotion coaching practices when mothers endorsed lower levels of Asian cultural values. In addition, children's anger and sadness evoked greater moral and behavioral responses from their mothers when mothers endorsed more Asian values. Overall, findings underscored the importance of cultural values in the interplay between mothers’ emotion socialization practices and children's emotions.     

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.     

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' Self-Reported Control of Their Preschool Children's Emotional Expressiveness: A Longitudinal Study of Associations with Infant–Mother Attachment and Children's Emotion Regulation

In the present longitudinal study we examined the associations between mothers’ self‐reported control of their preschoolers’ emotional expressiveness and two other key facets of early socioemotional development: the quality of the infant–mother attachment and children's emotion regulation. Seventy‐six white preschool‐aged children (46 boys and 30 girls) and their mothers participated. Principal assessments included the Parent Attitude Toward Child Expressiveness Scale (PACES; Saarni, 1985 ), the infant Strange Situation, and ‘Beat the Bell,’ a measure designed for this study to elicit children's emotional expression, sharing, and suppression in the presence of their mothers. Mothers’ control of their children's expressiveness was associated with both attachment and children's emotion regulation in theoretically predicted ways. First, mothers of children who had been classified insecure‐avoidant in the Strange Situation reported greater control of their children's negative expressiveness than other mothers, and mothers of children who had been classified insecure‐ambivalent reported less control of their children's negative expressiveness than other mothers. Second, mothers who reported greater control of their children's expressiveness had children who were less likely to express and share their feelings and more likely to suppress their anger in the ‘Beat the Bell’ emotion regulation assessment. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of maternal emotion socialization in children's early socioemotional development.     

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.     

Parental Emotion Coaching and Dismissing in Family Interaction

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.     

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.     

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.     

Dads Tuning in to Kids: A randomized controlled trial of an emotion socialization parenting program for fathers

Fathers play an important role in shaping their children’s emotional competence although most literature has focused on the influence of mothers. Dads Tuning in to Kids (Dads TIK) is a parenting program that teaches fathers to coach their children in learning about emotions, while also helping fathers increase awareness and regulation of their own emotions. A randomized controlled efficacy trial of Dads TIK was conducted with a community sample of 162 fathers of a 4‐year‐old child attending preschool in Melbourne, Australia. Those allocated to the intervention attended a seven‐session manualized group program. Questionnaires were completed by fathers, the fathers’ partners and the children’s teachers at baseline and 6‐month follow‐up. Results were that fathers in the intervention condition but not control condition reported significant increases in emotion socialization, parenting satisfaction and efficacy, and reductions in their children’s difficult behaviors. Partners of fathers in the intervention condition reported reductions in their own emotion dismissing parenting and improvements in psychological well‐being. Partners and teachers reported significant improvements in children’s behavior across both intervention and control conditions. These findings suggest a father‐focused program appears to lead to changes in fathers’ emotion socialization skills that may have benefits for partners’ functioning and children’s behavior.     

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.     

Parenting and children’s prosocial and problem behaviors in middle childhood: The role of Turkish mothers’ emotion socialization practices

Mechanisms by which the relations between different parenting behaviors and children’s prosocial and problem behaviors occur are the focus of the current study. Supportive and nonsupportive emotion socialization practices of mothers were considered as potential mediators. Further, the moderator role of gender was explored. Participants were 228 mothers of 6‐ to 11‐year‐old children living in Ankara, Turkey. Scales assessing parenting behaviors (specifically, positive parenting and inconsistent discipline), maternal reactions to children’s negative emotions, and prosocial and problem behaviors of children were completed by the mothers. The results revealed that supportive emotion socialization practices fully mediated the relation between positive parenting behaviors and both boys’ and girls’ prosocial behaviors. In contrast, nonsupportive emotion socialization practices partially mediated the relation between inconsistent parenting behaviors and problem behaviors, but only for girls. Findings indicated that girls were more vulnerable to their mothers’ inconsistent behaviors possibly because mother–daughter dyads are more likely to use emotion‐related language and to discuss emotions than mother–son dyads from a very early age.     

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.