Maternal Meta-emotion Philosophy and Adolescent Depressive Symptomatology

The current study examined the relations between maternal meta‐emotion philosophy and adolescent depressive symptoms, as well as general adolescent adjustment and the quality of parent–child interaction. Consistent with previous findings on children in the preschool period and middle childhood, it was expected that an emotion coaching meta‐emotion philosophy would be associated with fewer depressive symptoms, higher levels of adjustment and lower frequencies and less reciprocity of aversive and dysphoric affect during mother–child interaction. Maternal meta‐emotion interviews, observations of mother–child interaction and assessments of adolescent adjustment were obtained. Results indicated that mothers of adolescents with high levels of depressive symptoms were less accepting and expressive of their own emotions than were mothers of adolescents with low levels of depressive symptoms. A mother's acceptance of her own emotion was associated with fewer depressive symptoms, higher self‐esteem and fewer externalizing problems in young adolescents. A mother's emotion coaching was associated with lower frequency and less likelihood of the reciprocity of aversive and dysphoric affect during mother–child interaction. Discussion highlights the role of maternal meta‐emotion philosophy in creating emotional closeness in families with high and low levels of depressive symptomatology.     

Parental Emotion Socialization in Adolescence: Differences in Sex, Age and Problem Status

There is a paucity of research on how mothers and fathers socialize emotion in their adolescent sons and daughters. This study was based on 220 adolescents (range 11‐ to 16‐years‐old) who exhibit a range of emotional and behavioral problems and their parents. Parental responses to their children's displays of sadness, anger and fear were assessed. Mothers were found to be more engaged in their children's emotional lives than were fathers. With a few important exceptions (e.g., boys were punished for expressions of anger more than girls), adolescent girls and boys were socialized in much the same way. Parents of older adolescents were generally less supportive and more punitive toward emotional displays. Systematic links between adolescent problem status and parent approaches to emotion socialization were found. These findings on how parents socialize emotions in their adolescents have important implications for theory as well as practice.     

Parental communication about emotional contexts: Differences across discrete categories of emotion

Parent socialization of emotion is critical for children's emotional development. One mechanism through which parents socialize emotional understanding is in their conversations about emotions with their children. Previous research has investigated parent–child discourse about emotions differing by positive and negative valence. This study examined how parents communicated about and differentially emphasized elements of discrete emotion contexts (anger, sadness, disgust, fear, joy). Caregivers described images of emotional contexts to their 18‐month‐old or 24‐month‐old infant. Findings indicated that parents talked more about sadness images than joy images. Furthermore, parents mentioned the emoter more in anger and sadness contexts and talked about the referent more in disgust, fear, and joy contexts. Parents also posed more questions to female than male infants, particularly when discussing anger, sadness, and disgust images. No age differences were observed for any measure. These findings provide new insight into how parents talk about and highlight aspects of discrete emotional contexts.     

Parents’ and friends’ responses to discrete negative emotions: Associations with adolescent emotional experiences

Emotion socialization (ES) impacts a range of youth socioemotional outcomes. However, research often examines parent socialization of negative emotions more broadly. Research examining multiple socializers demonstrates that variety in ES messages may promote flexibility in youth socio-emotional adjustment. The current study examined how parents’ and friends’ supportive socialization of discrete negative emotions (anger, sadness, worry) related to adolescents’ emotional experiences. Eighty-seven adolescents (50 girls; 13–15 years old, M age = 14.23 years) reported on parent and friend supportive ES in 8^th grade. Sixty-four of these adolescents reported their own emotional experiences in 9^th and/or 10^th grade. Parents’ supportive ES was higher than friends’ for sadness and worry. Divergence between parent and friend ES of sadness related to lower increases in anger over time. There were effects of convergence in ES of anger, as matches between parent and friend ES were related to less experience of all three negative emotions. There were unique effects of parent and friend ES of worry. Parent ES of worry related to adolescents’ balance of anger and sadness, whereas friend ES of worry related to decreased sadness over time. These findings suggest that ES and its relations with adolescent emotional experience varied by discrete emotions, as each carries a different meaning and function. Future research should examine processes connecting discrete emotional experiences within interactions and across time.     

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.     

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.     

The roles of caregivers and friends in adolescent daily emotion dynamics

Daily emotion dynamics provide valuable information about individuals’ emotion processes as they go about their lives. Emotion dynamics such as emotion levels (mean), emotion variability (degree of fluctuation), and emotion network density (strength of temporal connections among emotions) are associated with risks for various psychopathology in youth and adults. Prior work has shown that caregivers and friends play crucial socializing roles in adolescent emotional well-being, but less is known about their roles in daily emotion dynamics. This study examined whether caregiver emotion coaching, caregiver-adolescent closeness, and friendship quality were associated with adolescents’ emotion levels, emotion variability, and emotion network density. Further, we examined whether caregiver-adolescent closeness moderated the associations between coaching and emotion dynamics. Participants were 150 adolescents (61% girls; M_age = 14.75) and one of their caregivers (95% female; M_age = 43.35) who completed a baseline survey and 21 daily surveys. Results showed that caregiver emotion coaching interacted with caregiver-adolescent closeness in predicting emotion levels and variability. Specifically, when closeness was higher, emotion coaching was significantly associated with lower sadness and anger levels, higher happiness levels, and lower happiness variability. Caregiver emotion coaching, independent of closeness, was also associated with lower anxiety levels, lower sadness variability, and lower emotion network density. Friendship quality was significantly associated with lower levels of sadness, anxiety, and anger, higher levels of happiness, and lower variability in anxiety and anger. These findings suggest that caregivers and friends are central to everyday emotion levels and variability and a more flexible emotion system in adolescents.     

Children's Emotionality and Social Status: A Meta-analytic Review

Over the last 15 years, the role of emotions in children's peer relations has received greader attention. The purpose of the meta‐analytic review was to determine the magnitude of the relation between negative emotionality (NE) and positive emotionality (PE) and social status. Based on 54 independent samples, the overall effect size for the relation between children's NE and social status was in the moderate‐to‐small range, and this effect size was similar across all types of NE (i.e., general measures of NE, anger, fear and sadness). Based on 10 independent samples, the overall effect size for the relation between children's PE and social status was in the small range. We found that the assessment method for anger significantly moderated the relation between anger and social status, and the context in which PE was observed significantly moderated the relation between PE and social status. This article concludes with a set of recommendations for the next generation of research on children's emotional and social competence.     

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.     

Low and Middle Income Mothers' Regulation of Negative Emotion: Effects of Children's Temperament and Situational Emotional Responses

The present study investigated the effects of situational (child situational emotions) and dispositional (child temperament) child variables on mothers’ regulation of their own hostile (anger) and nonhostile (sadness and anxiety) emotions. Participants included 94 low and middle income mothers and their children (41 girls; 53 boys) aged 3 to 6 years. Children's situational emotions (anger, sadness, or fear) and parent emotion type (hostile or nonhostile) were important predictors of mothers’ regulation, but their effects were influenced by SES: Middle income mothers were more likely to control hostile than nonhostile emotions in response to child anger and sadness, and more likely than low income mothers to control hostile emotions in response to child sadness and fear. Low income mothers were more likely than middle income mothers to control nonhostile emotions in response to child anger. However, results also suggest that differences in emotion regulation between low and middle income mothers may stem from the link between SES and authoritarian parenting beliefs. Maternal regulation of negative emotion was not predicted by child temperament.     

Children's awareness concerning emotion regulation strategies: Effects of attachment status

The current study evaluated the effects of preschoolers' attachment status on their awareness concerning emotion regulation strategies. A total of 212 children between 3 and 5 years participated in this study and completed two self‐report tasks. The first was the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT), which assessed children's internal working models concerning parent–child attachment; the second evaluated children's ability to generate emotion regulation strategies in relation to three negative emotions (anger, sadness, and fear). Statistical analyses involved a mixed models multilinear regression approach controlling for age and gender. The results consistently revealed that the insecure avoidant group was significantly less likely than securely attached children to generate both comforting and self‐regulatory strategies. Surprisingly, the insecure ambivalent group showed no deficits across measured outcomes. When the analyses were conducted separately for each negative emotion, findings for co‐regulatory strategies for fear, and self‐regulatory strategies for anger also suggested that avoidantly attached children exhibited the lowest levels of awareness compared with children from the secure attachment group. These findings stress the importance of children's attachment status, and implicitly, the quality of the parent–child interactions for children's awareness of emotion regulation strategies related to negative emotions.     

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.     

Associations between parent emotional arousal and regulation and adolescents' affective brain response

Parents' emotional functioning represents a central mechanism in the caregiving environment's influence on adolescent affective brain function. However, a paucity of research has examined links between parental emotional arousal and regulation and adolescents' affective brain function. Thus, the present study examined associations between parents' self‐rated negative emotion, parent emotion regulation difficulties, and adolescent brain responsivity to negative and positive emotional stimuli. Participants included 64 12–14 year‐old adolescents (31 females) and their female primary caregivers. Adolescents viewed negative, positive, and neutral emotional stimuli during an fMRI scanning session. Region of interest analyses showed that higher parent negative emotion was related to adolescents' greater ACC and vmPFC response to both negatively‐ and positively‐valenced emotional stimuli; whereas, parent negative emotion was related to adolescents' greater amygdala response to negative emotional stimuli only. Furthermore, parent emotion regulation moderated the association between parent negative emotion and adolescents' brain response to negative emotional stimuli, such that parents with high negative emotion and high emotion regulation difficulties had adolescents with the greatest affective brain response. Findings highlight the importance of considering both parent emotional arousal and regulation in understanding the family affective environment and its relation to adolescent emotion‐related brain development.     

Socialization in the Context of Risk and Psychopathology: Maternal Emotion Socialization in Children of Incarcerated Mothers

Children of incarcerated mothers are at increased risk for psychological, social, and emotional maladaptation. This research investigates whether perceived maternal socialization of sadness and anger may moderate these outcomes in a sample of 154 children (53.9 percent boys, 61.7 percent Black, M age = 9.38, range: 6–12), their 118 mothers (64.1 percent Black), and 118 caregivers (74.8 percent female, 61.9 percent grandparents, 63.2 percent Black). Using mother, caregiver, and child report, seven maternal socialization strategies were assessed in their interaction with incarceration‐specific risk experiences predicting children's adjustment. For sadness socialization, the results indicated that among children reporting maternal emotion‐focused responses, incarceration‐specific risk predicted increases in psychological problems, depressive symptoms, increased emotional lability, and poorer emotion regulation. For children who perceived a problem‐focused response, incarceration‐specific risk did not predict outcomes. There were no significant interactions with incarceration‐specific risk and perceived maternal anger socialization strategies. These results indicate a critical need to examine how socialization processes may operate differently for children raised in atypical socializing contexts.     

Emotion Talk and Friend Responses Among Early Adolescent Same‐sex Friend Dyads

To better understand early adolescent emotion talk within close same‐sex friendships, this observational study examined emotion talk, as measured by emotion term use, in relation to friend supportive and dismissive responses to such terms among 116 adolescents (58 friend dyads) in Grades 7–8 (56.9% female, M = 13.08, SD = .61). Partial intra‐class correlation coefficients derived by using actor partner interdependence models revealed similarities in the frequency of dyad mates use of positive and negative emotions terms. Chi‐square analyses indicated that when friends responded to participants' emotion talk supportively, rather than dismissively, participants were more likely to disclose emotions in subsequent utterances. Research and clinical implications for early adolescent emotional development are discussed.     

Emotion Regulation in Low-income Preschoolers

The present study was concerned with identifying the causes of low-income preschoolers' negative emotions and their most common regulation responses. The relations of family socialization practices and temperament to the children's emotion regulation skills were also examined. Ninety predominantly minority low-income preschoolers (46 boys) and their mothers participated. During visits to the children's preschools, observers watched for expressions of anger and sadness, and recorded the causes of the displays and the children's reactions. Mothers reported on their emotion socialization and discipline practices and their children's temperament. Although the children expressed more anger than sadness, they used more constructive reactions in response to sadness and more non-constructive reactions in response to anger. Maternal reports of appropriate family emotion were associated with low levels of non-constructive regulation responses to anger and sadness whereas reports of inconsistent parental discipline were generally associated with non-constructive regulation responses. All in all, the findings of this study are in accord with findings on middle-income children and indicate that low- and middle-income children are more alike than different with regard to the regulation of negative emotion in the peer environment.     

Sensitivity to facial emotional expressions and peer relationship problems in Chinese rural‐to‐urban migrant early adolescents: An exploratory study

This exploratory study compared sensitivity to facial emotional expressions (happiness, anger, sadness, and fear) between rural‐to‐urban migrant early adolescents and their non‐migrant counterparts, and examined whether migration status moderated the expected link between such sensitivity and peer relationship problems. Furthermore, we assessed the role of migrant youths' perceived integration in these associations. A total of 169 Chinese rural‐to‐urban migrant (46.1% girls) and 157 non‐migrant (54.1% girls) early adolescents aged between 10 and 13 years participated in an emotion recognition task with videos of neutral Chinese faces gradually morphing into full‐intensity emotional expressions, while teachers rated their students' peer relationship problems. Migrant youth also reported on their level of integration. Results indicated that rural‐to‐urban early adolescents were more sensitive to facial expressions (as indicated by early recognition) of anger and sadness than their non‐migrant peers, and that migration status moderated the association between emotional sensitivity and peer relationship problems. Specifically, migrant youths reported more peer relationship problems in the presence of heightened sensitivity to anger and sadness. In addition, less integration strengthened the association between increased sensitivity to anger and peer relationship problems in the migrant group. Although further research is warranted, our findings suggest that the interplay between hypervigilance to negative facial emotional expressions and low levels of integration may contribute to explaining peer relationship problems among Chinese rural‐to‐urban migrant youth.     

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.     

Differential associations and concordance across measures of parent emotion socialization: The role of parent and adolescent emotion dysregulation

Although parent ratings, adolescent ratings, and observations are all utilized to measure parent emotion socialization during adolescence, there is a lack of research examining measurement differences and concordance. Thus, the present study compared three measures of parent supportive and nonsupportive emotion socialization and examined whether parent and adolescent emotion dysregulation differentially related to these measures or moderated concordance across measures. Participants were a community sample of 92 adolescent-parent dyads. Adolescents were 13–17 years-old (M = 15.5, SD = 1.1), 41 were female and 51 were male; 87% of parents identified as mothers. Observed emotion socialization was coded during a parent-adolescent conflict discussion task. The adolescent and parent also rated the parent's supportive and nonsupportive reactions to the adolescent's negative emotions; they each also rated their own emotion dysregulation. Due to data collection timing, COVID-19 family stress was also assessed and explored as a covariate in analyses. Bivariate correlations indicated that there were weak and non-significant correlations across emotion socialization measures. Multilevel models indicated that measures of parent emotion socialization were differentially associated with adolescent emotion dysregulation, with adolescent emotion dysregulation relating significantly to adolescent ratings, but not observations or parent ratings, of parent emotion socialization. In addition, multiple regressions indicated that there was less concordance across measures when parents were higher in emotion dysregulation. Results suggest that measurement may influence researchers’ conclusions about how youth adjustment relates to parent emotion socialization. Additionally, there may be even lower agreement across measures of parent emotion socialization when parents have emotional challenges.