African American parents’ racial and emotion socialization profiles and young adults’ emotional adaptation.

Abstract

The current study aimed to identify parents' profiles of racial and emotion socialization practices, to determine if these profiles vary as a function of family income and young adult child gender, and to examine their links with young adults' emotional adaptation. Participants included 192 African American young adults (70% women) who ranged in age from 18 to 24 years (M = 19.44 years). Four maternal profiles emerged: cultural-supportive (high cultural socialization and supportive responses to children's negative emotions), moderate bias preparation (moderate preparation for bias, promotion of mistrust, and nonsupportive responses to negative emotions), high bias preparation (high preparation for bias, promotion of mistrust, and nonsupportive responses), and low engaged (low across racial and socialization constructs). Three paternal profiles emerged: multifaceted (moderate across racial and emotion socialization constructs), high bias preparation, and low engaged. Men were more likely to have mothers in the high bias preparation and to have fathers in the multifaceted or high bias preparation profiles. Individuals with higher income were more likely to have mothers in the cultural-supportive profile and to have fathers in the multifaceted profile. Young adults whose mothers fit the cultural-supportive profile or the moderate bias preparation profile had lower levels of depressive symptoms than young adults whose mothers fit the high bias preparation profile.

An Integrative Conceptual Model of Parental Racial/Ethnic and Emotion Socialization and Links to Children's Social‐Emotional Development Among African American Families

“…For African American families, adaptive emotion socialization may occur by combining supportive strategies—those that allow children to express their negative emotions while learning problem‐solving and self‐regulation strategies—as well as context‐specific suppression strategies that equip children with the flexibility to suppress their expressions of negative emotions in situations where bias is likely. Consistent with this view, in a recent study, young African American adults whose parents combined moderate‐to‐high levels of cultural socialization and supportive emotion responses with moderate levels of preparation for bias and suppression responses had lower levels of depression and expressed less anger than those whose parents combined high preparation for bias with low supportive responses and high suppression responses to emotion .…”

Parental ethnic–racial socialization practices and the construction of children of color’s ethnic–racial identity: A research synthesis and meta-analysis.

“…Compared to cultural socialization and preparation for bias research, fewer studies have examined how promotion of mistrust and egalitarian beliefs relate to psychosocial outcomes. For promotion of mistrust, the limited research has yielded mixed findings, with some work showing this practice is linked to decreased externalizing behaviors among young children (Caughy et al, ETHNIC-RACIAL SOCIALIZATION AND PSYCHOSOCIAL ADJUSTMENT 9 2002), and other studies tying promotion of mistrust to increased depression (Dunbar, Perry, Cavanaugh, & Leerkes, 2015b;Gartner, Kiang, & Supple, 2014) and diminished family cohesion (Liu & Lau, 2013). Egalitarianism socialization's connection to psychosocial outcomes has rarely been studied.…”

“…Conceptually, the promotion of mistrust seems to parallel unidimensional bias socialization strategies that focus primarily on instruction about discrimination and do not cultivate adaptive coping skills. When uncoupled from parenting behaviors that promote positive coping skills in the face of environmental stressors(Dunbar, Leerkes, Coard, Supple, & Calkins, ETHNIC-RACIAL SOCIALIZATION AND PSYCHOSOCIAL ADJUSTMENT 26 2017;Dunbar et al, 2015a), promotion of mistrust implicitly emphasizes avoidance-based coping behaviors (…”

Research on emotional schemas: A review of findings and challenges

“…This emphasis on emotional acceptance is not uniform however. Lowincome neighbourhoods, for example, continue to place high value on emotional stoicism and suppression of vulnerable emotions (Cunningham, Kliewer, & Garner, 2009;Dunbar, Perry, Cavanaugh, & Leerkes, 2015;Martini, Root, & Jenkins, 2004;Nelson, Leerkes, O'Brien, Calkins, & Marcovitch, 2012). Women also continue to be discouraged from expressing certain negative emotions, such as anger and frustration, in the workplace (Brescoll & Uhlmann, 2008;Lewis, 2000).…”