Child and Parent Contributions to Maternal Emotion Socialization and Children's Emotion Outcomes in Late Childhood

Abstract

Parents have an enduring influence on the development of children. The parent-child relationship is dynamic, and both children and their parents contribute to it. The purpose of this investigation was to examine parent-child emotion socialization processes. These processes represent one of the most influential settings where children's emotional trajectories are developed and shaped. Both children and parents shape parental responses to children's negative emotions. In this investigation, both child and parental antecedents were examined simultaneously, including children's negative emotionality, soothability, attention focusing, and inhibitory control, and parental attribution of children's dysregulated specific negative emotions. The final sample included one hundred and twenty-three mother-child dyads and 36 mothers. Mothers reported on their child's temperament and their attributions of children's dysregulated specific negative emotion displays. Children reported on their mother's supportive and nonsupportive emotion socialization responses to specific negative emotions, their emotion regulation strategy use, and regulatory emotional self-efficacy. Standard multiple regression and bootstrapping were used to examine the relations between children's temperament, parental attributions of dysregulated specific negative emotions, emotion socialization responses to specific negative emotions, and children's cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and regulatory emotional self-efficacy. Study findings demonstrated that both children and parents shape parental supportive and nonsupportive responses to specific negative emotions and children's emotion-related outcomes during late childhood.