Do parents respond in different ways when children feel different emotions? The emotional context of parenting

Abstract

When children experience emotions, do they view their primary caregiver as reacting in a different manner depending on the children's different emotions? Parental socialization of negative emotions and child psychopathology were examined among 161 inner city youth ages 11-14 years. These early adolescents were more likely to perceive their parents as responding in a different manner to different emotions than responding in the same way to different emotions. In addition, we asked if emotion-specific socialization strategies tell us more about child psychopathology than global socialization strategies do. Exploratory analyses suggest that a mixture of both emotion-specific and global socialization strategies may best predict child psychopathology. It remains important to clarify the emotional context of socialization strategies.

Parental socialization of emotion: How mothers respond to their children's emotions in Turkey

“…In another study, children's emotional difficulties were found to be related to parents' lack of accepting or supportive responses (O'Neal, & Magai, 2005). Yagmurlu and Altan (2010) indicated that inhibited young Turkish children had a low level of emotion regulation.…”

“…Several studies have indicated that parents', especially mothers', reactions to their children's emotions are strongly related to children's emotional competence (Denham & Kochanoff, 2002;Denham, Bassett, & Wyatt, 2007;Hastings & De, 2008;Fabes, Leonard, Kupanoff, & Martin, 2001;O'Neal & Magai, 2005;Ramsden & Hubbard, 2002;Yagmurlu & Altan, 2010). If parents react negatively towards their children's emotional displays, children feel anxious whenever they again face an emotionally evocative situation.…”

New version of the emotion socialization scale with the positive emotion of overjoy: initial validation evidence with Portuguese adolescents

“…proposed the Emotions as a Child Scales Inventory (EAC) that includes the Emotion Socialization Scale (ESS). The ESS assesses youth's perception about how parents react to their NE and features five parental emotion socialization strategies (Klimes-Dougan et al, 2007;O'Neal & Magai, 2005). The positive strategy, reward, comprises parental behaviors that foster the reduction of negative affect, while promoting the adolescent's tolerance to all NE by providing comfort, empathizing, and problem solving (Malatesta-Magai, 1991).…”

“…Overall, Tomkins and Magai's predictions have been supported (Kehoe et al 2014;Klimes-Dougan et al 2007;O'Neal & Magai, 2005), with contradictory findings regarding override, as it is not always associated with negative outcomes (Klimes-Dougan et al 2007. Override also includes distracting parental behaviors that in conjunction with an emotionally acceptant stance may be supportive of youths' regulatory efforts (Klimes-Dougan et al 2014).…”

Modeling risk for the development of child anxiety : the role of parent emotion socialization practices, children's emotional competence, and physiological responsiveness.

“…By comparison, mothers who were more likely to engage in unsupportive and harsh emotion socialization behaviors (i.e., were negative, more rejecting of emotions, and who less often discussed emotional experiences) had children who were less able to self--report on their sadness, who spent more time engaging in talk that was unrelated to the emotional expression, who were reported to be more negative and labile, and had lower emotion regulation abilities (Davidov & Grusec, 2006;Shaffer et al, 2012;Warren & Stifter, 2008). A retrospective, self--report study of parental responsiveness during childhood found associations between perceived parental responses to emotions and maladaptive outcome (O'Neal & Magai, 2005). More specifically, children who reported more symptoms of behavioral difficulties at ages 11 to 14 years perceived their parents as more frequently rewarding their feelings of shame (e.g., offering comfort following their child's expression of shame) and magnifying their feelings of anger (e.g., responding with anger to their child's expressed anger) when they were younger.…”