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Mothers’ Emotional Expression and Discipline and Preschoolers’ Emotional Regulation Strategies: Gender Differences

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Abstract

The early development of children’s emotional regulation benefits children with regard to their interpersonal relationships, academics, and mental health. Individual children may use different strategies to regulate their emotions. Because mothers are often children’s main caretakers, maternal emotional expression and discipline may be related to their children’s emotional regulation strategies (ERSs) and may reveal gender differences. Hence, we used questionnaires to survey 498 mothers of 3–5-year-old children in China to examine gender differences in the relationship between maternal emotional expression and discipline and boys’ and girls’ ERSs. The study results are as follows: (1) Maternal negative emotions were correlated with girls’ use of passive behaviors and venting, and maternal positive emotions were related to both girls’ and boys’ use of cognitive reconstruction and problem solving and to girls’ use of alternative activity. (2) The relationships between maternal nonviolent discipline and children’s use of problem solving and between maternal physical assault and children’s use of problem solving, self-consolation and venting existed only for girls. Additionally, maternal psychological aggression was correlated with both girls’ and boys’ use of venting. These findings suggest that the intervention for and prevention of children’s ERSs may be somewhat different for boys and girls in China.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Wang for guidance for this article and the editors at American Journal Experts for correcting our English. The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 31371058 to Wang Yifang] and the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of The People’s Republic of China [grant number GD1608 to Wang Yifang].

Author Contributions

X.C.: assisted with the data analyses and wrote the paper; X.W.: assisted with the design of the study and data collection; Y.W.: designed the study, assisted with data analyses, and wrote part of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Capital Normal University, Beijing, China

    Xiaoyan Chen & Yifang Wang

  2. Beijing Water Authority Kindergarten, Beijing, China

    Xixian Wu

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  1. Xiaoyan Chen
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  2. Xixian Wu
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  3. Yifang Wang
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Correspondence to Yifang Wang.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval was obtained from Capital Normal University of China.

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Chen, X., Wu, X. & Wang, Y. Mothers’ Emotional Expression and Discipline and Preschoolers’ Emotional Regulation Strategies: Gender Differences. J Child Fam Stud 27, 3709–3716 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-1199-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-1199-9

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