Abstract
Mothers’ emotion socialization practices are very important for children’s later outcomes; however, we know very little about how these practices may lead to different outcomes for European American (EA) and African American (AA) children. In the current study, maternal emotion socialization practices were investigated in relation to child emotion-related outcomes in 122 pairs of mothers and preschool-age children, and differences in associations were examined for EA and AA families. Mothers were assessed for their expressions of positive emotion with their child and their responses to their child’s negative emotions, including support of sadness/fear and magnification of anger, when children were 3. Children were assessed for their expression of positive emotion with their mother and their internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors when they were 4. When ethnicity was included as a moderator, results revealed that when AA mothers expressed more positive emotion, their children were also more positive 1 year later. Additionally, as AA mothers provided greater support for their children’s sadness/fear, these children tended to have fewer later internalizing problems. Finally, when AA mothers responded with more magnification of their children’s anger, these children tended to have greater internalizing and externalizing problems 1 year later. These associations were not found for EA families. Results highlighted differential effects based on the type of support provided by mothers and the role that mothers played in encouraging or suppressing their child’s expressions. The overall findings highlight the need to consider maternal emotion socialization from a culturally-informed perspective.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Achenbach, T. M., & Rescorla, L. A. (2001). Manual for the ASEBA preschool forms & profiles: Child behavior checklist for ages 1½ –5. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, Research Center for Children, Youth & Families.
Beck, A. T., Steer, R. A., Ball, R., & Ranieri, W. (1996). Comparison of Beck depression inventories-IA and –II in psychiatric outpatients. Journal of Personality Assessment, 67, 588–597.
Bowie, B. H., Carrère, S., Cooke, C., Valdivia, G., McAllister, B., & Doohan, E. A. (2013). The role of culture in parents’ socialization of children’s emotional development. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 35, 514–533.
Boykin, A. W. (1986). The triple quandary and the schooling of Afro-American children. In U. Neisser (Ed.), The school achievement of minority children: New perspectives (pp. 57–92). Hillsdale, New Jersey: Routledge.
Burchinal, M., Skinner, D., & Reznick, J. S. (2010). European American and African American mothers’ beliefs about parenting and disciplining infants: A mixed-method analysis. Parenting: Science and Practice, 10, 79–96.
Campos, J. J., Mumme, D., Kermoian, R., & Campos, R. G. (1994). A functionalist perspective on the nature of emotion. Japanese Journal of Research on Emotions, 2, 1–20.
Cole, P. M., & Tan, P. Z. (2007). Emotion socialization from a cultural perspective. In J. E. Grusec & P. D. Hastings (Eds.), Handbook of socialization: Theory and research (pp. 516–542). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Cumberland-Li, A., Eisenberg, N., Champion, C., Gershoff, E., & Fabes, R. A. (2003). The relation of parental emotionality and related dispositional traits to parental expression of emotion and children’s social functioning. Motivation and Emotion, 27, 27–56.
Dodge, K. A., McLoyd, V. C., & Lansford, J. E. (2005). The cultural context of physically disciplining children. In V. C. McLoyd, N. E. Hill & K. A. Dodge (Eds.), African American family life (pp. 245–263). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., & Spinrad, T. L. (1998). Parental socialization of emotion. Psychological Inquiry, 9, 241–273.
Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., & Murphy, B. C. (1996). Parents’ reactions to children’s negative emotions: Relations to children’s social competence and comforting behavior. Child Development, 67, 2227–2247.
Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R. A., Shepard, S. A., Guthrie, I. K., Murphy, B. C., & Reiser, M. (1999). Parental reactions to children’s negative emotions: Longitudinal relations to quality of children’s social functioning. Child Development, 70, 513–534.
Eisenberg, N., Gershoff, E. T., Fabes, R. A., Shepard, S. A., Cumberland, A. J., Losoya, S. H., & Murphy, B. C. (2001). Mother’s emotional expressivity and children’s behavior problems and social competence: Mediation through children’s regulation. Developmental Psychology, 37, 475.
Eisenberg, N., Losoya, S., Fabes, R. A., Guthrie, I. K., Reiser, M., Murphy, B., & Padgett, S. J. (2001). Parental socialization of children’s dysregulated expression of emotion and externalizing problems. Journal of Family Psychology, 15, 183.
Enders, C. K., & Bandalos, D. L. (2001). The relative performance of full information maximum likelihood estimation for missing data in structural equation models. Structural Equation Modeling, 8, 430–457.
Feng, X., Shaw, D. S., Skuban, E. M., & Lane, T. (2007). Emotional exchange in mother-child dyads: stability, mutual influence, and associations with maternal depression and child problem behavior. Journal of Family Psychology, 21, 714.
Garside, R. B., & Klimes-Dougan, B. (2002). Socialization of discrete negative emotions: Gender differences and links with psychological distress. Sex Roles, 47, 115–128.
Graziano, A. M., Hamblen, J. L., & Plante, W. A. (1996). Subabusive violence in child rearing in middle-class American families. Pediatrics, 98, 845–848.
Harding, J. F. (2015). Increases in maternal education and low-income children’s cognitive and behavioral outcomes. Developmental Psychology, 51, 583.
Harrison-Hale, A. O., McLoyd, V. C., & Smedley, B. (2004). Racial and ethnic status: Risk and protective processes among African American families. In K. I. Maton, C. J. Schellenbach, B. J. Leadbeater & A. L. Solarz (Eds.), Investing in children, youth, families, and communities: Strength-based research and policy. (pp. 269–283). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Hastings, P. D., & De, I. (2008). Parasympathetic regulation and parental socialization of emotion: Biopsychosocial processes of adjustment in preschoolers. Social Development, 17, 211–238.
Jabson, J. M., Dishion, T. J., Gardner, F., & Burton, J. (2002). Relationship process code-V2.0 training manual: A system for coding relationship interactions. Child and Family Center: University of Oregon.
Kang, S. K., & Chasteen, A. L. (2009). Beyond the double-jeopardy hypothesis: Assessing emotion on the faces of multiply-categorizable targets of prejudice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 1281–1285.
Klimes‐Dougan, B., Brand, A. E., Zahn‐Waxler, C., Usher, B., Hastings, P. D., Kendziora, K., & Garside, R. B. (2007). Parental emotion socialization in adolescence: Differences in sex, age and problem status. Social Development, 16, 326–342.
Leerkes, E. M., Supple, A. J., Su, J., & Cavanaugh, A. M. (2013). Links between remembered childhood emotion socialization and adult adjustment: Similarities and differences between European American and African American Women. Journal of Family Issues, 36, 1854–1877.
Lindsey, E. W., Colwell, M. J., Frabutt, J. M., Chambers, J. C., & MacKinnon-Lewis, C. (2008). Mother-child dyadic synchrony in European American and African American families during early adolescence: Relations with self-esteem and prosocial behavior. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 54, 289–315.
Magai, C. M. (1996). Emotions as a Child Self-rating Scale. Unpublished measure, New York: Long Island University.
Magai, C. M. (1997). Emotions as a Child Self-Rating Scale II. Unpublished measure, New York: Long Island University.
Mesquita, B., & Frijda, N. H. (1992). Cultural variations in emotions: a review. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 179.
Morelen, D., & Thomassin, K. (2013). Emotion socialization and ethnicity: An examination of practices and outcomes in African American, Asian American, and Latin American families. The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 86, 168.
Morris, A. S., Silk, J. S., Steinberg, L., Myers, S. S., & Robinson, L. R. (2007). The role of the family context in the development of emotion regulation. Social Development, 16, 361–388.
Morris, A. S., Silk, J. S., Steinberg, L., Sessa, F. M., Avenevoli, S., & Essex, M. J. (2002). Temperamental vulnerability and negative parenting as interacting predictors of child adjustment. Journal of Marriage and Family, 64, 461–471.
Muthén, L. K., & Muthén, B. O. (2014). Mplus user’s guide. 7th edn. Los Angeles, CA: Muthén & Muthén.
Nelson, J. A., Leerkes, E. M., O’Brien, M., Calkins, S. D., & Marcovitch, S. (2012). African American and European American mothers’ beliefs about negative emotions and emotion socialization practices. Parenting, 12, 22–41.
Nelson, J. A., Leerkes, E. M., Perry, N. B., O’Brien, M., Calkins, S. D., & Marcovitch, S. (2013). European‐American and African‐American mothers’ emotion socialization practices relate differently to their children’s academic and social‐emotional competence. Social Development, 22, 485–498.
Noldus Information Technology. (2013). The Observer XT (Version 11.5) [Computer Software]. Wageningen, The Netherlands: Noldus Information Technology.
Ogbu, J. U. (1981). Origins of human competence: A cultural-ecological perspective. Child Development, 52, 413–429.
Parker, A. E., Halberstadt, A. G., Dunsmore, J. C., Townley, G., Bryant, Jr, A., Thompson, J. A., & Beale, K. S. (2012). Emotions are a window into one’s heart: A qualitative analysis of parental beliefs about children’s emotions across three ethnic groups. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 77, 1–136.
Phinney, J. S., & Landin, J. (1998). Research paradigms for studying ethnic minority families within and across groups. In V. C. McLoyd & L. Steinberg (Eds.), Studying minority adolescents: Conceptual, methodological, and theoretical issues (pp. 89–109). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Shaw, D. S., Schonberg, M., Sherrill, J., Huffman, D., Lukon, J., Obrosky, D., & Kovacs, M. (2006). Responsivity to offspring’s expression of emotion among childhood-onset depressed mothers. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 3, 490–503.
Silk, J.S. (2004). Emotion regulation: Strategies and affect coding manual. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh.
Silk, J. S., Shaw, D. S., Prout, J. T., O’Rourke, F., Lane, T. J., & Kovacs, M. (2011). Socialization of emotion and offspring internalizing symptoms in mothers with childhood-onset depression. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 32, 127–136.
Spinrad, T. L., Eisenberg, N., Gaertner, B., Popp, T., Smith, C. L., Kupfer, A., & Hofer, C. (2007). Relations of maternal socialization and toddlers’ effortful control to children’s adjustment and social competence. Developmental Psychology, 43, 1170.
Author Contributions
E.G.H.: designed the study, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript. Q.W.: assisted with data collection and writing the manuscript. S.K.: assisted with data collection and editing the manuscript. M.G.: assisted with data collection and editing the manuscript. X.F.: assisted with study design, analyzing the data, and editing the manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Ohio State University Institutional Review Board. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Mothers provided assent for child participation.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hooper, E.G., Wu, Q., Ku, S. et al. Maternal Emotion Socialization and Child Outcomes among African Americans and European Americans. J Child Fam Stud 27, 1870–1880 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-1020-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-1020-9