Intuitive Theories of Parenting and the Development of Emotion Understanding in Preschoolers

Daria Bukhalenkova,Margarita Gavrilova,Natalia Kartushina

doi:10.3390/educsci11010015

Daria Bukhalenkova, Margarita Gavrilova + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11010015

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Abstract

Emotion understanding develops intensively in preschool and junior school. Although the parent/family environment has been shown to affect the development of emotion understanding in children, very little research has examined examined how parents’ view upbringing and education and how they are related to their child’s emotion understanding, given that the intuitive theories of parenting are reflected in actual parent behavior. This study fills this gap in the literature and examines the links between children’s ability to understand emotions and their parents’ intuitive theories of parenting. The sample was 171 5- to 6-year-old children and their parents. Analyses revealed a significant relation between intuitive theories of parenting and children’s emotion understanding. In particular, the intuitive attitude of uninvolved parenting was associated with the understanding of mental causes of emotions and the overall level of emotion understanding in preschool children. Integrating these results will allow us to reach more informed conclusions about the role of parental beliefs in the development of emotion comprehension in preschool children.

Highlights

Emotion understanding is one of the lines of emotional development that develops intensively in preschool and junior school
Our analyses revealed that Uninvolved Parenting was significantly and negatively related to children’s ability to understand Mental causes of emotion (rs(170) = −0.161, p < 0.05), and overall level of emotion understanding (rs(170) = −0.157, p < 0.05)
The present study made an important contribution to this topic by examining the relationship between intuitive theories of parenting and emotion understanding in preschool children across families with varying socio-demographic backgrounds

Summary

Introduction

Emotion understanding is one of the lines of emotional development that develops intensively in preschool and junior school. Emotion understanding is defined as the ability to understand the nature, causes, and consequences of one’s own emotions and those of others [1]. The ability to understand emotions allows a child to feel comfortable in different situations, to understand the dynamics and causes of changes in the emotional state and behavior of others [2,3,4]. It is important to examine the specifics of developing emotion understanding in preschool and identify factors that can modulate this process. K.H.; Wellman, H.M. Differences in early parent-child conversations about negative versus positive emotions: Implications for the development of psychological understanding.

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