Maternal socialization profiles, child gender, and later child regulation and internalizing symptoms

Abstract

We investigated main and interactive longitudinal associations of mothers' responses to children's emotions (emotion socialization) and child gender with children's emotion regulation and internalizing symptoms, applying person- and variable-centered analyses. Participants were 320 Australian mothers of children (Mage = 7.4 years; 51% boys) who completed surveys two times. There were no longitudinal associations of four maternal socialization profiles with child regulation or symptoms, but there were profile differences; mothers with a punishing/minimizing profile had children with the poorest regulation, low involved mothers had children who were most regulated, and coaching/accepting mothers had children with the highest anxiety. Additionally, girls had higher anxiety and less depressive symptoms than boys. In variable-centered analyses, mothers higher in emotion-focused responses had children who increased in anxiety symptoms over time. Also, mothers higher in emotion minimization had girls who decreased in regulation and increased in depressive symptoms over time, with the reverse found for boys.