Parental Emotion Socialization and Child Psychological Adjustment among Chinese Urban Families: Mediation through Child Emotion Regulation and Moderation through Dyadic Collaboration.

Xutong Zhang,Zhuo Rachel Han,Zhuyun Jin

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02198

Abstract

The theoretical model of emotion regulation and many empirical findings have suggested that children’s emotion regulation may mediate the association between parents’ emotion socialization and children’s psychological adjustment. However, limited research has been conducted on moderators of these relations, despite the argument that the associations between parenting practices and children’s psychological adjustment are probabilistic rather than deterministic. This study examined the mediating role of children’s emotion regulation in linking parents’ emotion socialization and children’s psychological adjustment, and whether dyadic collaboration could moderate the proposed mediation model in a sample of Chinese parents and their children in their middle childhood. Participants were 150 Chinese children (87 boys and 63 girls, Mage = 8.54, SD = 1.67) and their parents (Mage = 39.22, SD = 4.07). Parent–child dyadic collaboration was videotaped and coded from an interaction task. Parents reported on their emotion socialization, children’s emotion regulation and psychopathological symptoms. Results indicated that child emotion regulation mediated the links between parental emotion socialization and child’s psychopathological symptoms. Evidence of moderated mediation was also found: supportive emotion socialization and child emotion regulation were positively correlated only at high and medium levels of dyadic collaboration, with child’s psychopathological symptoms as the dependent variables. Our findings suggested that higher-level parent–child collaboration might further potentiate the protective effect of parental supportive emotion socialization practices against child psychopathological symptoms.

Highlights

Over the past two decades, a burgeoning body of research has focused on the development of children’s psychological adjustment in the context of parental socialization practices (Eisenberg et al, 1998a; Denham et al, 2007)
Considerable theoretical and empirical work underlined the central role of emotional competence in child psychological adjustment and suggested that one Emotion Socialization and Dyadic Collaboration particular mechanism of the link between parental emotion socialization and child psychological adjustment is through child emotion regulation (Greenberg et al, 1995; Eisenberg et al, 2001; Morris et al, 2007)
This study aimed to explore whether child emotion regulation served as the mediator of the links between parental supportive/unsupportive emotion socialization and child psychopathological symptoms and further investigated whether these links were moderated by parent–child dyadic collaboration in a sample of Chinese parents and their children in their middle childhood

Summary

Introduction

Over the past two decades, a burgeoning body of research has focused on the development of children’s psychological adjustment in the context of parental socialization practices (Eisenberg et al, 1998a; Denham et al, 2007). By contrast, when children get frustrated, children with parents who respond in a distressed or punitive way may experience prolonged negative emotions or express their frustration in a maladaptive manner (e.g., aggression), which would increase the risk for psychopathological symptoms (e.g., internalizing and externalizing symptoms). Such association between specific socialization practices and child adjustment unfold in day-to-day parent–child interaction, and it has been argued that quality and characteristics of dyadic interaction could influence children’s openness to certain parental emotion socialization practices, and influence the effectiveness of such socialization (Darling and Steinberg, 1993). We consider parental emotion socialization practices and an important aspect of parent–child dyadic interaction (i.e., dyadic collaboration) concurrently on their associations with child emotion regulation and psychological adjustment among Chinese families with children in their middle childhood

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