Maternal Emotion Socialization Research Articles

The role of children’s emotion regulation and maternal emotion socialization in preschoolers’ behavioral difficulties during the COVID-19 lockdown

AbstractTurkey, like many countries, implemented protective measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. One such measure involved isolating young children to reduce virus transmission. However, this regulation presented parents with the challenging task of juggling work responsibilities while caring for their young children without the usual support from external resources. Given these difficult circumstances, young children may struggle with emotion regulation, while isolation can impede parents from effectively addressing their children’s negative emotions. This online study aims to examine the dynamic relationship between children’s emotion regulation ability and maternal emotion socialization capacity in predicting children’s behavioral difficulties. The study revealed a positive correlation between maternal punitive and minimizing emotion socialization reactions and children’s behavioral difficulties. However, this association was primarily observed in children with high negative emotionality and low effortful control. Notably, when children had low negative emotionality scores, maternal minimizing emotion socialization behaviors were negatively associated with their behavior problems. These findings support the idea that during stressful periods, such as a pandemic, the diathesis-stress model may become more applicable. It emphasizes the interaction between individuals’ vulnerabilities and environmental triggers leading to unfavorable outcomes, such as higher levels of children’s externalizing problems. These results underscore the importance of tailored intervention programs for parent-child dyads experiencing limited psychological resources during stressful events like a pandemic.

Clarifying the relation between mother and adolescent borderline personality disorder symptoms: The roles of maternal and adolescent emotion regulation and maladaptive maternal emotion socialization.

Despite evidence for the intergenerational transmission of borderline personality disorder (BPD) pathology from mothers to offspring, the factors underlying the relation between mother and child BPD symptoms remain unclear and little is known about the pathways through which maternal BPD symptoms may relate to BPD symptoms in their offspring. One set of factors that warrants consideration in this regard is mother and child emotion regulation (ER) difficulties. In particular, theory and research suggest an indirect relation between mother and child BPD symptoms through maternal ER difficulties (and related maladaptive emotion socialization strategies) and, subsequently, child ER difficulties. Thus, this study used structural equation modeling to examine a model wherein maternal BPD symptoms relate to offspring BPD symptoms in adolescence through maternal ER difficulties (and maladaptive maternal emotion socialization strategies) and, subsequently, adolescent ER difficulties. A nationwide community sample of 200 mother-adolescent dyads completed an online study. Results provided support for the proposed model, revealing both a direct relation between maternal and adolescent BPD symptoms and two indirect relations through (a) maternal and adolescent ER difficulties and (b) maternal ER difficulties, maternal maladaptive emotion socialization strategies, and adolescent ER difficulties. Results highlight the relevance of both mother and adolescent ER difficulties in the relation between mother and offspring BPD pathology, as well as the potential clinical utility of targeting mother and child ER in interventions aimed at preventing the intergenerational transmission of BPD pathology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Associations Between Adult Attachment, Maternal Emotion Socialization and Child Behavior.

Attachment theories suggest that the adult attachment styles of mothers may influence behavior problems among their children; however, empirical studies examining the direct role of maternal adult attachment styles and the mechanisms through emotion-related parenting are scarce. This study examined the influence of maternal adult attachment styles and emotion-related parenting on child internalizing and externalizing problems. The participants were 409 mothers with children aged 4-5years. A questionnaire survey was conducted to obtain their adult attachment styles to their mothers, maternal emotion socialization, and their children's behavior problems. The results of structural equation modelling (SEM) analyses revealed that maternal adult attachment influenced child behavior problems directly and indirectly through maternal emotion socialization. (1) Maternal attachment anxiety directly affected child externalizing problems, and indirectly affected them via mothers' higher unsupportive emotion socialization (dismissing and dysfunction). Moreover, attachment anxiety influenced child internalizing problems directly, and indirectly via mothers' higher unsupportive emotion socialization (dysfunction). (2) Furthermore, attachment avoidance indirectly impacted child externalizing problems via mothers' lower supportive emotion socialization (coaching). These results suggested that maternal adult attachment styles and emotion-related parenting have important implications for the development of child behaviors. Future interventions should target parental factors to mitigate the risk of behavior problems among preschoolers.

Intimate partner violence and preschool self‐regulation: Examining the role of maternal emotion socialization in Black families

AbstractThe ways that parents respond to children's negative emotions shape the development of self‐regulation across early childhood. The objective of this study was to examine child self‐regulation in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure in a sample of Black, economically marginalized mothers and their young children (aged 3–5 years, N = 99). The study investigates the conditional effects of emotion socialization practices that (1) encourage expression of and problem‐solving around negative affect (“supportive”), and (2) encourage suppression of affective displays (“suppressive”) on children's self‐regulation. We found a significant association between higher child self‐regulation and supportive parental reactions in the context of psychological IPV. We also found a significant association between higher child self‐regulation and suppressive parental reactions in the context of psychological IPV. Our findings are consistent with prior research suggesting Black parents who teach varied strategies for emotional expression may promote children's adaptation in high‐stress family environments. Macrosystem factors such as systemic racism and discrimination as well as the threat of family violence may shape how parents approach emotion socialization and the teaching of affective self‐expression and self‐regulation.

Supplemental Material for Clarifying the Relation Between Mother and Adolescent Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms: The Roles of Maternal and Adolescent Emotion Regulation and Maladaptive Maternal Emotion Socialization

Supplemental Material for Clarifying the Relation Between Mother and Adolescent Borderline Personality Disorder Symptoms: The Roles of Maternal and Adolescent Emotion Regulation and Maladaptive Maternal Emotion Socialization

Maternal socialization of emotion and the development of emotion regulation in early adolescent girls.

Regulation of negative emotions is a core competency of child development. Parental emotion socialization profoundly influences later capacity to regulate negative affect in childhood and adolescence. The present study examined the effects of maternal emotion socialization on the development of emotion regulation in the context of a longitudinal study of 210 mother-daughter dyads. Dyads completed a conflict resolution task when the child was age 11 years during which maternal warmth and hostility were coded. At ages 11 to 13 years, mothers completed self-report measures of supportive and nonsupportive responses to child negative emotion, and children completed self-reports of inhibition and adaptive regulation of sadness and anger. We used latent growth curve modeling to estimate changes in inhibition and adaptive regulation of sadness and anger over time; observed maternal warmth and hostility were included as time-invariant covariates and maternal self-report of supportive and nonsupportive responses were included as time-varying covariates. Observed maternal warmth was positively associated with girls' adaptive regulation of anger and sadness at age 11 years. Maternal self-reported supportive responses to girls' negative affect were positively associated with girls' adaptive regulation of anger, and nonsupportive responses were negatively associated with adaptive regulation of anger and sadness. These findings support the role of maternal emotion socialization and indicate specific effects of maternal warmth and supportive responses in the development of girls' capacity to modulate negative emotions during early adolescence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The link between maternal emotion socialization practices and Turkish preschoolers’ emotion regulation: Moderating roles of paternal emotional support

The link between maternal emotion socialization practices and Turkish preschoolers’ emotion regulation: Moderating roles of paternal emotional support

Maternal depressive symptoms and child internalizing problems: The mediation of emotion socialization

AbstractObjectiveThis study examined the mediation of mothers' ratings of their maternal emotion socialization practices in the relation between mothers' depressive symptoms and children's internalizing problems in a Brazilian community sample.BackgroundMaternal depression and maternal emotion socialization reactions contribute to children's internalizing problems, but the mechanisms through which these variables interact remain unclear.MethodParticipants were 153 mothers of children between 3 and 8 years old. The Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES) evaluated mothers' ratings of their emotion socialization practices, the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) assessed children's internalizing behaviors, and the Beck Depression Inventory I (BDI‐I) measured maternal depressive symptoms.ResultsMaternal ratings of non‐supportive emotion socialization reactions partially mediated the relation between maternal depressive symptoms and children's internalizing problems. There were no effects of maternal depressive symptoms on maternal supportive emotion socialization reactions and child internalizing problems.ConclusionEarly psychosocial interventions that reduce non‐supportive reactions to children's emotions may be an important way of assisting children in understanding and managing their negative emotions.

Supportive Emotion Socialization Mitigates Risk Between Maternal Emotion Regulation Difficulties and Preschooler Emotion Regulation.

Few studies have examined protective maternal factors that may mitigate the intergenerational transmission of risk of maternal emotion regulation difficulties on child outcomes. The current study tested whether supportive maternal emotion socialization moderated the association between maternal emotion regulation difficulties and child emotion regulation behaviors. Participants were 68 mother-preschooler (aged 36-60 months) dyads that were oversampled for maternal symptoms of borderline personality disorder, in order to achieve greater variability in the range of maternal emotion regulation difficulties. Maternal emotion regulation difficulties and supportive emotion socialization behaviors were measured using self-report questionnaires, and child emotion regulation was coded during a frustration-eliciting blocked goal task. Results partially supported study hypotheses, such that trait maternal emotion regulation difficulties were associated with child displays of sadness at low levels of supportive maternal emotion socialization, but not when mothers engaged in higher levels of supportive emotion socialization. These findings suggest that maternal emotion regulation and emotion socialization are distinctly related to child emotion expression and regulatory actions, and that adaptive maternal emotion socialization may mitigate some of the adverse transgenerational impacts of impaired emotion regulation.

Chinese immigrant child and maternal reactions to disappointment: Cultural fit impacts the bidirectional associations

AbstractCulture provides a context in which emotion socialization is embedded, and the bidirectional effects between parents’ emotion socialization and children's emotional behaviors may work differently across cultures. To understand how emotion socialization may be shaped by the cultural context, we examined the moderating role of Asian cultural values in bidirectional associations between maternal emotion socialization practices and child anger and sadness. Seventy‐four U.S. Chinese immigrant mothers (Mage = 40.71 years, SD = 3.61) completed measures assessing their Asian cultural values and parenting style. Children experienced a disappointment task in the lab (Cole, 1986), and mothers and their children (Mage = 6.73 years, SD = .95; 55% female) were observed at two different time intervals. Mothers’ socialization practices (emotion dismissing, emotion coaching, and moral and behavioral socialization) and children's anger and sadness responses at both intervals were coded. Mothers’ greater Asian cultural values buffered the negative effects of their emotion dismissing practices on children's anger and sadness. However, Asian cultural values did not impact the effects of children's anger and sadness on mothers’ emotion dismissing practices. When mothers endorsed fewer Asian values, their emotion coaching practices reduced children's anger and sadness. Children's anger and sadness evoked more emotion coaching practices when mothers endorsed lower levels of Asian cultural values. In addition, children's anger and sadness evoked greater moral and behavioral responses from their mothers when mothers endorsed more Asian values. Overall, findings underscored the importance of cultural values in the interplay between mothers’ emotion socialization practices and children's emotions.

Culture, Emotion Socialization and Children’s Inhibitory Control

ABSTRACT In the current study, we investigated the relations among maternal emotion socialization practices and children’s inhibitory control (IC) performance in Chinese and European American families. Fifty-three Chinese (Mage = 60 months) and 52 European American (Mage = 50 months) children and their mothers participated in this study. Maternal emotion socialization was assessed using mothers’ reported reactions to children’s negative emotions by completing the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES). Child IC was assessed through two observational measures. Results revealed significant group differences. Specifically, Chinese mothers adopted more harsh responses and less distress responses as compared to European American mothers. Chinese children scored higher on IC than did European American children. Moderation analyses also suggest that maternal harsh responses and distress responses were negatively related to children’s IC performance for European American group but not for Chinese group.

Person-Centered Maternal Emotion Socialization and Child Temperament: Relations to Children’s Emotion Regulation and Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms

Maternal emotion socialization and children’s temperament are two foundations of children’s emotional development. Yet, emotion socialization and temperament are multidimensional, which suggests behavioral profiles are important to consider. We used a person-centered approach to compare children’s emotion regulation and anxiety and depressive symptoms between maternal emotion socialization and child temperament profiles, uniquely and interactively. The participants were 322 mothers of a child ages 6–8 years (Mage = 7.4 years, SD = 0.84, 51% boys). Mothers completed survey questions about children’s emotion regulation, anxiety and depressive symptoms, temperament traits, and mothers’ emotion socialization behaviors. Four profiles of maternal emotion socialization (coaching/accepting, blended, punishing/minimizing, and low involved) were identified that explained significant variation in children’s emotion regulation and anxiety symptoms. Four temperament profiles were found which revealed two vulnerable groups, namely emotional/cautious and emotional/impulsive, which distinguished children with more emotion dysregulation and anxiety and depressive symptoms. Unique associations of maternal and temperament profiles were found, but no interaction of profiles was significant in relation to children’s emotion regulation or their internalizing symptoms. There is merit in continuing to examine parenting behaviors and their influence by drawing from a person-centered perspective.

The moderating effect of facial emotion recognition in maternal emotion socialization and child socioemotional adjustment

AbstractThe current study investigated relations among maternal emotion socialization, children's facial emotion recognition (FER), and children's behavioral problems. A sample of 118 preschoolers (Mage = 41.96 months) and their mothers participated. Mothers reported their reactions to children's negative emotions and rated children's internalizing and externalizing problems by completing the Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale and Child Behavior Checklist, respectively. Children's FER was assessed with a task that involved matching emotion labels to facial expressions. Results revealed that FER moderated the association between minimizing/punitive maternal reactions and children's externalizing problems. Minimizing/punitive maternal reactions were found to positively correlate with externalizing problems in children with lower levels of FER, but not among children with high levels of FER. Exploratory analyses with child gender also suggested that the moderating effect of FER in the relation between minimizing/punitive maternal reactions and children's internalizing problems applied only to boys, not to girls. The results highlight the importance of children's FER and gender, in addition to maternal reactions to expressed emotion, in shaping their socioemotional adjustment.

Communicating emotional distress experienced by adolescents between adolescents and their mothers: Patterns and links with adolescents’ emotional distress

This research proposes the construct of Communication Patterns of adolescents’ emotional distress (CPAED) between adolescents and their parents, describing situations in which open or defective dialog about adolescents’ emotions following distressful events are formed between adolescents and their parents. By addressing adolescents’ perceptions of CPAED in adolescents and their mothers, we developed a valid and reliable scale to assess the hypothesized CPAED theoretical framework. Factor analyses in Study 1 (EFA; N = 257, Mage = 15.66 years old, SD = 0.35) and Study 2 (CFA; initial N = 684; Mage = 14.08, SD = 0.45) suggested three factors: a) Active and Reactive Emotion Sharing (ARES), referring to adolescents’ active sharing of emotion or reactive sharing in the face of maternal inquiry; b) Lack of Solicitation by mothers (LS), tracking mothers’ avoidance of communication; and c) Lack of Response by adolescents (LR), describing adolescents’ avoidance of communication even when asked by mothers. Moreover, Study 2 documented that CPAED were linked to maternal emotion socialization practices (i.e., emotion expressivity and responses to adolescents’ negative emotions) and adolescents’ negative emotion expression. Study 2 found that ARES predicted decreased emotional distress in adolescents, whereas LS and LR predicted increased emotional distress accordingly; and the three factors of CPAED incrementally predicted adolescents’ emotional distress over and beyond other theoretically relevant predictors.

Child internalizing symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic among maltreating and non-maltreating families: Examining the effects of family resources and the Reminiscing and Emotion Training intervention

BackgroundThe effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on child functioning have been especially pronounced among low-income families. Protective factors, including sensitive reminiscing and sufficient family resources, may reduce the negative effects of the pandemic on child adjustment. ObjectiveThe current study investigated how family resources during the pandemic, race, maltreatment, and pre-pandemic involvement in an emotion socialization intervention (Myears ago = 4.37, SD = 1.36) were associated with child internalizing symptoms during the pandemic. Participants and settingThe study utilized longitudinal data following 137 maltreating and low-income nonmaltreating mother–child dyads (Mage = 9.08, SD = 1.88; 54.7% Male). MethodsMother–child dyads engaged in a randomized controlled trial of the Reminiscing and Emotion Training (RET; Valentino et al., 2019) intervention prior to the pandemic. Dyads discussed shared, past emotional experiences, and during the pandemic, mothers reported on their family resources and their child's internalizing symptoms. A path analysis examined the effects of family resources, race, maltreatment, and the RET intervention on child internalizing symptoms. ResultsFamily resources during the pandemic were significantly and inversely associated with child internalizing symptoms, b = −0.07, SE = 0.02, p < .01. There was a significant indirect effect of RET on child internalizing symptoms through sensitive reminiscing and a prior assessment of child maladjustment (95% CI [−0.294, −0.001]). ConclusionsThese findings suggest adequate family resources and sensitive maternal emotion socialization may be protective against child internalizing symptoms during the pandemic.

Heterogeneous patterns of maternal emotion socialization and their association with maternal depression and maltreatment history: A person-centered approach

BackgroundThe influence of parent's emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) on children, and predictors of such ERSBs has been studied extensively. However, to our knowledge, no study used a person-centered approach for subtyping the parental ERSB patterns and identifying parental characteristics that could discriminate the patterns. ObjectivesThe present study explored establishing heterogeneous maternal ERSBs and confirmed whether mothers' depression and maltreatment experienced in childhood are predictive of the subtypes. Participants and settingIn Korean, 695 mothers of 7–12-year-old children participated in the study. We conducted a latent profile analysis (LPA) using the six reaction categories of the Korean version of the Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale (K-CCNES). We compared the characteristics of children and mothers among the derived classes and conducted a multinomial regression analysis to evaluate the predictors for each class. ResultsFive classes emerged based on the LPA: “restrained” (25.0%), “ineffective” (19.0%), “harsh” (7.3%), “dismissive” (28.9%), and “supportive” (19.7%). Demographics, children's behavioral problems, maternal depression, and maltreatment history showed differences between the subgroups. Maternal depression and experiences of emotional neglect contributed to differentiating the negative ERSBs subgroups from positive styles. ConclusionsWe were able to categorize mothers into subgroups displaying heterogeneous patterns of ERSBs. While maternal depression was the strongest predictor of negative patterns, mothers' emotional neglect experiences were an additional characteristic that uniquely predicted the lack of supportive responses to children's negative emotions. Therefore, exploring maternal emotional states and maltreatment experiences could be helpful for clinicians seeking to establish intervention strategies to improve parental ERSBs.

Parasympathetic activity, emotion socialization, and internalizing and externalizing problems in children: Longitudinal associations between and within families.

Biopsychosocial models of children's socioemotional development highlight the joint influences of physiological regulation and parenting practices. Both high and low levels of children's baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) have been associated with children's maladjustment, indicative of nonlinear associations. Negative or unsupportive parental responses to children's emotions are consistently linked with internalizing (IP) and externalizing problems (EP), although few studies have examined how associations vary within families. This study examined within- and between-person associations of children's quadratic baseline RSA, negative maternal emotion socialization, and children's problems over 7 years. RSA was measured in 133 3.5-year-old children (72 female) in predominantly middle- to upper-middle socioeconomic status, Caucasian families. Mothers reported on their emotion socialization practices and their children's adjustment concurrently and 1, 5, and 7 years later. Multilevel structural equation models revealed quadratic associations between baseline RSA and both IP and EP at the between-person level, suggesting that children with moderate RSA had fewer adjustment problems, on average, than children with lower or higher RSA. Across time and between families, children displayed more problems if their mothers reported more negative responses to their children's emotions. Within families, IP were elevated on years when mothers reported higher than usual negative responses, and children with either high or low baseline RSA had more problems on years when mothers reported greater than usual negative responses to their children's emotions. Altogether, these findings suggest that high and low baseline RSA may increase the risk for maladjustment, particularly in the time-varying context of aversive emotion socialization practices. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Temperament, Emotion Regulation, and Emotion-Related Parenting: Maternal Emotion Socialization during Early Childhood

Temperament, Emotion Regulation, and Emotion-Related Parenting: Maternal Emotion Socialization during Early Childhood

No hard feelings: maternal emotion socialization and callous-unemotional traits in children.

Parents' identification and discussion of their own and their children's emotions are important emotion socialization behaviors (ESBs) that may mitigate child conduct problems (CPs). However, ifparents perceive their child to be relatively unemotional, which may be the case for children with conduct problems and high callous-unemotional traits (CP + CU), these parents may be limited in their capacity to use ESBs effectively. This study tested these questions by looking at ESBs in mothers (N = 145) of children aged 2-8years with CP + CU (n = 24), CPs and low CU traits (CP-CU; n = 94) and a non-clinical community sample (n = 27). After watching an emotional movie excerpt, mothers were asked to (1) provide ratings of their child's emotional experience and then (2) engage in a debriefing task with their child about the content. Children's expressed emotion during the excerpt and transcriptions of the debriefing task were coded by masked raters. Unexpectedly, mothers' perceptions of their children's emotion did not vary by group. Emotional ratings provided by mothers of children in the CP + CU group most closely aligned with ratings from independent observers. ESBs did not differ by group in the debriefing task. Mothers of children with CP + CU traits were shown in this study to be reliable reporters of their children's expressed emotion and showed similar rates of parental ESBs as mothers of children in the other groups. Results are discussed in reference to various models of parenting and CU traits that might account for these unexpected findings.

Longitudinal Links among Mother and Child Emotion Regulation, Maternal Emotion Socialization, and Child Anxiety.

Models of transdiagnostic family emotion processes recognize parents' emotion-related characteristics and behaviors as key contributors to child emotional development and psychological functioning. One such psychological outcome, child anxiety, is prevalent and early emerging, underscoring the importance of identifying early family- and emotion-related mechanisms involved in anxiety risk. We investigated the extent to which mother and child emotion-related traits and behaviors related to child anxiety in a community sample of 175 mother-child dyads. Using three time-points (child ages 2-4years, assessments 1year apart), we examined how mothers' emotion dysregulation predicted their emotion socialization practices (either supportive or non-supportive) and children's emotion regulation (ER; either attention- or caregiver-focused) over time, in relation to later child anxiety. Models controlled for child inhibited temperament and also tested the role of maternal anxiety in these trajectories. Mothers reported on their emotion dysregulation, emotion socialization, and their own and their child's anxiety, whereas child ER and inhibited temperament were measured using laboratory observation. In supportive emotion socialization models, maternal emotion dysregulation predicted child anxiety 2years later. An indirect effect emerged, such that greater maternal emotion dysregulation predicted greater non-supportive emotion socialization, which in turn related to children's greater caregiver-focused ER. Maternal emotion dysregulation, maternal anxiety, and child inhibited temperament each predicted child anxiety above and beyond other variables, although their shared variance likely accounted for some of the results. Findings lend partial support to current theoretical models of transdiagnostic family emotion processes and child anxiety development, suggesting promising avenues of future research.