3-202 - Is Parents’ Supportiveness Always a Good Thing? The Dynamic Value of Parents’ Emotion Socialization Across Childhood

Session Type: Poster Symposium

Integrative Statement

Parents’ supportive emotion socialization behaviors are thought to facilitate children’s socioemotional and cognitive development (Fabes et al., 2002). Given numerous interventions that target parents’ supportive emotion socialization (e.g., Havighurst et al., 2013), it is important to determine whether supportive behaviors continue to facilitate positive outcomes as children become older, or whether a shift exists in the value of parents’ supportive socialization over time. This poster symposium examines whether parents’ supportive emotion socialization behaviors remain advantageous for children’s socioemotional and academic competencies across childhood. Longitudinal, multiple-reporter, and international data all suggest potential age-related or bidirectional effects in the value of parents’ supportiveness. Poster 1 demonstrates that mothers’ supportive responses have reduced value in predicting lower levels of externalizing behaviors in older compared to younger children. Poster 2 illustrates that parental supportive reactions are initially positively associated with child socioemotional competence at age 5, but negatively related to competence at age 6. Poster 3 presents findings from an intervention study that investigates bidirectionality and suggests that mothers’ supportiveness may also be a consequence rather than cause of children’s socioemotional difficulties. Poster 4 demonstrates that parental emotional support may be less influential in predicting school-aged children’s academic adjustment, as children gain skills in self-regulation. In poster 5, with third-grade children, mothers’ supportive responses are negatively related to teacher-reports of children’s socioemotional competence, but positively to parent-reports, suggesting that parents may not perceive costs to their supportiveness in older children. Together these posters suggest shifts in the utility of supportive socialization behaviors across childhood.

Sub Unit

• Social, Emotional, Personality

Chair

• Vanessa L. Castro, North Carolina State University

Individual Presentations

• 1. Parental Responses to Negative Emotions and Child Externalizing Behavior: Different Relations for 5-, 6-, and 7-year-olds - Presenting Author: Jackie A Nelson, University of Texas at Dallas; Brittany Paige Boyer, University of Texas at Dallas

• 2. Mothers’ Supportive Socialization Strategies and Children’s Socioemotional Competence Between Ages 5 and 7 - Presenting Author: Anika Fäsche, University of Freiburg; Antje von Suchodoletz, University of Freiburg; Catherine Gunzenhauser, Saarland University

• 3. Relations of Parent Emotion Socialization to Child Emotion Dysregulation in an Intervention Context - Presenting Author: Anne E Shaffer, University of Georgia; Kim Shipman, University of Georgia; Monica Marie Fitzgerald, University of Colorado at Denver; Laura Loucks, University of Georgia

• 4. Parents’ Reactions to Children’s Negative Emotions and Social-Emotional Classroom Functioning in the Early Grades - Presenting Author: Jodi Swanson, Arizona State University; Carlos Valiente, Arizona State University; Tashia Abry, Arizona State University; Kathryn Lemery-Chalfant, Arizona State University

• 5. Changing Tides: Mothers’ Supportive Emotion Socialization Relates Negatively to Children’s Social Success in School - Presenting Author: Vanessa L. Castro, North Carolina State University; Amy G Halberstadt, North Carolina State University; Patricia T Garrett-Peters, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill