Poster #144 - Identifying Clusters of Mothers’ Emotion Socialization Behaviors in China and India

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Parental emotion socialization (ES) is a key aspect of parenting with implications for children’s daily life, social interactions, and their mental health. A significant amount of research on ES exists, with several studies that have examined ES in diverse cultures around the world. Specifically, parents’ direct responses to children’s emotions have been the most commonly examined, typically categorized as supportive or nonsupportive. These composite parent responses are used in examining relations with various aspects of child functioning. Aggregating parent responses as supportive versus nonsupportive does not allow researchers to examine various profiles or clusters of parental responses to children’s emotions and how these clusters, as opposed to composite parent behaviors, relate to child functioning. Person-centered statistical approaches allow an examination of possible combinations of responses that parents utilize with their children, and whether different types of ES groupings influence children in different ways. In the current study, we used hierarchical cluster analysis to identify clusters of parent responses to children’s emotions in two Asian countries, China and India, and the associations of these clusters with child internalizing (i.e, anxiety, depression), and externalizing problems (i.e., aggression). The sample included mothers of 142 children from India (52.8% female, Mage = 12.48, SD = 1.16) and mothers of 184 children from China (47.3% female, Mage = 11.05, SD = 1.18). In their respective language (i.e., Marathi or Mandarin), participant mothers completed Parent Response to Children’s Emotions Questionnaire (with response options from the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale; Fabes, Eisenberg, & Bernz-weig, 1990, and culturally salient socialization responses in Asia), and Internalizing and Externalizing Scales from the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 2001). Hierarchical cluster analysis of the parental responses to children’s emotions generated three clusters (Culturally Adaptive Responses, Supportive Responses, and Supportive and Nonsupportive Responses, see figure 1). Adaptive Responses cluster represented the most common pattern accounting for 145 mothers and exhibited high means for supportive responses and moderately high means for a few nonsupportive responses (i.e., minimizing, punitive). Supportive Responses cluster exhibited the second most common pattern (n = 115 mothers) moderately high means for supportive responses and low means for all nonsupportive responses. Supportive and Nonsupportive Responses cluster was the least common (n = 66 mothers) and exhibited means for all responses at a moderate level. Multiple regression analyses revealed that Supportive and Nonsupportive Responses cluster, b = 1.16, SE = .26, t(256) = 4.46, p < .001 more strongly predicted child internalizing problems than Supportive Responses cluster, b = 1.03, SE = .26, t(256) = 3.90, p < .001. Further, Supportive and Nonsupportive Responses cluster predicted child externalizing problems the strongest, b = .62, SE = .23, t(267) = 2.67, p = .01, followed by Supportive Responses cluster, b = .52, SE = .23, t(267) = 2.24, p = .03, and lastly Adaptive Responses cluster, b = .50, SE = .24, t(267) = 2.88, p = .004. These findings highlight the importance of person-centered approaches to data analyses in capturing the complexity of parental ES in diverse cultural groups.

Authors

• Mackenzie Trevethan, Miami University
  Presenting Author

• Kathy Lin, Miami University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Vaishali Raval, Miami University of Ohio
  Non-Presenting Author

• Xu Li, Anshan Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jinsheng Hu, Liaoning Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Neeraj Deo, M. J. College
  Non-Presenting Author