African American Mothers’ Emotion and Racial Socialization of 3rd Grade Children’s Emotion Regulation

• In Event: Racial Socialization and Positive Parenting Across Ages in African American Families

Abstract

Racial socialization describes the process by which parents teach their children what it means to be a member of a particular racial group through shared values, norms, and practices (Hughes et al., 2006). Behavioral racial socialization (BRS) involves attempts of African American parents to instill feelings of positivity toward one’s racial group through the engagement of behaviors. BRS stimulates children’s learning experience of African American culture and has been found to be associated with better problem-solving skills among preschool children (Caughy et al., 2002), a skill important for school success. Although BRS is a developmentally appropriate form of racial socialization particularly for early and middle childhood, little is known about how BRS may facilitate other school-relevant developmental outcomes for African American children, such as emotion regulation skills. Emerging theory on the joint contribution of parents’ racial and emotion socialization highlights two specific emotion socialization strategies that African American parents likely engage in with racial socialization: suppression responses (responses to children’s emotion that are meant to restrict the child’s emotion expression) and supportive responses (responses to children’s emotion that are meant to support the child’s understanding of emotion and emotion regulation; Dunbar et al. 2017).

In the current study, we test the individual and joint effects of African American parents’ racial (i.e., behavioral) and emotion (i.e., suppressive and supportive) socialization with children’s emotion regulation. Participants were 117 African American mother-child dyads. Mothers reported their BRS practices via the Racial Socialization Questionnaire-Parent Version (RSQ – P; White-Johnson et al., 2009) and supportive and suppression responses via the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES; Fabes et al., 1990). Teachers rated children’s emotion regulation and emotion lability via the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC, Shields & Cicchetti, 1997). Results revealed that supportive responses significantly predicted boys’ regulation, b = -.30, p = .023, and both boys’ and girls’ emotion lability, b = .33, p = .026 and b = .46, p < .001, respectively. Suppression responses significantly predicted girls’ emotion regulation and lability, b = -.30, p = .026 and b = .29, p = .012, respectively. BRS significantly predicted girls’ emotion lability, b = -.41, p = .001. A significant interaction emerged between BRS and suppression responses for boys, b = -.36, p = .014. More specifically, greater BRS was associated with greater emotion regulation at low levels of suppression responses, but BRS was unrelated to boys’ emotion regulation in the context of high suppression responses.

Overall, both BRS and emotion socialization contribute to children’s emotion regulation abilities for both boys and girls. Yet, for boys specifically, racial socialization is particularly beneficial for their emotion regulation in the context of infrequent restriction of their emotion expression. These findings further our understanding of the normative emotional development among African American children and have implications for teachers’ perceptions of African American children’s behaviors.

Authors

• Deon Brown, Texas A&M University - College Station
  Presenting Author

• Fantasy T. Lozada, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alexandra Merritt, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Non-Presenting Author