Parents’ Emotion Socialization with Toddlers: Evidence from a Twin Difference Design

• In Event: The Kids will be alright: The roles of parents and children in promoting positive development

Abstract

Based on Eisenberg et al.’s (1998) parental emotion socialization model, we examine the extent to which parents’ emotion socialization relates to children’s concurrent and later regulatory behaviors and problem behaviors. Socialization of emotion during early childhood is inherently impacted by broader cultural, environmental, and family factors (Zahn-Waxler, 2010), but disentangling these factors with standard research designs is difficult due to potential confounding of parenting with other family factors. We leverage a longitudinal sample of families with twins to examine comparisons both between and within families.
Participants included 517 families, including 173 MZ pairs, 192 same sex SDZ pairs, and 152 opposite sex DZ pairs. We assessed mothers’ and fathers’ emotion socialization practices with their 3-year-old children during a teaching task. Children also completed two Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery tasks measuring inhibitory control and impulsivity at age 3 and 7. At twin age 7 (n=312 individual children), a subsample of mothers also completed a questionnaire assessing internalizing and externalizing behaviors.
Analyses used multilevel modeling to capitalize on nested family data. The conceptual model linking our research questions to model steps is in Figure 1. We first examined our research questions analyzing twins as individuals. Then, we conducted the same set of analyses using a Twin Difference Design which compares within family behaviors by computing difference scores between Twin 1 and Twin 2. For the Twin Difference analyses, interpretation is different. In this case the differences between twins within the same family are modeled, which allows us to uniquely disentangle parenting practices with children from other potentially unobserved shared environment factors (e.g., cultural beliefs, SES, or parent personality) controlling for unobserved within-family similarities. Because these shared environmental factors are controlled for, the significant effects revealed by the model are likely (1) attributable to the observed predictive behaviors, and (2) mediated by the non-shared environment and/or genetically mediated (due the presence of DZ cotwins in the design).
Results (see Table 1) at the individual level indicated that when mothers used more effective emotion socialization with their children at age 3, children were higher in concurrent inhibitory control and lower in concurrent impulsivity. Children higher in inhibitory control at age 3 were higher in inhibitory control at age 7, and higher age 7 inhibitory control was related to lower externalizing behaviors.
Intrapair twin differences in mothers' use of emotion socialization were positively related to twin differences in 3-year olds’ inhibitory control behaviors; the twin who experienced more effective emotion socialization from her mother during the teaching task showed increased inhibitory control when playing with toys. Twin differences in fathers' use of emotion socialization were negatively related to twin differences in their toddlers' impulsivity behaviors; the twin who experienced more effective emotional socialization practices from her father showed less impulsivity when playing with toys.
Relatively few longitudinal findings emerged with internalizing or externalizing problem behaviors. Nonetheless, we identify specific parenting practices, within a family, that relate to emerging regulation in children, with mother versus father behavior predicting different types of child behavior.

Authors

• Elizabeth M. Planalp, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Emily Hilton, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristin Dowe, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• H Hill Goldsmith, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Non-Presenting Author