Longitudinal Associations Between Mothers’ and Fathers’ Emotion Socialization and Toddlers’ Socioemotional Functioning

• In Event: Children's Emotion Socialization Within the Family: Mothers, Fathers, and Grandparents

Abstract

Competence in expressing, regulating, and understanding emotions is foundational to children’s school success and their ability to navigate social interactions (Denham et al., 2010). When children are unable to read others’ emotions, they are more likely to act impulsively or withdraw from social situations (Eisenberg et al., 2010). Parents’ emotion socialization (ES) practices, such as providing validation, are important for the development of socioemotional skills (Spinrad et al., 2007). Studies on ES have mostly focused on middle-class White mothers. Far fewer studies have examined the effects of emotion socialization in Latinx and African American families, which may misrepresent the range of parenting behaviors related to child development.

Using a sample of Latinx and African American couples (N = 128) and their children participating in an ongoing intervention, we ask: (1) What ES practices do mothers and fathers use with their toddlers at 18 and 24 months? (2) How are mothers’ and fathers’ ES practices associated with toddlers’ social functioning at 21, 24, and 30 months? and (3) What are the joint contributions of mothers’ and fathers’ ES practices to their children’s social functioning at 21, 24, and 30 months? We hypothesized that mothers and fathers who provide more supportive responses (e.g., emotion coaching) will have toddlers with greater social competence and fewer behavioral problems than parents who provide fewer supportive responses or provide more non-supportive responses (e.g., minimizing). We also expected that when both mothers and fathers provide high levels of supportive responses, toddlers will have greater social competence and fewer behavioral problems than when only one parent is highly supportive or when both parents are highly non-supportive.

Using video-recorded mother- and father-child interactions at 18 and 24 months, coders indicated the valence of toddlers’ affect (positive or negative) and categorized parents’ responses to emotions as emotion coaching (e.g., validating the emotion), non-supportive (e.g., minimizing), distraction, or ignoring (e.g., not providing a response). At 21, 24, and 30 months, mothers and fathers reported on toddlers’ social competence and behavioral problems using the BITSEA (Carter & Briggs-Gowan, 2005). Control variables included parental education, intervention condition, child sex, and child emotionality.

Descriptive statistics appear in Table 1. Hierarchical regression models indicated that fathers who more frequently ignored negative emotions at 18 months had toddlers with more behavioral problems at 30 months (B = 3.68, t(81) = 2.34, p < .05) whereas at 24 months, fathers who more frequently distracted their toddlers when they expressed negative emotions had toddlers with greater social competence at 30 months (B = 3.61, t(44) = 2.84, p < .01). Lastly, toddlers had greater social competence at 30 months when one parent engaged in high levels of ignoring and one parent engaged in low levels of ignoring at 24 months, providing support for a divergence model of emotion socialization (McElwain et al., 2007).

Because fathers’ responses to negative emotions were uniquely associated with toddlers’ socioemotional functioning, parenting programs targeting parents’ emotion socialization practices should involve fathers as a means of promoting positive socioemotional outcomes among ethnically diverse children.

Authors

• Angelica Alonso, University of Maryland - College Park
  Presenting Author

• Natasha J Cabrera, University of Maryland - College Park

• Mariah Egerton

• Stephanie M Reich, University of California - Irvine