Poster #95 - Grandparents as Emotion Socializers: Evidence from High Point and Low Point Narratives and Life Lessons

• In Event: Poster Session 15

Abstract

Emotion socialization (ES) refers to the process through which children learn about their own emotional experience and how to manage it, as well as how to communicate and understand others’ emotional displays, with respect to what is adaptive within their societal context (Eisenberg et al., 1998b). A large body of research demonstrates the importance of parents’ ES in their children’s socio-emotional outcomes (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 1998a; Morris et al., 2007). Teachers’ ES also has been shown to influence their students’ socio-emotional competence (e.g., Garner, 2010; King & Paro, 2018), and research is accruing evidence for the influence of friends as agents of ES (e.g., Miller-Slough & Dunsmore, 2016, 2019; Rose, 2002). Grandparents are also common proximal influences in children’s ecological familial context who make meaningful contributions to child development (e.g., Barnett et al., 2010; Bronfenbrenner, 1986). Yet, grandparents’ role has been largely overlooked within ES research. Grandparents may provide caregiving and mentorship and serve as family historians, relaying cultural values and lessons through family narratives (David & Nelson-Kalkulla, 2019; Smith & Wild, 2019). Thus, grandparents’ roles in their grandchildren’s lives afford opportunities for them to be ES agents.. In the current study we examined whether ES by grandparents was spontaneously brought up in adults’ retrospective reports of grandparents’ messages and behaviors.
Participants were 100 adults aged 26 – 44 years (M age = 33.83 years, SD = 4.93; 10% Black or African American, 7% Asian American, 79% White, 4% multiracial; 5% Hispanic/Latinx) living in the US who completed a two-part survey on MTurk. Total compensation was $7.85. For the current study we analyzed two sets of narratives that were part of this survey: (a) high point and low point narratives from their relationship with their grandparent (adapted from McAdams, 2007) and (b) a list of up to 10 life lessons learned from the grandparent. High point/low point narratives were coded for presence vs absence of grandparent ES (adapted from Lozada et al., 2016; K = .60). Life lessons were first coded for presence/absence of positive and negative emotions (Ks > .80). Then, a team of 18 independent coders conducted an open card sort on the lessons including emotions (Rugg & McGeorge, 2005).
Across both high point and low point narratives, 14.6% of participants included grandparent ES. Though this proportion is small, the absence of ES in the prompt lends weight to the salience of these experiences of grandparent ES. See Table 1 for ES themes and example excerpts. Approximately half of participants (55%) mentioned emotionality or emotion-related skills in their lessons. Dendrograms of the open card sort results suggested 6 themes for lessons about positive emotions and 2 themes for lessons about negative emotions. See Table 2. Overall, results suggest that grandparent ES is salient in retrospective meaning-making by adult grandchildren. Grandparents’ ES of positive emotions was emphasized more than ES of negative emotions, and the particular focus on love and caring is consistent with Positivity Resonance Theory (Brown & Fredrickson, 2021; Fredrickson, 2016).

Authors

• Julie C Dunsmore, University of Houston
  Presenting Author

• Erika Hernandez, BInghamton University

• Fantasy T. Lozada, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Karen E Talley, University of Houston

• Linda C. Halgunseth, Michigan State University

• Rachel Miller-Slough, East Tennessee State University