Poster #74 - Mother- and Father-Child Emotion Discussions: Links with Children’s Socioemotional Adaptation

• In Event: Poster Session 18

Abstract

Parents play a vital role in the development of children’s emotional competencies (understanding, expression, and regulation of emotions; Eisenberg et al., 1998). Research indicates that a parent’s capacity to support their child’s exploration of emotions in the context of an open and coherent dialogue is an important vehicle by which children build emotional competence, which then reduces risk for externalizing and internalizing problems (Fivush et al., 2009). To date, most of this research has documented mothers’ role in these discussions despite fathers’ increased involvement in childrearing post-infancy (Pleck, 2010) and evidence suggesting a unique contribution of father-child emotion socialization for children’s socioemotional adaptation (Thomassin & Suveg, 2014). Consequently, the current research aimed to compare the quality of mother- and father-child emotion discussions along with their unique associations with children’s socioemotional adaptation in middle childhood. Based on findings suggesting that fathers may be comparatively less supportive, involved, and aware of their children’s emotions than mothers (Blandon, 2015) we hypothesized that mother-child dyads would engage in higher quality discussions. Further, given findings showing that the quality of child relationship with each parent contributes to child socioemotional adaptation (Dagan et al., 2022), we hypothesized to observe associations between both father-child and mother-child emotion discussions and children’s socioemotional adaptation.

A community-based sample of 75 children (42 girls; 8-10 years) participated in the Autobiographical and Emotional Events Dialogue (AEED; Koren-Karie et al., 2003) with their mothers and fathers during separate counterbalanced laboratory sessions. Dialogues involved the recounting of a happy, scary, angry, and sad event. Dialogues were rated on seven parental and child scales (Shift of Focus; Boundary Dissolution; Acceptance; Hostility; Involvement/Cooperation; Resolution; Structuring/Elaboration) and two scales measuring the overall quality of the dialogue (Adequacy; Coherence). In keeping with past research, aggregate scores were generated based on the average of these scales to capture the parent (“Parental Sensitive Guidance”) and child’s (“Child Cooperation and Exploration”) individual performance, along with the overall dyadic quality of the dialogue (“Emotionally Coherent Narrative”) for mother- and father-child dyads. Children’s internalizing and externalizing problems were assessed via self-report (Dominic-Interactive; Valla, et al., 2000) and mother- and father reports (SDQ; Goodman, 1997). To minimize parental reporting bias, we collapsed mother and father ratings (r=.60-.73) into one single score for the
Internalizing and the Externalizing problems scales.
Paired sample t-tests (Figure 1) revealed that mothers’ parental sensitive guidance was higher (M=6.36; SD=.98) than fathers (M=5.83; SD=1.01; t(73)=3.58, p<.001), and that children’s cooperation and exploration was higher with their mother (M=6.43; SD=.87) than father (M=6.07; SD=.93; t(73)= 2.97, p=.004). Correlation analyses (Table 2) indicated that children’s cooperation and exploration during emotion dialogues with their mothers was negatively associated with parent-reported internalizing and externalizing problems as well as self-reported externalizing problems.
These results suggest that mothers may have a stronger ability to construct coherent, organized, and emotionally regulated narratives than fathers. Moreover, it seems that children’s participation in the co-construction process with mothers is more strongly associated with their socioemotional development. Such findings may help identify targets of interventions aimed at bolstering father-child relationships.

Authors

• Sage Sezlik, University of Ottawa
  Presenting Author

• Camille Guérin-Marion, University of Ottawa

• Jean-Francois Bureau, University of Ottawa