Poster #205 - Differences in Maternal and Paternal Discussions of Emotion by Child Sex

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Emotion socialization from both parents can differentially inform children’s expectations of gender norms related to emotions, which can have implications for children’s expression and regulation of emotions. Simon and Nath (2004) found that men were less likely to view their anger as appropriate than women, suggesting that men are socialized to hide emotions and thus may socialize boys and girls differently when compared to women. To examine these potential differential emotion socialization behaviors of mothers and fathers to sons and daughters, we examined parental emotion coaching and elaboration observed during parent-child discussions of positive and negative emotions. It was expected that that mothers would be more encouraging and elaborative than fathers. It was also expected that girls, when compared to boys, will be socialized to express and maintain a positive outlook, and thus, parents of daughters will be more encouraging of positive emotions than parents of sons. On the other hand, it was expected that boys would be socialized to be more stoic and hide their emotions, like sadness; thus, parents of sons were expected be less encouraging of negative emotions compared to parents of daughters.

Children between 6-9 years old participated in a five-minute emotion talk task with mothers and fathers on separate occasions, where each parent discussed two memories with the child: happy and upset. Parental encouragement of emotion was coded on a 5-point scale based on how encouraging and validating parents were for both positive and negative emotions. Each subject-verb phrase was coded for presence or absence of parental elaboration.

A 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 MANCOVA examined differences in parental emotion discourse with three within-subjects factors (parent sex; discourse type; emotion type) and one between-subjects factor (child sex), controlling for maternal and paternal employment and maternal education. The analyses revealed a 2-way interaction of child sex with parent sex (F(1,36)=6.45, Wilks’ lambda=0.84, p<.05) and a 2-way interaction of child sex with emotion type (F(1,36)=17.28, Wilks’ lambda = 0.68, p<.001). Mothers engaged in less elaboration and encouragement with daughters than sons, whereas fathers engaged in more elaboration and encouragement with daughters than sons (see Table 1). For positive events, both parents engaged in more encouragement and elaboration with daughters than sons. For negative events, both parents engaged in more encouragement and elaboration with sons than daughters.

Our findings highlight the complex nature of potential differential emotion socialization from parents to children. The pattern of findings demonstrate that parents were less elaborative and encouraging with their same-gender children, and girls’ expressions of positive emotions, across both parents, were more encouraged than boys’ expressions of positive emotions. However, parents appear to be more accepting of boys’ expressions of negative emotions than girls’ expressions of negative emotions. These results could indicate that parents view emotions like anger to be more masculine and thus appropriate for boys. Future research should continue to examine the ways that specific emotions, such as sadness and anger, are socialized to boys and girls from fathers and mothers.

Authors

• Diana Devine, Virginia Tech
  Presenting Author

• Cynthia L Smith, Virginia Tech
  Non-Presenting Author

• Julie Dunsmore, Virginia Tech
  Non-Presenting Author