Mother- and Father-Child Emotion Discussions: Comparisons on the Autobiographical Emotional Events Dialogue

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Background: Parent-led emotion discussions, a central method in which parents socialize children’s emotion skills, have important implications for children’s socio-emotional development (Laible, 2011). Notably, they are instrumental in supporting children’s verbal communication of emotions throughout middle childhood in particular (Zeman et al., 2010). While extensive research has documented mothers’ role in these discussions (e.g., Fivush et al., 2003; Visser et al., 2016), much less is known about fathers’ involvement. This is problematic given fathers’ increased involvement in childrearing post-infancy (Pleck, 2010) and findings indicating a unique contribution of father-child emotion socialization for child psychopathology (Thomassin & Suveg, 2014). Further, emerging empirical findings support the need to adopt a family systems perspective and examine the bidirectional processes of emotion-related parenting (Morris et al., 2007). Consequently, we aimed to compare how mothers and fathers of the same family engage in emotion discussions with their children. Based on previous research suggesting fathers may be comparatively less supportive, involved, and aware of their children’s emotions than mothers (Blandon, 2015; Fivush et al., 2000), we hypothesized that mother-child dyads would engage in higher quality discussions compared to their father-child counterparts.
Method: A community-based sample of 66 children (56% girls; 8-10 years) participated in the Autobiographical and Emotional Events Dialogue (AEED; Koren-Karie et al., 2003) with their mother and father during separate counterbalanced laboratory sessions. Parent-child dyads were presented with four emotion cards (happy, sad, scared, angry) and were asked to jointly describe a specific event in which the child felt each emotion. Dialogues were rated on seven parental and parallel 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). Dyads who generated collaborative, coherent, and well-structured dialogues were classified as “Emotionally Matched”, whereas dyads with underdeveloped and overwhelming/unfocused dialogues were classified as Emotionally “Unmatched-Flat” and “Unmatched-Exaggerating”, respectively. A sociodemographic questionnaire was also completed for each family.
Results: Three McNemar tests revealed that there was a significantly larger proportion of father-child dyads classified as Unmatched-Exaggerating as opposed to mother-child (p=.03), while no significant difference in the proportion of Emotionally Matched or Unmatched-Flat classifications were found (Figure 1). A repeated measures MANOVA indicated that there were significant differences between mother- and father-child dyads across the AEED rating scales, F(1,65 )=5.25, p<.05, ηp2=.08. Pairwise comparisons were therefore examined (Table 1) and showed significant differences between mother- and father-child dyads on Shifts of Focus and Boundary Dissolution, all in favour of mothers, while significant associations were also found between mother- and father-child dyads on the following scales: hostility, structuring, cooperation, elaboration, and coherence.
Conclusion: Findings indicate differences in how mothers and fathers engage in emotion discussions with their children. In contrast to mothers, fathers seem to have more difficulties with maintaining focus and boundaries when discussing emotions with their children, which appears to lead to more overwhelming and elusive dialogues. Findings reinforce the importance of examining how both parents contribute to emotion socialization processes within a family systems perspective.

Authors

• Sage Sezlik, University of Ottawa
  Presenting Author

• Camille Guérin-Marion, University of Ottawa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jean-Francois Bureau, University of Ottawa
  Non-Presenting Author