Maternal Parenting Styles Predicting Mother-Child Conversations about Race-Related Moral Transgressions

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Mothers play a key role in teaching and interpreting moral values to children (Vittrup & Holden 2011). Parental messages about morality and their transmission to children are affected by parenting styles (Carlo, Mestre, Samper, Tur, & Armenta, 2011). For example, warm mothers create positive emotional climates that promote conversations about caring for others (Eisenberg et al., 2006). Authoritative mothers provide more explanations for moral rules (Moshman, 1995). Responsive mothers are likely to use more moral emotions (Eisenberg & Murphy, 1995). Despite the substantial evidence about the link between parenting and mothers’ conversational style in moral issues, we know nothing about how parenting styles shape the parent-child conversations about race-related moral transgressions. Given that the race of the target changes the people’s view of transgression (Killen, & Cooley, 2014; Killen, 2007), the way mothers and children talk about racial exclusion might be different than talking about non-race based social exclusion. The limited work on parent-child conversations about race shows that White parents mostly avoid discussing race, even in the context of moral transgressions (e.g. Vittrup, & Holden, 2011; Vittrup, 2018; Pahlke, Bigler, & Suizzo, 2012; Perry et al., 2020). In this study, we chose to examine how maternal parenting styles predict mother-child conversations about race-based social exclusion. It was hypothesized that maternal warmth and reasoning would be positively associated with the use of emotion terms and moral evaluatives by mothers and children while mothers’ punitiveness and directiveness would be negatively associated with them.
110 Non-Hispanic White children ranged from 6 to 9 years of age (55% male, M = 7.17, SD = .93) and their mothers participated in a laboratory study. Parenting styles of mothers were assessed by using four subscales of Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire: warmth/involvement, reasoning/induction, nonreasoning/punitive, and directiveness (PSDQ; Robinson, Mandleco, Frost Olsen, & Hart, 1995, 2001). A video stimulus depicting an exclusion of an African American child from being invited to a party was shown to participants. After watching the video, they were asked to discuss the video for two minutes. Transcripts from the task were coded for emotion references, moral evaluatives, and mothers’ perspective-taking.
Regression analyses indicated that maternal warmth significantly predicted her use of emotion terms (β = 1.35, p= .018) and moral evaluatives (β = .939, p= .026). Mothers’ reasoning/induction was also positively associated with their use of emotion terms (β = .937, p= .035) and moral evaluatives (β = .659, p= .045) in discussing the race-based exclusion. Also, child gender moderated the effects of mothers’ reasoning on children’s use of emotion terms (β = 1.77, p= .0018). Mothers’ reasoning predicts the use of emotions only for girls (β = 1.29, p= .0007). Mothers’ punitiveness is negatively associated with children’s use of emotion terms (β = -.749, p= .036). These results shed light on which aspects of maternal parenting styles might influence mother-child conversations about race-related moral transgressions.

Authors

• Afra Agalar, Lehigh University
  Presenting Author

• Deborah J. Laible, Lehigh University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Clare Amelia van Norden, Lehigh University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tracy L Spinrad, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nancy Eisenberg, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gustavo Carlo, University of California, Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author