Cultural socialization of toddlers in emotionally charged situations

Abstract

This study examined mothers' responses to foster emotional competence from a cultural perspective. Fifty-one European American, 52 Turkish, and 40 Romanian mothers of 2-year-old children provided open-ended responses to vignettes of anger-, sadness-, fear-, and happiness-eliciting situations. Mothers' responses were compared between the family models of independence (United States) and psychological interdependence (Turkey, Romania) to understand cultural variations. To anger, all mothers endorsed problem-focused responses that emphasized teaching coping skills at similar rates, suggestive of an autonomy-orientation. European American mothers also endorsed behaviorally oriented discipline to cope with anger independently more than Turks and Romanians, who endorsed reasoning and comforting responses more, reflecting a relatedness emphasis. To sadness, problem-focused and comforting responses did not reveal cultural differences. Expected differences in reasoning and dismissive responses were partly supported. To fear, comforting was the dominant response, with the highest rate reported by European Americans. Turkish and Romanian mothers' relative emphasis on reasoning was characteristic of their family model. In happy situations, European American mothers validated toddlers' happiness most often, whereas Turkish mothers reported the escalation of happiness most often. Despite sharing the psychological interdependence model, differences in some responses to sadness, fear, and happiness were noted between Turkish and Romanian mothers. K E Y W O R D S anger, culture, emotional competence, emotion norms, family models, fear, happiness, sadness 262 |

Maternal Self-Construal, Maternal Socialization of Emotions and Child Emotion Regulation in a Sample of Romanian Mother-Toddler Dyads

“…In terms of emotion regulation, Romanian mothers of preschoolers emphasize teaching their children to down regulate anger and sadness, while in the case of happiness, they tend to match their children’s expressions (Denham et al, 2004). More recently, Corapci et al (2017) also found evidence for the emotional interdependence model in Romanian mothers, when assessing interview responses targeting toddler socialization in emotionally charged situations.…”

“…Like other collectivist societies undergoing significant sociodemographic changes, Romania is considered representative for the emotional interdependence model, given the major shifts toward democracy, market economy, urbanization, and globalization, over the post-communist period (since 1990), augmented after having joined the European Union in the last decade (Gavreliuc and Ciobotă, 2013; Corapci et al, 2017).…”

“…On the one hand, in independence-promoting cultures, an important aim for early childhood development is the ability to interact independently with the world, based on ones’ own goals and intentions. Consequently, self- and emotional control are central socialization goals, whereas parental strategies, characterized by less directiveness and more autonomy granting, are thought to have beneficial effects on child regulatory development (Rothbaum and Wang, 2010; Corapci et al, 2017). On the other hand, when comparing the proximal infant parenting style, characteristic for interdependence-promoting cultures, with the more distal parenting style of independence-promoting ones, Keller et al (2006) emphasized that the first was associated with earlier emergence of self-regulation in toddlerhood.…”

“…Given the weight cultural context may put on these processes, as recent approaches suggest, we investigated maternal regulatory behaviors in relationship to maternal cultural models of self. Our theory-guided selection of sample was based on Kagitcibasi’s (2007) model of emotional interdependence, illustrated by several studies on the Romanian cultural context of the last two decades (e.g., Mone et al, 2014; Moza et al, 2015; Corapci et al, 2017).…”

Does Mothers’ Self-Construal Contribute to Parenting Beyond Socioeconomic Status and Maternal Efficacy? an Exploratory Study of Turkish Mothers

“…Naturalistic home observations also reveal that higher SES Turkish mothers of 3-year-old children are less likely to display controlling (e.g., verbally or physically intruding the child) and non-responsive behaviors than lower SES mothers (Akcinar and Baydar, 2014; Baydar and Akcinar, 2015). A recent study on emotion socialization has revealed that middle-high SES Turkish mothers endorse encouragment of the child for independent coping along with comforting and reasoning responses, suggestive of a combination of autonomy- and relatedness-orientation (Corapci et al, 2018). These results suggest that higher SES Turkish mothers convey messages about the autonomous-related self in socializing children.…”