Maternal and paternal reactions to child sadness predict children's psychosocial outcomes: A family‐centered approach

Abstract

Parents' reactions to children's emotions shape their psychosocial outcomes. Extant research on emotion socialization primarily uses variablecentered approaches. This study explores family patterns of maternal and paternal responses to children's sadness in relation to psychosocial outcomes in middle childhood. Fifty-one families with 8-to 12-year-old children participated. Mothers and fathers reported their reactions to children's sadness and children's social competence and psychological adjustment. Cluster analyses revealed three family patterns: Supportive (high supportive and low non-supportive reactions from both parents), Not Supportive (low supportive reactions from both parents), and Father Dominant (high paternal supportive and non-supportive reactions, low maternal supportive and non-supportive reactions). Supportive families had children with higher social competence and more internalizing symptoms whereas Father Dominant families had children with lower social competence and fewer internalizing symptoms. Not Supportive families had children with average social competence and fewer internalizing symptoms. Findings are discussed in relation to the "divergence model" which proposes that a diverse range of parental responses to children's sadness, rather than a uniformly supportive approach, may facilitate children's psychosocial adjustment. K E Y W O R D S emotion, internalizing/externalizing, middle childhood, parent-child communication, social competence

Maternal responses to negative emotions and child externalizing behavior: Different relations for 5‐, 6‐, and 7‐year‐olds

“…While mothers tend to be primarily responsible for caregiving and the emotional climate in the home (Erickson, ; Finley, Mira, & Schwartz, ), children also receive emotion socialization messages from fathers, teachers, peers, and siblings. Studies in this Quartet have examined mother and teacher (Castro, Halberstadt, & Garrett‐Peters, this issue) and mother and father (Miller‐Slough, Dunsmore, Zeman, Sanders, & Poon, this issue) reports, finding developmental patterns generally consistent with ours. Future work should continue to evaluate characteristics of these alternative sources of socialization, including developmental differences in these messages over time, consistencies and inconsistencies with mothers' responses, and whether they independently or interactively contribute to changes in children's social behaviors over time.…”

Social development quartet: When is parental supportiveness a good thing? The dynamic value of parents' supportive emotion socialization across childhood

“…The final two articles of this Social Development Quartet consider how context may influence the association between parental emotion socialization behaviors and children's socioemotional competence. Miller‐Slough, Dunsmore, Zeman, Sanders, and Poon () focus on the family context and take a person‐centered approach to identify family patterns of maternal and paternal supportive and nonsupportive responses to children's sadness as related to children's social skill and problem behavior in middle childhood. Although children's social skills were highest when both parents utilized high levels of supportive reactions and low levels of nonsupportive reactions, internalizing behaviors were also highest in these dually supportive families.…”

Mothers' interoceptive knowledge predicts children's emotion regulation and social skills in middle childhood

“…Supportive behaviors include actively engaging with children's emotions, accepting children's feelings, and incorporating such feelings into growth‐oriented discussions. Young children of emotion‐supportive parents better grasp the causes and consequences of emotions and exhibit better scholastic success, peer relationships, and self‐control (Denham & Kochanoff, ; Eisenberg et al, ; Miller‐Slough, Dunsmore, Zeman, Sanders, & Poon, ; Spinrad et al, ), although in middle and later childhood, supportive parenting is sometimes negatively associated with certain social skills (Castro, Halberstadt, & Garrett‐Peters, ; Mirabile, Oertwig, & Halberstadt, ).…”