Temperament, Gender, and Cultural Differences in Maternal Emotion Socialization of Anxiety, Somatization, and Anger

The Relationships Among Maternal Meta-emotion Philosophy, Maternal Video-Mediated Cognitions, and Adolescent Behavior Adjustment in Taiwan

This study examines the relationships among maternal meta-emotion philosophy, maternal video-mediated cognitions, and adolescent behavior adjustment. We adopt video-mediated recall methods to obtain mothers' perceptions of their interaction with their children. In total, 121 pairs of mothers (age, M = 42.55) and their adolescent children (age, M = 12.34) were videotaped for 10 min while discussing daily issues. The mothers reviewed the tape (30 episodes) and rated their own behaviors and the counterparts' behaviors on 8 cognitive or affective dimensions. The mothers also completed a parental meta-emotion philosophy inventory, and the adolescents completed the Youth Self-Report. The results indicate that maternal emotional dysfunction has a positive effect on adolescents' externalizing problem behaviors through mothers' perceptions of conflictual interaction. These findings highlight the importance of considering maternal meta-emotion philosophy in the mother-adolescent interaction process and understanding adolescent problem behaviors.

Parental reactions to children's negative affect: The moderating role of parental GAD

The impact of parental anxiety disorders has been explored in broad categories of parenting behaviors; however, less is known about the impact of parental anxiety on emotion socialization behaviors. The current study tested the conditional effect of parental Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) on one aspect of emotion socialization, parents' reactions to their child's negative affect. Participants were 89 children between ages 3 and 12 and their parents, from a community sample. Parents completed the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule-IV (ADIS-IV), an interaction task with their child, and the Beck Anxiety Inventory-II (BAI-II). Overall, the data supported study hypotheses. Parental GAD moderated the relationship between child's negative affect and parental over control and emotional discouragement. Specifically, children's negative affect was positively related to parental emotional discouragement for parents with GAD, but not for parents without a diagnosis. Conversely, children's negative affect was not predictive of parental overcontrol for parents with GAD, but increases in children's negative affect did predict increases in parental overcontrol for parents without a diagnosis. The present findings suggest parents diagnosed with GAD are discouraging of their children's emotional experiences and fail to adjust their level of guidance throughout situations which induce negative affect, leaving children to cope with negative emotions on their own.