Correlates of Ostensibly “Unsupportive” and “Supportive” Parental Emotion Socialization in Black vs. White Parent-Adolescent Dyads

Résumé fourni par la source

Parental emotion socialization strategies, or parental responses to children’s emotions, are often conceptualized as “supportive” or “unsupportive” based on research that is largely informed by White cultural ideals and majority-White samples. Unique emotion socialization goals related perhaps to discrimination might limit the applicability of these conceptualizations to racialized families. Purportedly unsupportive emotion socialization may predict adolescents’ global positive perceptions of their parents and mental health outcomes primarily in White, but not Black samples. We divided a sample of young adolescents (10-14yrs; 47% female) and their caregivers (80% biological mothers) into groups in which dyad members identified as both White (n=68) or both Black (n=64). Adolescents reported on parents’ emotion socialization behaviors and completed a more global measure of perceived positive parenting, and both dyad members rated the adolescent’s mental health (internalizing and externalizing). Positive parenting and mental health measures were repeated 10 months later. Dyad race interacted with emotion socialization to predict positive parenting cross-sectionally. Unsupportive emotion socialization strategies were associated with less positive parenting, and supportive emotional socialization strategies were associated with more positive parenting, but only for White adolescents. Dyad race did not moderate longitudinal effects on ratings of positive parenting or adolescents’ mental health, but Black adolescents reported higher positive parenting and lower externalizing symptoms at follow-up, compared to White adolescents, controlling for earlier levels. Findings suggest often-termed “unsupportive” and “supportive” emotion socialization may show expected correlations with psychosocial outcomes more in White vs. Black dyads, implicating these distinctions as racialized concepts relevant to researchers and practitioners.

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