Parentsʹ inconsistent emotion socialization and childrenʹs socioemotional adjustment

Parents socialize childrenʹs emotion through active, purposeful strategies and through their own expressivity; yet little research has examined whether parents are inconsistent within or between these socialization domains. The author presents a heuristic model of inconsistency in parentsʹ emotion socialization. Parents (M age = 34.8 years, 85% mothers) of preschool-aged children (M age = 4.5 years, 53% female) reported on their responses to childrenʹs emotions, their own expressivity, child emotion regulation and expressivity, child social competence, and child internalizing and externalizing. Parents were largely consistent in their emotion socialization, with one exception being that some highly negatively expressive parents punished childrenʹs negative expressivity. This pairing of inconsistent socialization behaviors interacted to explain variance in child emotion regulation and internalizing. The author discusses the implications and limitations of the findings and directions for future research.