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Emotion socialization, child emotion understanding and regulation, and adjustment in urban African American families: Differential associations across child gender

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Jera Nelson Cunningham ,
Wendy Kliewer  and
Pamela W. Garner
Jera Nelson Cunningham*
Affiliation:
Commonwealth Counseling Associates
Wendy Kliewer
Affiliation:
Virginia Commonwealth University
Pamela W. Garner
Affiliation:
George Mason University
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Jera Nelson Cunningham, Commonwealth Counseling Associates, 9097 Atlee Station Road, Suite 219, Mechanicsville, VA 23116; E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

The prospective relation of maternal emotion philosophy to children's emotion understanding and regulation and positive and negative adjustment was investigated. Sixty-nine African American youth (50% male; M age = 11.29 years) and their maternal caregivers living in high violence areas of a midsized city participated in this interview study. Caregivers' meta-emotion philosophy predicted child emotion understanding and emotion regulation, which also were associated with Time 2 grades, internalizing behaviors, externalizing behaviors, and social skills after controlling for Time 1 adjustment. Emotional understanding mediated the relationship between caregivers' emotional socialization and boys' internalizing behaviors and between caregivers' emotional socialization and girls' social skills. In addition, emotion regulation mediated the relationships between emotional socialization and all four outcomes for boys. Implications for future work on emotion socialization and clinical intervention, particularly related to emotion regulation, are discussed.

Type
Regular Articles
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 261 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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