Strategies and expectations in parents' socialization of children's emotion expression

The study analyzed parents' emotion socialization strategies when their children express negative emotions (sadness and anger) in situations in which the child’s expression could hurt other individuals that are present. Influence of parent’s and children’s gender on socialization strategies, and of children’s age were the independent variables considered. Subjects were 267 Italian adults, 141 mothers and 126 fathers, whose children - attending local schools - were 4/5 or 8/9 years-old (N = 107 and 160), both male and female (N= 131 and 136). Data were collected by means of a questionnaire that presented Ss with two hypothetical stimulus events, one assumed to elicit sadness, the other one anger in a child protagonist C - e.g., in the presence of C’s mother/father, a friend of C unintentionally drops C’s ice-cream; C feels angry. Subjects - asked to assume that C would be their child, and to identify themselves with the parent in the event - answered 2 open and 1 closed question related to their predictions about C's expressive behavior, and their reactions toward C's expression of negative emotions. Qualitative and quantitative data analyses showed that parents tend to adopt a variety of strategies - e.g., ‘explaining’ the event to C; suggesting a solution to the problem (e.g., getting another ice-cream); asking C to change attitude toward the event; soothing C; etc. Both parents’ predictions, and their reactions, proved to be influenced by gender (both child’s and parent’s), and by the child’s age. For instance, parents expected older children to express negative emotions less frequently than younger children, but also expected girls to show anger much less than boys; fathers (but not mothers) suggested a solution more often for anger than for sadness events. A comparison of these results with those obtained in a previous study (Cigala & Zammuner 1998) shows that some socialization process aspects are emotion-specific, i.e. due to the nature of the elicited emotion rather than to the stimulus-event kind. The results of the study are discussed in terms of their implications as regards emotion socialization practices, and their impact on a child's well-being.