Parents' strategies and expectations in their socialization of children's emotion expression: anger and sadness

The paper reports the results of two parallel studies carried out in order to study: a) parents’ expectations about their children’s expressive behavior (control of emotional expression), and b) parent’s socialization strategies (reactions) when their children express negative emotions (sadness and anger), in situations in which the child’s emotional expression could hurt other individuals who are present. Two studies were done, using the same experimental procedure, but different emotional events as stimulus. In both studies, independent variables considered were: parent’s gender, child’s age (4-5; 8-9) and child’s gender as between subjects; type of emotion (sadness or anger) as within subjects. Subjects were Italian mothers and fathers (In the first study: 109 mothers and 85 fathers; in the *second study: 141 mothers and 126 fathers), whose children –who attended local schools- where either 4-5 or 8-9 years-old. In both studies data were collected by means of a questionnaire, that presented subjects with two hypothetical stimulus events. The results of both studies showed that parents tend to adopt with their children a complex variety of socialization strategies. Both parents’ expectations and reactions are influenced by child’s gender and age. The general picture of results shows that the socialization strategies types, adopted by mothers and fathers, differ with respect to emotion expressed (sadness or anger). In particular, mothers adopted more solutions than fathers in front of child’s sadness emotional expression, whereas in the anger situation mothers utilized more a directive strategy than fathers.