Parents' inconsistent emotion socialization and ...

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 35 (2014) 392–400

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Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

Parents' inconsistent emotion socialization and children's socioemotional adjustment Scott P. Mirabile ⁎ St. Mary's College of Maryland, 18952 E. Fisher Rd., St. Mary's City, MD 20686-3001, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 6 September 2013 Received in revised form 12 June 2014 Accepted 20 June 2014 Available online xxxx Keywords: Inconsistency Emotion socialization Emotion expression Emotion regulation Internalizing Early childhood

a b s t r a c t Parents socialize children's 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 parents' 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 children's 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 children's 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. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Parent–child relationships are the first context in which children learn about social interactions and emotions and serve as a rehearsal stage for children's developing socioemotional skills. Parents socialize children's emotional competence by labeling and defining emotions, discussing the significance of emotions and their regulation, and modeling emotion expression and emotion regulation (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998; Morris et al., 2002). Multiple theorists categorize these emotion socialization (ES) behaviors into two domains: 1) active, purposeful responses to and discussions of children's emotions; and 2) relatively passive, unintentional modeling of emotions and emotion-related behaviors (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Klimes-Dougan & Zeman, 2007). Parents' supportive active ES (e.g., emotion discussion) is linked to children's understanding of emotions (Denham & Auerbach, 1995; Denham, Cook, & Zoller, 1992; Dunn, 2003), positive expressivity (Denham et al., 1992), and adaptive emotion regulation (Garner, 2006). Conversely, parents' unsupportive active ES (e.g., punitive, minimizing responses) is linked to increased negative affect (Fabes, Poulin, Eisenberg, & Madden-Derdich, 2002) and poorer emotional competence (Denham, Mitchell-Copeland, Strandberg, Auerbach, & Blair, 1997; Garner, Jones, & Miner, 1994). Parents' passive ES (i.e., emotional expressivity, modeling of emotions) strongly contributes to children's socioemotional competence, as children are likely to learn about emotions by watching how parents handle their own emotions (Denham, 2007). Indeed, parents' general expressiveness, regardless ⁎ Tel.: +1 240 895 3365(Office), +1 504 220 5173(Cell); fax: +1 240 895 4436. E-mail address: [email protected].

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2014.06.003 0193-3973/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

of valence, improves children's understanding of others' emotions (Eisenberg et al., 1998). However, this relation is likely curvilinear, with positive links between parent expressivity and child emotional competence restricted to the early childhood period (Halberstadt & Eaton, 2002). Conversely, parents' frequent, dysregualted displays of negative emotions likely undermine children's developing socioemotional skills (Denham, Renwick-DeBardi, & Hewes, 1994; Dunn & Brown, 1994; Fabes et al., 2002; Garner, 1995). Further, parents' poor emotion regulation and low levels of positive emotion are linked to children's concurrent and subsequent internalizing and externalizing problems (Bayer, Sanson, & Hemphill, 2006; Eisenberg et al., 2001; Katz & Gottman, 1993; Marchand & Hock, 2003). Researchers and theorists have largely assumed that parents' ES behaviors should be consistent between socialization domains, though there is good reason to suspect the opposite. In contrast to their active ES, parents' emotional expressions “do not especially reflect [their] beliefs, values, and goals in relation to emotion” (Eisenberg et al., 1998, p. 317). Thus, it is likely that parents' passive ES will at times be inconsistent with their active ES. For example, if a parent is frustrated with a store clerk and berates the individual, the observing child may learn that yelling is an acceptable way of dealing with frustration, even if such a message is not what the parent would purposefully teach. The limited research addressing this issue has yielded mixed results. While parents' emotional expressiveness, reactions to emotions, and emotion discussion are often correlated in expected directions (Denham & Kochanoff, 2002; Stocker, Richmond, Rhoades, & Kiang, 2007; Warren & Stifter, 2008), such relation are frequently weak and inconsistent (e.g., McDowell & Parke, 2005; Ramsden & Hubbard, 2002;

S.P. Mirabile / Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 35 (2014) 392–400

Spinrad et al., 2007). Indeed, the inconsistent coherence between domains should not be surprising, as multiple theorists have acknowledged that highly variable processes (e.g., parents' emotional competence and mental health, the emotional valence of the socializing context) likely influence parents' socialization behaviors (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Grusec & Davidov, 2010; Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers, & Robinson, 2007). Eisenberg et al. (1998) acknowledge that some socialization encounters will be inconsistent with other encounters, and Halberstadt (1998) calls for research on multiple domains of ES, explicitly noting the possibility for inconsistency between ES domains. In response to this call, the present study has two goals: first, to determine whether parents are inconsistent in their ES; and second, to describe relation between parents' inconsistent ES and children's socioemotional adjustment. Theoretical framework The development of a full theoretical model of inconsistency in ES should only follow from a large body of evidence demonstrating the presence and significance of such inconsistency, but a preliminary inconsistent ES framework is needed to structure initial attempts at describing inconsistent ES. Despite the strong theoretical frameworks for describing multiple domains of ES (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Morris et al., 2007), there is little theoretical or empirical work devoted to inconsistency in ES. Constructs similar to inconsistent ES (e.g., inconsistent discipline, parent differential treatment of siblings) have been investigated; however, these topics are typically explored within a general parenting framework (e.g., control/discipline and affection/ warmth), thus ignoring the unique role of ES in promoting children's socioemotional competence (e.g., Garner, 2006). Although the findings of such investigations may be of limited use in understanding how inconsistent ES relates to children's socioemotional adjustment, the frameworks employed in previous research on inconsistent discipline (e.g., Bierman & Smoot, 1991; Gardner, 1989; Patterson, Dishion, & Bank, 1984) and on parent differential treatment of siblings (e.g., McGuire, Dunn, & Plomin, 1995; Stocker, 1995; Volling, 1997) do suggest multiple ways parents may be inconsistent in their ES, as described below. In the following preliminary theoretical framework, emotion and ES are conceptualized primarily through a functionalist perspective (e.g., Campos, Mumme, Kermoian, & Campos, 1994). Specifically, emotions are understood to serve social regulatory or disruptive functions and are understood in relation to individuals' goals. Goals notwithstanding, socializers may use emotional expressions unintentionally (e.g., dysregulated expressions of anger), thus creating the possibility for inconsistency between the messages sent by such unintentional displays (i.e., that anger expressions are acceptable) and the socializer's goals for that interaction (e.g., down-regulating the child's anger). This pairing of personal negative expressivity and dismissing or hostile responses to others' emotions may be viewed as consistent from a personality perspective; however, when viewed as socialization messages directed at a child attempting to understand the rules governing emotional expressivity, such messages are inherently contradictory. Alternately, children may view such encounters holistically, only understanding that “mom is being mean and yelling because I got angry;” though it is not clear that all unsupportive ES messages are presented with a negative emotional valence. Indeed unsupportive strategies such as ignoring, dismissing, and minimizing may be presented with neutral affect. Regardless of the affective tone of any given socialization message, parents may be affectively negative during multiple encounters, creating myriad opportunities for inconsistency. Given the likelihood that a host of highly variable processes impact any given socialization encounter (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Grusec & Davidov, 2010; Morris et al., 2007), parents may be inconsistent within each domain of ES. For example, a parent may engage in emotion focused responses and minimizing responses to a child's negativity.

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Building on the active vs. passive dichotomy in ES, it is possible that socializers are inconsistent between these domains. For example, a parent may freely express negative emotions and respond punitively to a child's negativity. Additionally, multiple socializers may be inconsistent with one another, both within and between socialization domains. For example, one parent may encourage expressivity while the other parent minimizes their own and the child's expressivity. Further, one or more socializers may be inconsistent in any of the above ways across multiple children. Finally, it is likely that socializers will dramatically change their ES behaviors over time in response to children's changing age and regulatory capacities (Denham, 2007; Morris et al., 2007), creating temporal inconsistency. Thus, a preliminary framework for describing inconsistent ES includes inconsistency within and between domains of socialization, within and between socializers, between children, and over time. The present study addresses only within-domain and between-domain inconsistencies.

Empirical approaches to inconsistency in emotion socialization Limited empirical evidence suggests that parents may adopt inconsistent approaches to ES and that parent inconsistency may have consequences for children's adjustment. Unfortunately, much of the following research relies upon concurrent designs, suggesting that parents' inconsistency also may be a response to various child behaviors or characteristics. Regarding between-parent inconsistency, children exposed to low levels of support from one parent are more emotionally competent if the other parent is high in support (McElwain, Halberstadt, & Volling, 2007). Surprisingly, when both parents are high in support, children are less emotionally competent (McElwain et al., 2007). Regarding between-child inconsistency, children who receive less warmth and more negativity than their siblings have increased rates of antisocial behavior problems (Caspi et al., 2004). Likewise, between-sibling differences in mothers' discipline and affection predict children's externalizing problems (McGuire et al., 1995). Although these studies approach socialization through a broader parenting framework, the findings suggest that inconsistency in the emotional dimensions of parenting (e.g., emotional negativity, warmth/affection) may affect children's adjustment. Concerning between-domain inconsistency, Fabes, Leonard, Kupanoff, and Martin (2001) found that parents' punitive and minimizing responses to children's emotions were inversely related to children's social competence; and this relation was stronger when parents were more negatively aroused during emotionally salient parent–child interactions. These findings seem to suggest that children who receive negative/unsupportive socialization in both domains fared worse than children receiving such messages in only one domain. However, simply considering parents' punitive/minimizing responses and parents' negative emotionality as different forms of unsupportive socialization ignores the inherent inconsistency between the messages these behaviors send. That is, while parents may be explicitly dismissive and punitive of children's negative emotions, they also are implicitly endorsing negative expressivity through their own emotionality. Landry and colleagues investigated parents' temporal withindomain inconsistency in warmth and responsiveness by grouping mothers into “consistently responsive,” “inconsistent,” and “consistently low-responsive” clusters, finding that consistently responsive mothers had children with better-developed cognitive and social skills (Landry, Smith, Swank, Assel, & Vellet, 2001). Along similar lines, Curby, Brock, and Hamre (2013) analyzed the impact of inconsistency over time in teachers' emotional support with students and found that less variability (i.e., more consistency) in teachers' emotional support was associated with better social and academic outcomes for children. Further, mean levels of emotional support were not significantly related to the same outcome variables, suggesting the unique importance of temporal inconsistency in ES.

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Current study Few theorists have suggested that parents may be inconsistent in their ES (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 1998; Halberstadt, 1998); and fewer still discuss the forms such inconsistency may take or its consequences for children's development. Thus, the present investigation first determines whether parents are inconsistent in their ES (i.e., within their active ES and between the active and passive domains) and then describes relation between parents' inconsistent ES and children's social, emotional, and behavioral adjustments. The limited research on inconsistent ES suggests that inconsistency generally relates to poorer child socioemotional competence, thus the author expected that all identified forms of inconsistent ES would relate negatively to child social and emotional competence and positively to child internalizing and externalizing. The present investigation represents a theoretical and methodological advancement of previous work in that it integrates multiple domains of ES and uses both widely accepted and improved/novel measures of ES and emotional competence. Method Participants Eighty-one 3 to 6 year old children (mean age = 4.5 years, 43 female) and their parents (mean age = 34.8 years; 69 mothers, 8 fathers, 2 great-grandmothers, 1 aunt, 1 female spouse/legal guardian) were recruited from three preschools in southern Maryland. The sample largely reflected the ethnic makeup of the county, mainly Anglo-American (88.9%) with few African–American (12.3%), Hispanic–American (1.2%), and Asian–American (1.2%) participants. Most parents reported completing a four-year college degree or a master's/doctoral degree (34.6% and 33.3%, respectively), with 50.6% of families earning more than $100,000. Most children had married (79%) or single, never married (14.8%) parents; average family size was 3.6 persons. Procedures Parents were contacted through area preschools both in person and through information packets sent home with the children. All parents were eligible to participate. Parents completed online or paper questionnaires on their demographic data and family composition; their emotion socialization (ES); and their child's emotion regulation, expressivity, social competence, and maladjustment. Parents provided informed consent and received $30 as compensation. Measures Active emotion socialization Parents completed the Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES; Fabes, Eisenberg, & Bernzweig, 1990), a widely used parent-report instrument assessing parents' responses to children's negative emotions. Parents rated how likely they are to react in specific ways to 12 different scenarios in which their child is emotionally upset (e.g., “If my child becomes angry because he/she is sick or hurt and can't go to his/her friend's birthday party, I would …”). Each item is rated on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (very unlikely) to 7 (very likely). Five subscales from the CCNES were used to measure active socialization: expressive encouragement, emotion focused reactions, problem focused reactions, punitive reactions, and minimizing reactions (see Table 1). The distress reactions subscale was excluded from analyses because it is conceptually more similar to parents' passive ES than to other active ES subscales. Analyses were conducted with and without the distress scale, and the findings were nearly identical; no previously statistically significant results were reduced to nonsignificance or vice versa. Subscales were computed by averaging their respective items. The CCNES has good internal and test–retest reliability and good concurrent

Table 1 Descriptions of parent and child variables.

Parent emotion socialization Supportive composite Problem-focused Emotion-focused Expressive encouragement Unsupportive composite Punitive Minimizing Ignoring Positive expressivity Negative expressivity Child outcomes Emotion regulation Adaptive emotion regulation Maladaptive emotion regulation Negative expressivity composite Lability Negative expressivity Social competence Internalizing Externalizing

M (SD)

Range

Cronbach's alpha

5.45 (0.73) 5.83 (0.64) 5.62 (0.81) 4.90 (1.17) 2.10 (0.70) 2.24 (0.72) 2.28 (0.89) 1.77 (0.78) 6.96 (0.92) 4.43 (0.91)

2.92–6.97 3.50–7.00 2.58–7.00 1.25–6.92 1.17–5.00 1.00–4.92 1.08–5.08 1.00–4.92 4.68–9.00 2.82–7.00

.74 .78 .80 .92 .85 .72 .87 .85 .82 .80

3.40 (0.41) 1.70 (0.41) 1.41 (0.46) 0.00 (1.78) 1.96 (0.47) 7.78 (3.16) 4.24 (0.78) 8.12 (6.92) 10.67 (8.14)

1.25–6.92 0.88–2.81 0.30–2.65 3.04–5.46 1.20–3.60 3.00–17.25 1.00–5.90 0–30 0–35

.75 .62 .61 n/a .86 .77 .88 .89 .92

Note. All measures were completed by the parent. Untransformed scores are presented. n = 81.

and construct validity (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1994; Fabes et al., 2002). The author also included a novel ignoring reactions subscale to assess parents' intentional failure to respond to children's negative emotions (e.g., “ignore my child until s/he stopped crying,” “not respond to my child's distress and not get involved”). The ignoring reactions subscale demonstrated strong internal consistency (α = .85) and correlated significantly and positively with other unsupportive scales (see Table 2). Following Fabes et al. (2002), supportive and unsupportive composite scores were created by averaging the respective subscales. Passive emotion socialization Parents completed the Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire (SEFQ; Halberstadt, Cassidy, Stifter, Parke, & Fox, 1995), a 40, item questionnaire in which parents rate how frequently they express themselves during different family situations. Items are rated on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (never) to 9 (very frequently), with higher scores indicating greater levels of expressivity. The SEFQ includes two subscales: positive expressivity (23 items) and negative expressivity (17 items). Sample items include: “Exclaiming over a beautiful day,” “Showing contempt for another's actions,” and “Crying after an unpleasant disagreement.” Positive and negative expressivity subscales were computed by averaging all items on the respective scales (see Table 1). The SEFQ has well-established construct validity and strong internal consistency (Halberstadt et al., 1995). Child emotion regulation Parents reported on children's emotion regulation using the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC; Shields & Cicchetti, 1997) and a novel measure, the Emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire (ERSQ). The ERC emotion regulation subscale assesses children's regulatory capacity and various correlates of regulation (e.g., “Displays appropriate negative emotions,” “Is empathic towards others”) using a 1 (never) to 4 (almost always) Likert-type scale. The emotion regulation items were averaged to create a single emotion regulation score (see Table 1). The ERC has demonstrated strong reliability and convergent validity (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997). Unfortunately, the ERC largely assesses outcomes of regulation (e.g., emotional state, empathy) rather than regulatory skills per se; and it may be contaminated with measures of maladjustment (Weems & Pina, 2010). In response to the limitations of the ERC, the ERSQ was developed through a thorough review of relevant theoretical and empirical literature. Parents rated their agreement with statements concerning


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Table 2 Correlations among CCNES scales and parent expressivity. CCNES supportive

1. Supportive composite 2. Problem focused 3. Emotion focused 4. Expressive encouragement 5. Unsupportive composite 6. Ignoring 7. Minimizing 8. Punitive 9. Positive expressivity 10. Negative expressivity

1

2

– .85⁎⁎⁎ .80⁎⁎⁎ .86⁎⁎⁎ −.34⁎⁎

– .71⁎⁎⁎ .59⁎⁎⁎ −.28⁎

−.22 −.26⁎ −.42⁎⁎⁎ .53⁎⁎⁎ .09

−.21 −.21 −.33⁎⁎ .48⁎⁎⁎⁎ .07

CCNES unsupportive

3

4

5

– .49⁎⁎⁎ −.17 −.11 −.08 −.24⁎ .44⁎⁎⁎⁎ .05

– −.38⁎⁎ −.24⁎ −.34⁎⁎ −.41⁎⁎⁎ .45⁎⁎⁎⁎ .13

6

SEFQ

7

8

9

10

.70⁎⁎⁎ −.24⁎ .23⁎

– −.26⁎ .34⁎⁎⁎⁎

– .19+

–

–

.84⁎⁎⁎ .90⁎⁎⁎ .86⁎⁎⁎ −.28⁎ .29⁎⁎

–

.61⁎⁎⁎ .57⁎⁎⁎ −.23⁎ .20

–

Note. CCNES = Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale. SEFQ = Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire. n = 81. ⁎ p b .05; ** p b .01; *** p b .001; **** p b .004 (Bonferroni corrected).

children's use of 13 regulatory strategies in response to each of the child's four primary emotions—happy, sad, angry, and afraid—using a 0 (never) to 4 (almost always) Likert-type scale. Sample items include “She expresses her anger by crying, yelling, or screaming,” “He tries to hold his sadness inside and/or does not want to show how he feels,” and, “He is able to calm himself by talking through the problem.” Regulatory strategies were grouped into adaptive and maladaptive scales based on previously reported links between each strategy and changes in children's expressed emotion or children's socioemotional adjustment (e.g., Calkins, Gill, Johnson, & Smith, 1999; Eisenberg & Fabes, 1994; Eisenberg, Fabes, Nyman, Bernzweig, & Pinuelas, 1994; Gilliom, Shaw, Beck, Schonberg, & Lukon, 2002; Grolnick, Bridges, & Connell, 1996; Gross, 1999; Murphy, Eisenberg, Fabes, Shepard, & Guthrie, 1999; Ramsden & Hubbard, 2002; Stifter & Braungart, 1995). For example, aggression, venting, and suppression strategies are grouped as maladaptive because they fail to reduce and may even amplify children's distress or physiological arousal (Eisenberg et al., 1994; Gross, 2002). Conversely, strategies such as distraction, self-soothing, comfort seeking, and information gathering are generally effective at reducing distress during early childhood (e.g., Calkins et al., 1999; Gilliom et al., 2002; Grolnick et al., 1996). The adaptive emotion regulation scale consists of children's self-directed speech, instrumental coping, information gathering, social distraction, object distraction, self-soothing, comfort seeking, and support seeking. The maladaptive emotion regulation scale consists of children's focus on the distressing object, venting, aggression, avoidance, and suppression. The internal consistencies are moderate (see Table 1), reflecting that young children likely use diverse strategies as they develop their regulatory skills. Scale scores were averaged to create component indicators of adaptive and maladaptive ER. Child expressivity Children's expressivity was measured using the lability scale of the ERC (15 items) which assesses children's dysregulated, disruptive, largely negative emotionality (e.g., “Exhibits wide mood swings,” “Is prone to angry outbursts”), with higher scores indicating more emotional lability (see Table 1). To augment the assessment of children's negative expressivity, parents also completed the Child Emotion Expressiveness Questionnaire (CEEQ), a novel measure adapted from a teacher-report measure described by Halberstadt, Fox, and Jones (1993). The CEEQ assesses children's frequency, duration, intensity, and latency to express happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. The CEEQ includes 16 items (four for each emotion), rated on a 1 (never) to 7 (always) Likert-type scale, with higher scores indicating higher frequency, longer duration, greater intensity, and more quickness to express emotions. Frequency, duration, intensity, and latency scores for each emotion were summed to create composite indicators of children's expressivity of sadness, anger, and fear (happiness was not used in the present analyses). These scales demonstrated acceptable internal consistency (α = .70, .85, and .81 for sadness, anger, and fear,

respectively). Given moderate correlations among the composite scores for anger, fear, and sadness (rs ranged from .50 to .58; average r = .54, all ps b .001), the anger, fear, and sadness scores were summed to create a single negative expressivity indicator with higher scores indicating greater negative expressivity (see Table 1). The ERC lability scale and the CEEQ negative expressivity score were positively correlated (r = .59, p b .001); thus, a composite negative expressivity score was created by standardizing and summing these scores (see Table 1). Child social competence Parents completed the parent version of the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation—Short Form (SCBE-30; LaFreniere & Dumas, 1996). The SCBE-30 assesses children's patterns of anxiety/withdrawal, anger/ aggression, and social competence in early- to middle-childhood (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1995). Items are rated on a Likert-type scale with responses ranging from 1 (never) to 6 (always). Only the social competence scale (10 items) was used in the present study (see Table 1). The social competence scale has demonstrated construct validity and strong internal consistency (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1995, 1996). Child maladjustment Parents completed the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment-Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL 1 and 1/2–5; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000), in which they are asked to rate the degree to which they believe each item is true of their child within the past two months on a scale from 0 (not true) to 2 (very true or often true). The CBCL contains two broad scales: internalizing problems (36 items) and externalizing problems (24 items). Items within each subscale were summed; higher scores indicate greater levels of problem behavior (see Table 1). The CBCL has been used extensively in both clinical and research contexts and has demonstrated strong reliability and considerable content, construct, and convergent validity (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000; Rescorla, 2005). Design The current study is a cross-sectional, correlational investigation of inconsistency in parents' emotion socialization and child adjustment. This design allows for the identification of inconsistency in parents' emotion socialization and the assessment of contemporaneous relations between inconsistency and child adjustment during the early childhood period. Results Preliminary data analyses Data were analyzed for outliers and skew and for missing data. No variables used in hypothesis testing were missing data. No multivariate

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outliers were detected. Outliers were present in parents' emotion focused, problem focused, and ignoring response scores and in children's internalizing and externalizing scores. Following the suggestions of Tabachnick and Fidell (2001), outlying scores were adjusted (e.g., replacing the outlying score with a value one point higher than the next highest score) so as to be less extreme. One composite variable (CCNES Unsupportive) and five scale scores (expressive encouragement, emotion focused, punitive, minimizing, and ignoring responses) demonstrated skew and were transformed (e.g., square root or log transformations) as suggested by Tabachnick and Fidell (2001). Transformed scores no longer demonstrated statistically significant skew. Prior to hypothesis testing, child sex, child age, parent age, parent education, parent income, and parent marital status were investigated as confounds. Given the number of parent and child constructs evaluated (12), a Bonferroni corrected alpha of .004 (.05/12) was used for the analysis of potential confounding variables. Child age and parent age were not statistically significantly correlated to any other constructs. Likewise, ANOVA tests revealed no statistically significant group differences in constructs between varying levels of child gender or age (i.e., 3– 4 years old compared to 5–6 years old), parent education, income, or marital status. Since few non-Anglo-American parents participated, parent ethnicity could not be reliably evaluated as a confound. Concerning parent gender, all analyses were conducted twice, once using the full sample and once using only mother-reported data. The findings were nearly identical with one exception: the interaction term explaining variance in children's maladaptive emotion regulation was reduced to marginal significance. As the results were of a similar strength and direction when using mother-only data, the reduction of statistical significance is attributed to the reduced statistical power of the smaller sample. Results using data from all reporters are presented. Goal 1: Investigate the presence of inconsistency in parent emotion socialization Inconsistency in active emotion socialization Inconsistency within parent active ES may be defined as parent use of conflicting responses to child emotions. Following the dichotomy described by Fabes et al. (2002), parent supportive and unsupportive responses are inconsistent with one another. Thus, inconsistency in parent active ES could be indicated by a statistically significant and positive correlation between supportive and unsupportive ES scores. The present data do not support this expectation, as supportive and unsupportive ES scores correlate negatively. This simple approach using composite indicators of supportive and unsupportive ES may obscure the presence of inconsistent pairings of specific ES strategies (e.g., expressive encouragement and punitive responses). To address this possibility, the supportive and unsupportive ES subscale scores were entered into a correlation analysis. This analysis detected no statistically significant positive correlations among pairs of inconsistent strategies (see Table 2). These results suggest that parents are not inconsistent in their active responses to children's emotions. Inconsistency between active and passive emotion socialization The analysis of between-domain inconsistency may be conducted at the composite level, at which composite indicators of parent supportiveness and unsupportiveness and parent positive and negative expressivity are analyzed. Alternately, a finer-grained, subscale approach can be used to analyze inconsistency between specific active socialization strategies and parents' own expressivity. At the composite level, inconsistency may be demonstrated through: 1) a negative correlation between supportive ES and negative expressivity, or 2) a positive correlation between unsupportive ES and negative expressivity. Both of these possibilities represent a mismatch between parents' explicit responses to children's negative emotions and parents' own negative expressivity. While correlations among parents' ES and their positive expressivity are presented in Table 2, it is not

yet clear how any relation between parents' positive expressivity and parents' responses to children's negative emotions might indicate inconsistency. Parents' composite ES and expressivity scores were entered into a correlation analysis (see Table 2). With one exception, parents demonstrated considerable consistency between their active and passive ES. Parents who were more supportive were more positively expressive, and parents who were more unsupportive were less positively expressive. However, these analyses also reveal that parents' unsupportive ES was positively correlated with their negative expressivity. That is, parents who use relatively more unsupportive responses to children's negative emotions also express more negative emotions. The composite-level analyses of between-domain inconsistency suggest that parents are largely consistent between domains; however, the positive relation between unsupportive ES and parents' negative expressivity is clear evidence of between-domain inconsistency. The composite-level approach identified one inconsistent pairing between parents' active and passive ES; a subscale-level approach may be used to identify additional inconsistent pairings obscured at the composite level. All CCNES subscales and parent positive and negative expressivity scores were entered into a correlation analysis (see Table 2). After correcting for family-wise error, four correlations remained statistically significant, three of which suggest some level of consistency between domains of ES (e.g., parents' expressive encouragement responses correlate positively with their positive expressivity). One statistically significant correlation indicated a highly inconsistent pairing: parent negative expressivity and punitive responses. Taken together, the composite- and subscale-level analyses suggest that parents are largely consistent between active and passive ES domains, an exception being negatively expressive parents who punish children's negative expressivity. Goal 2: Describe the relations between parent inconsistent emotion socialization and child outcomes In the previous sections, correlation analyses were used to identify inconsistency in parent ES. Here regression-based interaction analyses will be used to assess relationships between the above-identified forms of inconsistency and child outcomes. Between-domain inconsistency and child outcomes Two instances of between-domain inconsistency were identified in previous analyses: parent negative expressivity correlated with both the unsupportive ES composite and the punitive responses scale. Because the punitive responses scale was the only unsupportive CCNES subscale statistically significantly related to parent negative expressivity, and because the results of the following analyses are essentially identical using the composite unsupportive ES score and the punitive scale, only results for the punitive scale are presented. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to determine whether parent punitive responses interact with parent negative expressivity in explaining variance in multiple child outcomes: emotion regulation (the ERC subscale), adaptive ER, maladaptive ER, negative expressivity, social competence, internalizing, and externalizing (see Table 3). Both parent punitive responses and negative expressivity were entered into the first step, followed by the centered punitive responses by centered negative expressivity interaction term in the second step. Results of the regression analyses indicate that parents' punitive responses interact with their negative expressivity in explaining variance in children's adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation and internalizing behavior. These statistically significant interactions were explored following Preacher, Curran, and Bauer (2006). Figs. 1, 2, and 3 illustrate how the relations between parent punitive responses and child adaptive ER, maladaptive ER, and internalizing, respectively, strengthen at higher levels of parent negative expressivity. With the exception of the simple slope of punitive


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Table 3 Hierarchical regression analyses evaluating the interaction of parent punitive responses and negative expressivity explaining variability in child outcomes. Child outcomes Emotion regulation 2

R Δ

Predictors Step 1 Punitive responses Negative expressivity Step 2 Interaction term Total R2

β

.07

Adaptive ER 2

R Δ

2

β

RΔ .17⁎⁎

.02 −.21 .00

.02 −.17 .10

.06⁎ .08⁎

Negative expressivity

Maladaptive ER

−.04 .08 .26⁎

.04⁎ .21⁎

β .08⁎⁎ .30⁎⁎ .22⁎⁎

2

R Δ

β

.32⁎⁎⁎

.22⁎ .41⁎⁎⁎

.01

Social competence 2

RΔ

.00 −.23 −.07 .07

RΔ .27⁎⁎⁎

.00

.34

2

β

.06

.11

Internalizing

.06⁎ .32⁎

β .21⁎ .31⁎ .25⁎

Externalizing R2Δ

β

.27⁎⁎⁎ .21 .36⁎⁎ .01 .13 .29

Note. ER = emotion regulation. n = 81. * p b .05; ** p b .01; *** p b .001.

Discussion

Adaptive Emotion Regulation

Much is already known about the ways in which parents socialize children's emotions and the consequences of their effortful, active socialization attempts (e.g., responding to children's emotions) and their unintentional, passive socialization behaviors (e.g., emotional expressivity). The present study both adds to and integrates these bodies of knowledge by demonstrating that parents can be inconsistent in their emotion socialization (ES) and that such inconsistency is linked to children's adjustment. Importantly, the present study is not simply assessing the presence and correlates of authoritarian parenting, which also may include punitive responses and verbal hostility (e.g., Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen, & Hart, 1995). The CCNES specifically assesses parents' responses to children's negative emotions rather than children's general behaviors or misdeeds. Further, the SEFQ negative expressivity variable used here is a composite of multiple kinds of parent negativity, not simply hostile emotions. While general dimensions of parenting such as discipline are strong predictors of a variety of child outcomes, they are relatively poor predictors of children's socioemotional competencies (Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1996).Many theorists have acknowledged that multiple, highly variable processes influence parents' socialization behaviors (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 1998; Grusec & Davidov, 2010; Morris et al., 2007); thus, parents were expected to demonstrate some inconsistency in their active responses to children's emotions (e.g., by reporting high levels of various supportive and unsupportive strategies). However, results suggest that parents are actually fairly consistent in their active socialization attempts. Indeed, this finding aligns with Eisenberg et al.'s (1998) conceptualization of active ES as a collection of behaviors purposefully chosen by parents to communicate

6 5 Negative Expressivity

4

High (M+2SD)

3

Mean

2

Low (M-2SD) 1 0 1 2.22 Punitive Responses

Fig. 1. Relation between parent punitive responses and child adaptive emotion regulation at multiple levels of parent negative expressivity.

their values and goals regarding specific emotions. It is likely that the present method of assessing parents' active ES (i.e., a self-report measure that asks parents to consider their behavior generally) contributed to the observed consistency. Given that parents' emotion expressions may not necessarily reflect their socialization goals (Eisenberg et al., 1998), the present study also tested whether parents may be inconsistent between domains of ES; for example, high levels of negative expressivity paired with high levels of punitive responses to children's negative emotions. Indeed this pairing is exactly what the results illustrate. It is not yet clear why inconsistency emerged only for the punitive and negative expressivity scores and not for other combinations of emotion socialization behaviors. It may be that punitive responses are driven—perhaps more so than other unsupportive responses—by parents' own emotional negativity. That is, parents who are generally more emotionally negative also may be more prone to respond negatively to children's emotions (e.g., Fabes et al., 2001). Importantly, the inconsistency is not in the valence of parents' expressions and responses, as both punitive responses to children's emotions and parents' negative expressivity may share a negative valence; nor is the inconsistency necessarily in the intent of socialization messages, as both negative expressivity and punitive responses may be used by parents to signal disapproval. The inconsistency exists between the explicit and implicit messages sent by a parent who devalues and punishes the child's negative emotions but who also freely models such emotional expressivity. Children may be confused by such discordant messages, with likely negative consequences for their socioemotional competence. This study presents no direct evidence that parents are emotionally negative while delivering their punitive socialization messages. Research analyzing the emotional tone of active ES messages is needed to better describe the occurrence of such inconsistent ES. Follow-up analyses linked inconsistent ES with children's maladaptive emotion regulation and children's internalizing, such that the

Maladaptive Emotion Regulation

responses and maladaptive ER at high levels of parent negative expressivity, the individual simple slopes were not statistically significant; but the significant interaction effects indicate that the simple slopes are statistically significantly different from one another (Preacher et al., 2006).

12 10 8

Negative Expressivity

6

High (M+2SD) Mean

4

Low (M-2SD) 2 0 1 2.22 Punitive Responses

Fig. 2. Relation between parent punitive responses and child maladaptive emotion regulation at multiple levels of parent negative expressivity.

398


25

Internalizing

20 Negative Expressivity 15 High (M+2SD) 10

Mean Low (M-2SD)

5 0 1 2.22 Punitive Responses

Fig. 3. Relation between parent punitive responses and child internalizing at multiple levels of parent negative expressivity.

positive relations between parents' punitive responses and children's maladaptive emotion regulation and internalizing are stronger at higher levels of parent negative expressivity. These findings extend the work of Fabes et al. (2001) who found that parents who use high levels of unsupportive ES and who are emotionally negative have children with poorer social competence. Given that emotional competence underpins social competence (Halberstadt, Denham, & Dunsmore, 2001) and that failures of emotional competence are implicated in various childhood psychopathologies (Frick & Morris, 2004), inconsistent ES may undermine child adjustment by compromising children's development of emotional competence. Alternately, it is possible that parents' frequent use of unsupportive responses and negative expressivity creates a negatively emotionally charged home in which children feel at fault for household negativity and consequently display more maladaptive emotion regulation and internalizing behavior. Surprisingly, findings for children's adaptive emotion regulation followed the same pattern, suggesting that children exposed to more punitive responses and more negative expressivity also use a greater number of adaptive regulatory strategies. This finding is not easily explained, though a possible explanation can be found in the work of Denham (2007) who suggests that parents may use unsupportive approaches to signal that better emotion regulation is expected. That is, parents' punitive responses and negativity may be a prompt for children's increased regulatory abilities. Additional research is required to better understand these novel findings and to determine which child outcomes are most likely to be impacted by parents' inconsistent ES. The current study provides a critical contribution and new direction to the literature on ES by analyzing multiple domains of ES, multiple forms of inconsistent ES, and the relations between inconsistent ES and child adjustment. The findings that parent emotional expressivity and punitive responses interact to explain variance in child emotional competence and adjustment highlight the need for the exploration of additional interactive effects between ES domains. Given the importance of research on inconsistent discipline to various parenting interventions and training programs, it is likely that research on inconsistent emotion socialization will shape advancements in emotionfocused parent- and teacher-training programs. Limitations and future directions First, this study relied entirely upon parent-reported data in the assessment of parent ES and child emotional competence and adjustment. This methodological limitation may have inflated the observed relationships among study variables (Doty & Glick, 1998). Research using multiple reporters and observational methods is needed to more fully assess inconsistent ES. When assessing child emotional competence, using multiple reporters is often recommended; but researchers also must consider that children's affective behavior may be an emergent property

of specific relationships (Dunn, 2003), potentially limiting the utility of a multi-reporter assessment. Additionally, the vast majority of reporters were mothers; more purposeful targeting of fathers is likely needed to secure their participation. Though research suggests that mothers and fathers may socialize emotions differently (e.g., Eisenberg, Fabes, & Murphy, 1996; Gottman et al., 1996; McElwain et al., 2007), the present findings were largely consistent between the full sample and the mothers-only subsample. Between-parent (e.g., gender-based) inconsistency should be a focus of future research on inconsistent emotion socialization. Second, these data are correlational in nature, and the direction of effects cannot be determined. It is likely that the observed relation result from complex, bidirectional influences between parents and children. Third, the families in the current sample are relatively well educated, largely intact, and predominantly White. Additional research should include participants of greater socioeconomic and racial/ethnic diversity. Finally, this study used novel measures to augment the assessment of multiple constructs. Correlations among all measures of child outcomes suggest that the novel measures relate in theoretically consistent ways with few exceptions (see Table 4). These measures demonstrate potential as improvements over previous measures of children's emotional competence. The CEEQ allows for detailed emotion- and dimension-specific (e.g., frequency, duration) analyses of child negative expressivity. Likewise, the emotion-specific and strategy-specific construction of the ERSQ allows researchers to assess children's competence in using specific strategies to regulate specific emotions. Interestingly, only the ERSQ—not the widely used ERC—demonstrated statistically significant relations with parents' inconsistency. Lastly, the novel CCNES ignoring scale assesses an under-studied dimension of ES and demonstrated excellent psychometric properties. While these measures demonstrated acceptable reliability and evidence of convergent and criterion validity, additional validation work is needed. This work represents the first explicit investigation of inconsistency in parent ES; thus, there are numerous potential future directions. Future research should use multiple methods to address three broad goals: first, identification of various forms of inconsistent ES; second, exploration of causes and consequences of inconsistent ES; and third, exploration of mediators and moderators of the link between inconsistent ES and child outcomes. First, as suggested by the proposed inconsistent ES theoretical framework, other forms of inconsistent ES warrant investigation, particularly inconsistency between socializers (e.g., parents, teachers, peers), between targets of socialization (e.g., siblings, classmates), and inconsistency over time. Researchers should adopt measurement approaches which identify emotion-specific and context-specific ES to better assess various forms of withindomain inconsistency. Researchers also should develop additional approaches to operationally define inconsistent ES—for example, the difference approach and the variability approach. The Table 4 Correlations among child outcome variables. 1 1. Emotion regulation 2. Maladaptive ER 3. Adaptive ER 4. Negative expressivity 5. Social competence 6. Internalizing 7. Externalizing

2

3

4

5

6

−.48⁎⁎⁎ −.61⁎⁎⁎

– .67⁎⁎⁎

– −.36⁎⁎

–

.17⁎⁎⁎

.18⁎⁎⁎

−.47⁎⁎⁎

.66⁎⁎⁎

−.12⁎⁎

.51⁎⁎⁎

−.46⁎⁎⁎

.35⁎⁎

−.50⁎⁎⁎

−.59⁎⁎⁎ −.38⁎⁎⁎

.50⁎⁎⁎ .61⁎⁎⁎

−.01⁎⁎ −.08⁎⁎

.74⁎⁎⁎ .71⁎⁎⁎

Note. ER = emotion regulation. n = 81. ** p b .01; *** p b .001.

– – –


difference approach is appropriate for assessing any form of inconsistency occurring within a single ES domain. For example, both parents may report on their emotional expressivity; and by subtracting one parent's score from the other, a difference score is generated for each family. One weakness of this approach is that the difference score masks absolute levels of the assessed behavior. For example, one pair of parents may be highly and moderately expressive while another pair of parents may be moderately and minimally expressive; yet these pairs would generate similar difference scores. Landry et al.'s (2001) clustering approach may be adapted to overcome this limitation, as the clusters are defined by the paired levels (e.g., a cluster of highly expressive mothers and moderately expressive fathers). Following the work of Curby et al. (2013), inconsistency may be conceptualized as variability in a behavior assessed multiple times. Repeated assessments of any ES behavior could be analyzed for temporal inconsistency; though extraneous variables which may affect temporal inconsistency (e.g., time of day, changes in context/activity) also should be assessed. Second, research is needed to identify individual-level (e.g., parent, child) and contextual factors which predict inconsistent ES. For example, inconsistency may be more likely among parents with less deliberative approaches to ES, poorer regulatory ability, and higher levels of parenting stress, marital discord, or mental health problems. Likewise, various child-level factors (e.g., gender, temperament, age, and emotional competence) may contribute to parent inconsistent ES. Further, family-level factors (e.g., family composition/marital status, number of children) may impact parents' ability to maintain consistency in their ES. In addition, contextual factors like the location of the socializing encounter (e.g., home, playground, doctor's office) and its unique situational demands may influence parents' consistency in ES. Finally, additional work is needed to describe the relations among various forms of inconsistency (e.g., inconsistency over time or between parents) and child adjustment. Third, additional research is needed to better understand what factors may mediate or moderate links between inconsistent ES and children's adjustment. Just as the relation between ES and child adjustment may vary by child temperament (Mirabile, Scaramella, & Sohr-Preston, 2009; Morris et al., 2002) or age (Denham, 2007), the effects of inconsistent ES also may be moderated by child-level factors. Likewise, given the central role of emotional competence in social competence (Halberstadt et al., 2001) and adjustment (Frick & Morris, 2004), emotional competence is a likely mediator of the links between inconsistent ES and child adjustment. Finally, it must be noted that a great deal of data already collected in studies of ES could be easily re-analyzed to address the suggestions above. For example, numerous researchers have collected data on multiple ES domains (e.g., Denham & Kochanoff, 2002) or multiple socializers (e.g., Baker, Fenning, & Crnic, 2011). Sixteen years have passed since Eisenberg et al. (1998) recognized the possibility of inconsistent ES and Halberstadt (1998) called for research addressing that possibility. The present study suggests that parents can be inconsistent in their ES and that such inconsistency relates to important child outcomes; but additional research is needed to better understand this long overdue topic.

Acknowledgment This research was supported by St. Mary's College of Maryland. I would like to acknowledge my colleagues, Laraine Glidden and Renée Dennison, for their thoughtful suggestions and editorial assistance. I would also like to acknowledge my research assistants, Jared Borns and Samantha Kirk, without whom this project would not have been possible.

399

Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data to this article can be found online at http://dx. doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2014.06.003.

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