A Thematic Analysis of Low-Income African American Fathers’ Meta-Emotion Interview Responses

This study explored African American fathers’ beliefs about and experiences with their own and their children’s negative emotions. Participants included 58 African American fathers in the Midwestern region of the United States between the ages of 29 and 40 ( M age = 30.94). Participants completed the Meta-Emotion Interview, a semi-structured interview of parents’ and their children’s negative emotion. A theoretical thematic analysis of participants’ responses to a subset of Meta-Emotion Interview questions about sadness and anger was conducted. Five themes of African American fathers’ beliefs about and experiences with their own and their children’s negative emotions were interpreted: (1) responsibility for children’s emotions, (2) complex relationship with anger, (3) reckoning negative emotions, (4) children at the center, and (5) actively working through emotions. Taken together, these five themes demonstrate that African American fathers recognize the inherent value of negative emotions while navigating the potential harm these emotions may bring to self and others. Furthermore, the findings provide insight into the role of African American fathers in parental emotion socialization processes.