Parental beliefs about emotional development and responses to children’s negative emotions

Parental emotion socialization behaviors influence children’s socio-emotional development. This study examined the general parental beliefs about emotional development as one of the key factors contributing to individual differences in responses to children’s negative emotions. Participants comprised 276 parents whose first child was 3–8 years. They completed an online questionnaire containing nine questions to measure their general beliefs regarding emotional development alongside the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale. The results showed that the expectation of early comprehension of “the control of emotion” led to unsupportive emotion socialization behaviors to discount or devalue children’s negative emotions/problems (minimization reactions). Further, parents who expected earlier comprehension of “the experience of emotion” engaged in supportive emotion socialization behaviors that help children to calm down (emotion-focused reactions), and to solve problems that caused distress (problem-focused reactions). These findings highlight how general parental beliefs about emotional development manifest in emotion socialization behavior in daily life.