Balancing Self- and Other-Orientations in Parental Emotion Socialization Goals and Implications for Child Development in China

Emotion socialization goals (ESGs) refer to parental expectations and aspirations for their children’s emotional development. This research aims to explore what ESGs are held by contemporary Chinese parents, and how different ESGs relate to parental emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs) and child outcomes in China. Three empirical studies were conducted. In Study 1, parents’ ( n = 150, 78% females, 36–57 years old) written responses to an open-ended question about their emotion socialization goals were analyzed using a hybrid inductive-deductive coding approach, with the aim of identifying emergent themes and confirming the theorized dimensions of ESGs. In Study 2, a survey-based study involving parents ( n = 1,417; 57.66% females, M age = 41.94 years old, SD = 4.52) was conducted to examine the basic psychometric properties of the newly developed scale using factor analyses and test its criterion-related validity. Factor analyses revealed three factors: extreme self-oriented, balanced, and extreme other-oriented ESGs. The results showed that parents with balanced ESGs tended to exhibit more supportive ERSBs and experienced less emotional dysfunction, while parents with extreme ESGs tended to display more nonsupportive ERSBs and have more emotional dysfunction. Even after controlling parental socialization goals or parents’ own emotional dysfunction, the three kinds of ESGs explained additional variances in predicting parental ERSBs. Based on parent-child dyads ( n = 483; for children: M age = 14.01 years old, SD = 0.93, 41.03% females; for parents: M age = 42.05 years old, SD = 4.60, 49.90% females), Study 3 explored how ESGs relate to children’s psychosocial problems. The results showed that balanced ESGs were linked negatively with children’s psychosocial problems. Extreme self-oriented ESGs but not extreme other-oriented ones had significant positive associations with children’s psychosocial problems. Moreover, ERSBs significantly accounted for the relations between ESGs and children’s psychosocial problems. The findings suggest that ESGs of Chinese parents are multi-dimensional and have close relevance to parental ERSBs and child outcomes.