Parental Socialization of Emotion and Child Functioning Among Indian American Families: Consideration of Cultural Factors and Different Modes of Socialization

Abstract

Indian Americans are among the fastest-growing ethnic groups in the United States, and yet, we know very little about parenting in these families. Focusing on a key domain of parenting, parental socialization of emotion, we examined how different methods of socialization relate with one another and how these methods may be related to parental acculturation and child functioning. Forty Indian American mothers and their children completed self-report measures. Indian American mothers endorsed relatively equal preference for Indian and American lifestyles. Maternal acculturation was positively related to their positive expressivity and negatively related to nonsupportive responses to their children’s emotions. Different methods of emotion socialization were interrelated in the expected direction: Mothers’ supportive responses to children’s emotions were positively correlated with their positive expressivity and negatively correlated with negative expressivity. Mothers’ acceptance of their emotions was positively correlated with their positive expressivity, and mothers’ regulation of their emotions was positively associated with their supportive responses to children’s emotions and negatively associated with their negative emotional expressivity. Finally, mothers’ regulation of their emotions was negatively correlated with child behavior problems, while mothers’ negative expressivity was positively associated with child behavior problems, highlighting the relevance of different methods of emotion socialization.