Parents' reactions to elementary school chilren's negative emotions: Relations to social and emotional functioning at school

Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, Apr 2002 by Jones, Sarah, Eisenberg, Nancy, Fabes, Richard A, MacKinnon, David P

This study addressed the role of specific parenting practices in children's expression of emotion and social competence. The specific objective was to examine the relations of parents' reactions to children's negative emotions with children's social and emotional competence at school and to explore the moderating role of children's dispositional emotionality in this relation. A diverse sample of first to fourth graders was observed at school; teachers reported on children's social competence and affect, and parents reported on their reactions to their children's negative emotions and the intensity of children's negative emotions. Parental problem-focused reactions were positively related to socioemotional competence for boys but negatively associated for girls. Parental punitive/minimizing reactions were associated with low socioemotional competence. Moderating effects were obtained for emotion-focused (comforting) parental reactions: Children prone to intense negative emotions were especially low in socioemotional competence if their parents reported using high or average levels of these reactions.

Problems in regulating emotion have been linked to a variety of negative outcomes for children, including social and behavioral problems (Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & Reiser, 2000; Hubbard & Coie, 1994). Consequently, researchers have begun to examine the role of specific parenting practices in children's expression and regulation of emotion (see Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998; Halberstadt, Crisp, & Eaton, 1999). One such practice is parental reactions to children's negative emotions, which are hypothesized to affect children's regulatory skills (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1997).

Theory on the relation of parental reactions to children's emotions to children's development preceded most empirical work on the topic. Tomkins (1991) suggested that rewarding parental responses acknowledge children's negative emotions and attempt to teach the children to tolerate and regulate these emotions. In contrast, punitive parental responses communicate neither acceptance nor tolerance of the expression of negative emotion; rather, they focus on reducing the expression of emotion without providing regulation strategies or methods to deal with the evocative stimulus. Similarly, Skinner and Wellborn (1994) suggested that parents who tend to be positive and supportive when their children experience negative emotions help their children to manage their distress and to cope successfully in stressful situations; this success might in turn foster the development of social skills and reduce negative expectations about social interactions (Dusek & Danko, 1994; Hardy, Power, & Jaedicke, 1993). In addition, parents who instruct their children in regard to problem solving when their children express negative emotion are likely to foster the development of specific skills that contribute to the management of the experience and expression of negative emotion (Eisenberg et al., 1998). Moreover, Gottman et al. (1997) argued that children of parents who are accepting of emotions and who talk about them are relatively likely to develop an understanding and acceptance of emotion that contribute to their physiological regulation of emotion. Similarly, Buck (1984) theorized that children who are punished for displaying negative emotions will associate the experience of negative emotions with negative sanctions. This association is believed to increase children's distress and arousal in contexts involving negative emotion, which might be expected to undermine attempts at regulation and hence, social functioning.

Thus, theorists have argued that parental punitive or nonsupportive reactions to children's negative emotion are associated with children's heightened experience and expression of negative emotion-- although, over time, the children may start to hide their negative feelings (Buck, 1984). In contrast, parental support, discussion, and problem-solving reactions are expected to promote children's regulation of the experience or expression of negative emotion and their socioemotional competence. There is some initial support for these predictions. Parents who are high in warmth and positive emotion and low in negativity with their children-more generally and not solely in response to their displays of negative emotion-have socially competent children who exhibit relatively low levels of hostility, externalizing problems, and internalizing problems (e.g., anxiety, anger; Lindahl, 1998; Matthews, Woodall, Kenyon, & Jacob, 1996; Rothbaum & Weisz, 1994; Rubin, Hastings, Chen, Stewart, & McNichol, 1998). Moreover, Gottman and colleagues (1997) found that children of parents who were supportive in regard to encouraging the appropriate expression of emotion and coaching children about emotions were relatively high in regulatory abilities and low in aggression.

Eisenberg, Fabes, and colleagues have examined a number of parental behaviors specifically in reaction to children's negative emotions. In regard to the expression of emotion, parental nonsupportive reactions such as punitive responses or minimizing of children's emotion tend to be modestly correlated with children's situational and dispositional proneness to frequent or intense negative emotions, although the degree of relations varies somewhat across studies (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1994; Eisenberg, Fabes, Carlo & Karbon, 1992; Eisenberg, Fabes, & Murphy, 1996; Eisenberg et al., 1999). Minimizing children's emotion may often be viewed as belittling rather than acknowledging and supporting the children's emotional experience (at least in the United States). In contrast, more supportive parental reactions such as encouraging problem-focused or emotion-focused responses (e.g., comforting) have been associated with preschoolers' low anger intensity in peer conflicts and, for comforting, with relatively low venting of anger (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1994; also see Denham, 1993; Eisenberg, Fabes, Carlo, & Karbon, 1992). However, associations between supportive parental reactions and children's experience and expression of emotion have been somewhat inconsistent and also have been infrequent in studies of school children (unpublished data from Eisenberg et al., 1999).