Person-Centered Maternal Emotion Socialization and Child Temperament: Relations to Children’s Emotion Regulation and Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms

Abstract

AbstractMaternal emotion socialization and children’s temperament are two foundations of children’s emotional development. Yet, emotion socialization and temperament are multidimensional, which suggests behavioral profiles are important to consider. We used a person-centered approach to compare children’s emotion regulation and anxiety and depressive symptoms between maternal emotion socialization and child temperament profiles, uniquely and interactively. The participants were 322 mothers of a child ages 6–8 years (Mage = 7.4 years, SD = 0.84, 51% boys). Mothers completed survey questions about children’s emotion regulation, anxiety and depressive symptoms, temperament traits, and mothers’ emotion socialization behaviors. Four profiles of maternal emotion socialization (coaching/accepting, blended, punishing/minimizing, and low involved) were identified that explained significant variation in children’s emotion regulation and anxiety symptoms. Four temperament profiles were found which revealed two vulnerable groups, namely emotional/cautious and emotional/impulsive, which distinguished children with more emotion dysregulation and anxiety and depressive symptoms. Unique associations of maternal and temperament profiles were found, but no interaction of profiles was significant in relation to children’s emotion regulation or their internalizing symptoms. There is merit in continuing to examine parenting behaviors and their influence by drawing from a person-centered perspective.