The Effects Of Parental Emotion Socialization On Adolescents Emotional Regulation And Psychological And Behavioral Adjustment Outcomes

Adolescence is an important period of one’s life,during which there are huge changes in their physical,psychological and cognitive aspects.Adolescents have to experience the developmental interaction between biological changes and socio-psychological changes.These internal and external changes they face may result in emotional experiences and behaviors that are sometimes confusing,overwhelming and difficult to manage.In fact,adolescents have a more sensitive inside world compared to other stages of their life and they need to learn how to manage their emotions.Some adolescents can be reluctant to share their feelings or do some emotional reactions tremendously.Instead of letting feelings out,they bury their emotions,and then bubbling up later in a hurtful way.When the adolescents holding a little resentment,they think it is embarrassing and petty,and it is not a good color on themselves.They don’t know how to release the mood,leading to some problematic behaviors,such as autotomy,suicide,violence,homicide,risky sexual behaviors,alcohol and substance abuse.In addition to this,adolescence is also a peak period for psychopathology,including depression,anxiety,and bipolar disorder.Therefore,it is important to learn more about the adolescents’ inside world.In fact,adolescents’ emotional ability and social outcomes can be influenced by their parents,especially their parents’ emotion related parenting practice.The adolescents’ negative physical or psychological outcomes may as a result of lacking of their parents’ emotion socialization.Chinese children are sometimes compared with others by their parents.Parents are fond of compare their children with those of other children who are regarded as superior not only their academic achievements,but also their all aspects of life.Parents always care about whether their children’s classmates or neighborhood kids are more hardworking,ambitious,popular and so on,comparing the other kids’ performance with their own kids.This kind of suffocative parenting behavior exert over the children.Previous studies have shown that parents’ social comparison render the children experience both internalized and externalized problems.In our study,80 groups of junior high school students aged 11-15 and their parents were recruited to participate in the study.Questionnaires were used to evaluate parenting practice,adolescents’ emotional behavior regulation and social adjustment outcomes,and physiological polygraph(BIOPAC MP150)was used to collect the ECG and respiratory values of adolescents,measuring the adolescents’ emotion physiological regulation.This study explored the effects of parental supportive and non-supportive parenting practice and parental social comparison practice on adolescents’ emotion regulation and social adjustment outcomes.After controlling the adolescents’ gender,age,parents’ gender,socio-economic status and education level,the results shows that:(1)Supportive parenting practice in children’s angry circumstance can positively predict adolescents’ emotion coping,negatively predict adolescents’ emotion lability,and positively predict adolescents’ emotional regulation;non-supportive parenting practice in the sad circumstances can negatively predict adolescents’ emotion coping and emotion regulation;non-supportive parenting practice in angry circumstances can negatively predict adolescents’ emotion coping and emotional regulation.Non-supportive parenting practice in children’s angry circumstance can negatively predict adolescents’ emotion coping,and positively predict adolescents’ emotional lability.(2)The supportive parenting practice with regard to sad and angry emotion can negatively predict the adolescents’ RSA reactivity.Meanwhile,the non-supportive parenting practice with regard to youth’s angry emotion can positively predict the adolescents’ RSA reactivity in the angry emotion discussion events.There was no significant correlation between parental supportive and non-supportive parenting practices with the RSA baseline of emotional discussion events.(3)Supportive parenting practice with regard to adolescents’ angry can negatively predict adolescents’ externalizing problems reported by parents;non-supportive parenting practice with regard to adolescents’ angry can positively predict adolescents’ internal problems which are reported by parents and adolescents.(4)There are no significant relationships between parents’ social comparison practice and adolescents’ emotional behavior regulation.Perceived social comparison and social comparison orientation are not related to adolescents’ emotion coping,emotion lability and emotional regulation.(5)The social comparison orientation in parents’ social comparison practice can negatively predict the RSA reactivity of sad events’ discussion,which have significant results with adolescents’ emotion physiological regulation.(6)Parents’ social comparison practice can positively predict adolescents’ internalizing problems.Perceived social comparison can positively and significantly predict adolescents’ internalizing problems reported by adolescents;social comparison orientation can positively predict adolescents’ internalizing problems which is reported by parents.Parents’ social comparison practice have no significant results with adolescents’ externalizing problems.