The Impact Of Parental Emotional Socialization On Adolescents’ Internalizing And Externalizing Symptoms In The Discussion Of Emotional Events

Adolescents have increasingly rich social relationships,but parents still play a very important role in the process of emotional socialization,influencing adolescents’ability of emotional regulation,expression and understanding.However,the conclusions of existing studies are mostly based on the western culture,and Chinese research has paid scant attention to adolescents.This study focused on the emotional socialization of parents to adolescents and the influence on the internalizing and externalizing symptoms,so as to more accurately described the parental emotional socialization under the background of Chinese culture,and paid attention to the emotional development of adolescents.Considering cultural differences and age factors,this study hypothesized that adolescents were more likely to be aroused by social themed events.There were differences between parents’ emotional socialization of adolescents,such as happy,sad and angry.Different emotional types affected the relationship between parents’ emotional socialization and adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing symptoms.In the current study,we examined the impacts of parents’ emotion socialization on adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing symptoms in a sample of Chinese parents and their children in their middle adolescence.Participants were 72 adolescents(39 boys and 33 girls,Mage = 12.78 years,SD = 0.97)and their parents(58 mothers and 14 fathers,Mage = 41.36 years,SD = 3.98).Parent–child dyadic collaboration was videotaped and coded from three interaction tasks.Through observing and encoding,we got adolescents’ emotional events’ theme and the process of parental emotion socialization,including the conversational turns and parents’different reaction on happy,sad and angry events.On the basis of existing theory,we classified the reaction of the parents for coaching approach,emotion-encouraging approach and emotion-dismissing approach to analyze the influence of parents’reaction to adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing symptoms,which reported by parents and adolescents on questionnaire.Results indicated that: 1)The sadness and anger of adolescents were more caused by social theme events.2)The conversational turns during happy discussion events between parents and adolescents was significantly more than that during sad and angry discussion events.3)Parents paid more attention to the event during happy discussion events,while during sad and angry discussion events,they paid more attention to the emotional reaction.4)Parents’ emotional responses were dominated by coaching approach,synchronous reaction and reflection in happy discussion were significantly more than that of sad and angry.In the discussion of sadness and anger,the problem-focused coping and training were significantly more than that of happy ones,and parents were more likely to use coaching approach in response to anger.The weakening of anger was significantly greater than that of sadness,and the sadness was significantly greater than that of happiness.5)There was no significant difference between parents’ emotional reactions to their sons and daughters.6)Parents’punishment and reflection of adolescents’ happiness was related to greater adolescents’ externalizing symptoms.Parents’ inhibition of adolescents’ sadness was related to greater adolescents’ externalizing symptoms and less depression.The parental response of punishment,minimization,encouraging expression and training response in angry discussion were positively correlated with the internalization symptoms.Parents’ minimization of adolescents’ angry was related to greater adolescents’ depression.On the basis of the results of this study,some constructive suggestions were provided for parents to the process of adolescents’ emotional socialization,focusing on the reaction to adolescents’ emotions.