Citation

Cunningham JN, Kliewer W, Garner PW. Dev. Psychopathol. 2009; 21(1): 261-283.

Affiliation

Commonwealth Counseling Associates, Mechanicsville, VA 23116, USA. jncunningham@commonwealthcounseling.com

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Cambridge University Press)

DOI

10.1017/S0954579409000157

PMID

19144233

Abstract

The prospective relation of maternal emotion philosophy to children's emotion understanding and regulation and positive and negative adjustment was investigated. Sixty-nine African American youth (50% male; M age = 11.29 years) and their maternal caregivers living in high violence areas of a midsized city participated in this interview study. Caregivers' meta-emotion philosophy predicted child emotion understanding and emotion regulation, which also were associated with Time 2 grades, internalizing behaviors, externalizing behaviors, and social skills after controlling for Time 1 adjustment. Emotional understanding mediated the relationship between caregivers' emotional socialization and boys' internalizing behaviors and between caregivers' emotional socialization and girls' social skills. In addition, emotion regulation mediated the relationships between emotional socialization and all four outcomes for boys. Implications for future work on emotion socialization and clinical intervention, particularly related to emotion regulation, are discussed.

Language: en