Peer-reviewed article
Maternal and paternal emotion socialization practices and psychosocial adjustment from early- to mid-adolescence among urban Chinese families.
Lixian Cui, Meng-Run Zhang, Niobe Way, Theodore E A Waters, Guangzhen Zhang et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how mothers and fathers in urban China socialize their children's emotions and how this relates to adolescent mental health. Researchers followed 272 children from age 10 to age 15, asking parents about their emotion-teaching practices and adolescents about their self-esteem and depressive symptoms. Supportive parenting practices from mothers were linked to better mental health outcomes for both boys and girls over time, while fathers' emotion socialization showed different effects for sons.
Key points
- Maternal supportive emotion socialization (encouragement, talking about emotions, teaching) was positively linked to girls' self-esteem at age 10
- Paternal emotion socialization was inversely associated with boys' depressive symptoms at age 15
- Maternal supportive practices were uniquely related to increases in self-esteem and decreases in depressive symptoms across all adolescents over the 5-year period
- Mothers and fathers play distinct roles in emotion socialization for boys and girls
- Long-lasting associations exist between parental emotion socialization and adolescent psychological adjustment
Limitations
The study is limited to urban Chinese families and may not generalize to rural areas or other cultural contexts. The study relies on self-reported data from parents and adolescents, which may be subject to bias.
Abstract
Longitudinal studies of emotion socialization are still lacking in the Majority World. Studies with father data are particularly scarce. The present study drew data from a 15-year longitudinal project of urban Chinese families and examined both concurrent and longitudinal associations between parental emotion socialization (ES) practices and youth psychosocial adjustment from early- to mid-adolescence. Youths (N = 272, 52.9% boys, Mage = 9.77 years, SD = 0.22) and their parents (247 mothers and 191 fathers) participated in the sixth wave of data collection when children were 10 years old (Year 10). Majority of them continued to participate 5 years later for the seventh wave of data collection (Year 15). Both mothers and fathers reported on their ES practices, and adolescents reported on their psychosocial adjustment outcomes at both waves. To examine how maternal and paternal ES were uniquely linked to adolescent psychosocial outcomes concurrently and across time, a series of multiple regression models were tested. Results showed that concurrently, maternal supportive ES (i.e., emotion encouragement, emotion talk or sharing, and emotion teaching) was positively linked to girls' self-esteem at Year 10, whereas paternal ES was inversely associated with boys' depressive symptoms at Year 15. Longitudinally, maternal supportive ES practices were uniquely related to girls' increases in self-esteem and decreases in depressive symptoms for all adolescents. Our findings suggest long-lasting associations between parental ES practices and adolescent psychological adjustment and unique roles of maternal and paternal ES in adolescent girls' and boys' development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Maternal and paternal emotion socialization practices including emotion encouragement, emotion talk and sharing, and emotion teaching
- Population
- Urban Chinese children (N=272, 52.9% boys, mean age 9.77 years) and their mothers (247) and fathers (191)
Key finding
Maternal supportive emotion socialization positively linked to girls' self-esteem at Year 10