Do Parents Show Interpersonally Oriented Socialization Practices for Adolescents’ Negative Emotions? Through the Lens of Chinese Families

This research proposes a new framework called interpersonally oriented parental emotion socialization (inter-PES) practices to address parental socialization of adolescents’ interpersonal emotional processing. This framework captures parents’ interpersonal perspectives when their adolescent children experience negative emotions resulting from social interactions. In Study 1, parents (n = 925; 84.54% females; M_age = 39.86 years, SD = 4.37) recalled their PES practices. Content analysis of parents’ narratives showed four components of inter-PES: perspective-taking, positive attributions to others, negative attributions to others, and concern for others. In Study 2, parents (n = 536; 57.98% females; M_age = 42.84 years, SD = 4.01) evaluated their own parenting behaviors on a newly developed scale to measure the four components mentioned above. Factor analysis supported the four-factor structure. Moreover, the four subscales demonstrated good reliabilities. In Study 3, adolescents (n = 864; 45.97% females; M_age = 14.50 years, SD = 0.77) reported their perceived maternal inter-PES using the same scale, and factor analysis again confirmed the four-factor structure. Study 3 also showed that the four components of inter-PES reported by adolescents were related to their perceptions of other commonly assessed maternal parenting variables and self-reported socioemotional development. Overall, this research develops a new tool for studying inter-PES and reveals new avenues for future research on how parents’ interpersonal perspectives during emotional socialization may relate to adolescents’ socioemotional outcomes.