Relations between maternal emotion socialization behaviors and children's emotional adjustment: A latent profile analysis.

Abstract

The present study examines how specific aspects of emotion-focused parenting behaviors influence children's concurrent emotional development. One-hundred eighteen mother-child (6-10 years) dyads completed this two-part study. Part 1 involved a series of mother-completed online questionnaires about mother and child's emotion regulation capacity and general mother and child mental health. Part 2 involved mother-child interaction tasks (i.e., snakes and ladders game) played online to measure emotional validation, as well as a brief child attachment interview. Latent profile analysis revealed a four-profile solution, including "bear" parent (high supportiveness/low validation; 24.37%), "orca" parent (high supportiveness/moderate validation; 26.89%), "wolf" parent (high suppression/low validation; 10.08%), and "eagle" parent (low supportiveness/high validation; 36.97%). Overall, maternal emotion-focused behaviors, specifically supportive and validating responses to children's negative emotions, were found to be significantly related to children's concurrent emotion regulation and psychosocial adjustment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).