Parenting and children's prosocial and problem behaviors in middle childhood: The role of Turkish mothers' emotion socialization practices


ACAR BAYRAKTAR A. V., ÇAKMAK Z., Saritas-Atalar D.

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, cilt.28, sa.2, ss.333-346, 2019 (SSCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 28 Sayı: 2
  • Basım Tarihi: 2019
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1111/sode.12344
  • Dergi Adı: SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.333-346
  • Hacettepe Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Mechanisms by which the relations between different parenting behaviors and children's prosocial and problem behaviors occur are the focus of the current study. Supportive and nonsupportive emotion socialization practices of mothers were considered as potential mediators. Further, the moderator role of gender was explored. Participants were 228 mothers of 6- to 11-year-old children living in Ankara, Turkey. Scales assessing parenting behaviors (specifically, positive parenting and inconsistent discipline), maternal reactions to children's negative emotions, and prosocial and problem behaviors of children were completed by the mothers. The results revealed that supportive emotion socialization practices fully mediated the relation between positive parenting behaviors and both boys' and girls' prosocial behaviors. In contrast, nonsupportive emotion socialization practices partially mediated the relation between inconsistent parenting behaviors and problem behaviors, but only for girls. Findings indicated that girls were more vulnerable to their mothers' inconsistent behaviors possibly because mother-daughter dyads are more likely to use emotion-related language and to discuss emotions than mother-son dyads from a very early age.