Associations between maternal reactions to child negative emotions and child social competence: A longitudinal study

Acknowledgement: This study was funded by a grant from Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee, Hong Kong, China, to Chun Bun Lam (ECS 28401714). The authors are grateful to the participating children and their mothers and class teachers, as well as the research assistants and faculty collaborators who helped conduct this study. To date, the data and ideas appearing in this article have not been published or presented elsewhere.

Parents’ emotion socialization plays a critical role in their children’s social development (Ladd & Pettit, 2002). One important aspect of parents’ emotion socialization concerns parents’ reactions to their children’s negative emotions (Parke, 1994). Research based mostly on European and European American families suggests that parents’ nonsupportive reactions to their children’s negative emotions, such as minimization and punishment, may contribute to adjustment problems among children (Eisenberg et al., 1999; Jones et al., 2002; Miller-Slough et al., 2016). However, according to Eisenberg et al.’s (1998) heuristic model of emotion socialization, the links between parental emotion socialization and child adjustment may be moderated by the personal characteristics of children. Children’s knowledge about culturally bound, emotion display rules—rules that prescribe how emotions should be displayed in public (Gnepp & Hess, 1986)—may be one of these moderators, as children with different understanding of emotions may interpret their parents’ behaviors in different ways (Camras et al., 2012). Surprisingly, the interrelationships among parents’ emotion socialization, children’s emotion knowledge, and children’s social competence have rarely been examined. Using multi-informant data on 330 kindergarten-aged children from Hong Kong, China, the present study examined the longitudinal associations of maternal minimizing and punitive reactions to child negative emotions with child peer acceptance, social cognition, and aggression, and tested child emotion knowledge as a moderator in such associations.

In his seminal book, Ladd (2005) defined children’s social competence as “the correlates and antecedents of children’s success and difficulty in peer relationships [emphasis added]” (p.113). He further grouped these correlates and antecedents into positive skills that contribute to the formation of friendships and peer acceptance and negative behaviors that lead to failure to make friends and peer rejection. Guided by these views, we used three distinct but related constructs to capture the complexity of children’s social competence: We used children’s peer acceptance to indicate their success and difficulty in peer relationships. Furthermore, we used children’s social cognition (i.e., abilities to take the perspectives of others, understand others’ feelings, and use appropriate strategies to deal with social problems; Crick & Dodge, 1994) to indicate their positive skills and children’s aggression (i.e., tendencies to attack others verbally or physically; Kempes et al., 2005) to indicate their negative behaviors.

Children’s social competence is shaped by many interpersonal and intrapersonal factors (Ladd, 2005). Parents’ emotion socialization plays a crucial role, given that social relationships are nearly always intertwined with emotions (Thompson & Goodman, 2010) and that most children learn how to approach and deal with their emotions through their parents (Raval & Walker, 2019). Among parents’ emotion socialization practices, parent’s reactions to their children’s negative emotions are fundamental, as these reactions inform children that some emotions are seen as acceptable whereas some are not, a realization that will shape how children deal with their negative emotions (Eisenberg et al., 1998).

Parents’ unsupportive reactions to children’s negative emotions include minimization (i.e., responses intended to minimize the seriousness of the situation) and punishment (i.e., responses intended to punish the child for showing negative emotions). In an individualistic culture that prioritizes the self over the group (Triandis, 1995), parents’ unsupportive reactions are likely to be detrimental to their children’s social adjustment, as these reactions repress children’s self-expression, a quality reinforced and treasured by many Western societies (Fabes et al., 2002; Perry et al., 2012). Indeed, studies with U.S. families have linked parents’ minimizing and punitive reactions to lower social competence among their children. For example, in a sample of school-aged children, most of whom were of European and Mexican American heritage, Jones et al. (2002) found that parental minimizing and punitive reactions were concurrently associated with lower levels of child social cognition and peer acceptance. Moreover, in a sample of kindergarten-aged children, most of whom were of European American heritage, Mackler et al. (2015) found that parental minimizing and punitive reactions predicted child aggression over a 6-year period.

However, in a collectivistic culture that emphasizes group harmony, sometimes at the expense of individuals’ benefits (Triandis, 1995), parents’ unsupportive reactions may have different implications for child social adjustment. For example, Asian children are less emotionally expressive and more behaviorally cautious, especially when compared to their Western counterparts (Chen, 2010). These social characteristics of Asian children are fostered primarily by their parents and teachers who praise Asian children for being modest and obedient and reprimand them for being inconsiderate and unruly (Kwong et al., 2018; Li et al., 2020). In other words, parental unsupportive reactions to child negative emotions may be more compatible with the cultural expectations imposed by Asian societies.

Only a handful of studies have linked parents’ unsupportive reactions to their children’s adjustment among Asian families, and the findings are mixed. For example, Suh and Kang (2020) found that Korean mothers’ minimizing and punitive reactions were concurrently associated with their kindergarten-aged children’s aggression. On the other hand, Raval et al. (2018) found that Indian parents’ punitive (but not minimizing) reactions were concurrently associated with their school-aged children’s conduct problems, although parents’ reactions were not associated with their children’s adjustment among Chinese families at all. Finally, Tao et al. (2010) found that Chinese mothers’ punitive reactions were linked to decreases in their school-aged children’s social cognition (i.e., act appropriately in different social situations) over a 4-year period. Chinese mothers’ minimizing reactions were not significantly linked to their children’s social cognition, however.

Taken together, parents’ unsupportive reactions to children’s negative emotions have been negatively linked to children’s social competence among European and European American families, but such links have been less consistently documented among Asian families. Although differences in sample demographics and construct measurement may play a role, the mixed findings documented in Asian studies may also reflect the presence of conceptual moderators.

A heuristic model of emotion socialization conceptualizes parents as important socializers of children’s social and emotional competence (Eisenberg et al., 1998). Importantly, the impact of parental emotion socialization is not uniform, but dependent on children’s personal characteristics, such as gender and temperament. Previous research, for example, has shown that parental emotion socialization was more strongly linked to child adjustment for boys with higher levels of negative emotionality (Engle & McElwain, 2011). In this study, we examined children’s knowledge about emotion display rules as a personal characteristic, a characteristic that may affect how children interpret their parents’ behaviors (Stein & Liwag, 1997) and thus moderate the associations of parental reactions to child negative emotions with child social competence.

Emotion display rules vary considerably across cultures (Gnepp & Hess, 1986). For example, in individualistic cultures where self-expression is valued, such as the U.S., individuals are often allowed to display intense emotions, be it positive or negative, and assert themselves to achieve open communication (Markus & Kitayama, 2001). However, in collectivistic cultures where self-control is valued, such as China, individuals are often expected to refrain from showing negative emotions in order to save face and maintain positive social relationships. In fact, both qualitative and quantitative research indicates that Chinese parents expect their children to regulate their emotions, accommodate others’ needs, and pay attention to group coherence beginning from the early years (Chan et al., 2009; Kwong et al., 2018). Therefore, in a collectivistic culture that prioritizes the group over the self (Triandis, 1995), parents’ “unsupportive” reactions to children’s negative emotions may be interpreted in a more positive light.

As argued by Raval and Walker (2019), children may interpret their parents’ behaviors based on three factors: “children’s affective subjective experience (how does the caregiver’s behavior make the child feel), causal attribution (why did the caregiver engage in a given behavior), and perception of normativeness (how typical is the caregiver’s behavior within one’s local community)”(p.149). In a collectivistic culture, children with more knowledge about emotion display rules may perceive their parents’ minimizing and punitive reactions to be beneficial (e.g., “Mommy is doing this for my own good”) and normative (e.g., “All children are expected to show self-control”), even though these reactions may not make them feel good.

To date, no studies have tested children’s emotion knowledge as a moderator in the relationship between parent emotion socialization and child social adjustment. However, Perry et al. (2017) found that, compared to European American adult children, African American adult children reported feeling less hurt, less ashamed, and more loved when their parents exhibited minimizing or punitive reactions to their negative emotions, possibly because African Americans tend to be more collectivistic than European Americans. Also, Berzenski and Yates (2013) found that child emotion knowledge moderated the association between harsh parental punishment and child adjustment problems in an ethnically diverse U.S. sample, with parental screaming and hitting more strongly linked to child behavioral problems and self-concept deficits among children with more emotion knowledge. As emphasized by the authors, however, these findings had to be interpreted taking into account the embedding cultural context: As harsh parental punishment is disapproved and nonnormative in the U.S. (Ateah et al., 2003), more knowledgeable children may find it less acceptable and thus respond in a more reactive way.

To recap, using data collected from 330 kindergarten-aged children, their mothers, and class teachers from Hong Kong—a modernized city in China that is highly collectivistic (Hofstede Insight, 2018)—we examined the longitudinal associations of maternal minimizing and punitive reactions to child negative emotions with child social competence and tested child emotion knowledge as a moderator. Guided by theory and research, we hypothesized that Chinese mothers’ minimizing and punitive reactions would be associated positively with their children’s peer acceptance and social cognition and negatively with their children’s aggression, especially for children with more knowledge about emotion display rules. We controlled for prior levels of child adjustment to capture its changes over time (Cole & Maxwell, 2003). Moreover, we controlled for child demographics (gender and age), family socioeconomic status (SES) (maternal education), and reporter characteristics (teacher education), as these factors may affect parental socialization and child adjustment (Brophy-Herb et al., 2007; Kwong et al., 2018; Lam et al., 2018; Li et al., 2020).

Participants were 330 children and their mothers and class teachers from 10 kindergartens in Hong Kong, China. Families in Hong Kong varied widely in SES. Therefore, we adopted a stratified sampling approach to recruit a sample that was more representative of the population in terms of SES. Based on census data on median household incomes (Census and Statistics Department, 2011), we stratified the 18 geographic districts of Hong Kong into high, medium, and low-SES strata. Then, using publicly available information, we randomly called kindergartens in these strata until three kindergartens in each stratum agreed to participate in our study. As two kindergartens from the high-SES stratum happened to be small in size, we recruited one more kindergarten from that stratum to balance the numbers of families from different SES districts. Invitation letters and consent forms were sent to all families with second-year kindergarten children through the 10 kindergartens. Three hundred and thirty-three families provided informed consent for us to collect longitudinal data from the children, their mothers, and class teachers for two consecutive years. Two waves of data collection were conducted, separated by about 12 months. Mothers provided demographic information about their families and completed self-administered questionnaires on their parenting practices, whereas children were interviewed by trained interviewers and completed tasks on emotion knowledge. Class teachers completed self-administered questionnaires on children’s social competence. The retention rate across Waves 1 and 2 was 89%, better than most longitudinal research in the developmental and family literature (Stets et al., 2012). We removed three families whose data on parenting practices were provided by female relatives rather than mothers (e.g., aunts or grandmothers). Our analyses were thus based on the remaining 330 families.

In Wave 1, the age of children averaged 4.81 years (SD = 0.38), and 56% of them were girls (n = 186). The education level of mothers averaged 3.12 (SD = 1.14), with 1 representing elementary school education and 5 representing postgraduate education. As compensation, in each wave of data collection, each mother and each class teacher received a supermarket coupon of HK$50 (≈ US$6) and HK$100 (≈ US$12), respectively. In each wave of data collection, each child received a gift of about HK$5 (≈ US$1). The procedures of the present study were approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Education University of Hong Kong.

Two independent translators forward and backward translated the English items into Chinese. Two family researchers then joined the two translators, resolving the discrepancies and finalizing the items as a group. For all measures, ratings were averaged, with higher scores indicating higher levels of the constructs.

Mothers’ minimizing and punitive reactions to children’s negative emotions were measured using the 24-item Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (Fabes et al., 2002). In Wave 1, on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (very unlikely) to 7 (very likely), mothers rated how likely they would react in minimizing and punitive ways when their children exhibited negative emotions in hypothetical situations, such as “My child is shy and scared around strangers and consistently becomes teary and wants to stay in his/her bedroom whenever family friends come to visit” and “My child becomes angry because he/she is sick or hurt and can’t go to his/her friend’s birthday party.” Minimizing reactions involved actions that minimize the seriousness of the situation or devalue children’s negative emotions, such as “Tell my child that he/she is overreacting” and “Tell my child that he/she is being a baby about it.” Punitive reactions involved actions that punish children for showing their negative emotions, such as “Tell my child that he/she must stay in the living room and visit with our friends” and “Send my child to his/her room to cool off.” Cronbach’s alphas for mothers’ minimizing and punitive reactions were .85 and .84, respectively.

Children’s social competence was measured using the 20-item Social Competence Scale (Vaughn et al., 2009). In Waves 1 and 2, on a 6-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all accurate) to 6 (very accurate), class teachers rated three aspects of social competence for each of their students. These aspects included peer acceptance (whether the child was welcomed by or “popular” among his or her peers, indicated by such items as “This child is accepted by the peer group,” “Other children like this child and seek him/her out for play,” and “This child gets along well with peers of same sex”), social cognition (whether the child was able to understand the feelings and points of views of his or her peers and deal with peer problems appropriately, indicated by such items as “This child understands others’ feelings,” “This child takes other children and their points of view into account,” and “This child generates many solutions to interpersonal problems”), and aggression (whether the child hurt his or her peers with verbal or physical actions and showed disruptive behaviors in group activities, indicated by such items as “This child says mean things to peers in teasing or name-calling,” “This child hits, bites, or kicks other children,” and “This child disrupts the peer group by inappropriate or attention-getting behavior”). In Wave 1, Cronbach’s alphas were .87, .94, and .92 for peer acceptance, social cognition, and aggression, respectively. In Wave 2, Cronbach’s alphas were .88, .94, and .93, respectively.

Children’s knowledge of emotion display rules was measured using the 14-item Child Display Rule Knowledge Task (Jones et al., 1998). In Wave 1, children were guided by trained interviewers through hypothetical situations where it might be desirable to conceal one’s emotions in order to protect the feelings of others. In one situation, for example, “Child’s parents are going away for the weekend. Child thinks he/she will miss his/her parents. But, they are very excited about their trip.” In another situation, “Child’s mother had a friend and her daughter (son) over to visit. Child’s mother said child had to play with the little girl (boy). Child does not want to play.” Using four cartoon characters that, respectively, showed happy, sad, angry, and neutral facial expressions, children selected a character that best represented the emotion they would display publicly and a character that best represented the emotion they would truly feel at heart. Children who selected two different characters that showed appropriate consideration toward others’ feelings (i.e., happy or neutral in both situations described above) and accurate understanding of their own emotions (i.e., sad or angry) received two points. Children who selected two different characters that did not reflect appropriate consideration and accurate understanding still received one point (as they understood that the outer display and inner experience could be different). Children who selected the same character to represent their outer displays and inner feelings received no point. Therefore, this task measured children’s abilities to understand the possible consequences and thus desirability of expressing different emotions in the presence of others. This measure had been validated in Japanese and Chinese samples (Naito & Seki, 2009; Wang et al., 2012). In the present study, the Cronbach’s alpha was .81.

The mean values and standard deviations of and correlations among variables are shown in Table 1. Focusing on the longitudinal associations, maternal minimizing and punitive reactions to child negative emotions in Wave 1 were not correlated with child peer acceptance, social cognition, or aggression in Wave 2 (rs ranging from −.02 to .05; ns.). The autocorrelations of child peer acceptance, social cognition, and aggression were significant and moderate (rs ranging from .33 to .47; ps < .01), however, indicating both stability and change of social competence during early childhood. Child gender was significantly correlated with nearly all measures of child social competence (rs = −.11−.29, ps < .05), with girls scoring higher on peer acceptance and social cognition and lower on aggression.

Overall, less than 5% of our data were missing. However, Little’s Missing Completely At Random test revealed that these data were not missing completely at random, χ2(128) = 200.78, p < .001. Comparisons between children who participated in Wave 1 only versus those who participated in both waves of data collection revealed that the former had more educated mothers, t(324) = −1.98, p = .049, and scored higher on peer acceptance, t(325) = −2.63, p = .009. In Hong Kong, the admission to the elementary school is highly affected by where the family lives. Most families that dropped out from our study changed schools in Wave 2 (i.e., the last year of kindergarten). Therefore, our missing data pattern might reflect that parents with more financial and social resources had moved to another district to help their children get into a more desirable elementary school. To address this issue, we used the Full Information Maximum Likelihood (FIML) method to reduce potential estimation bias. FIML is among the most effective methods to deal with missing data in multilevel models (Graham, 2009).

Given our clustered design (i.e., multiple children were rated by the same class teacher), intraclass correlations were calculated for each outcome measure to test whether multilevel modeling was needed to accommodate the potential correlations among the residuals. Results based on unconditional models—which included no predictors and merely estimated whether significant variance existed at each level—indicated that there was significant variance at the teacher level for child peer acceptance (σ2 = 0.13, SE = 0.05, p < .01), social cognition (σ2 = 0.14, SE = 0.06, p < .01), and aggression (σ2 = 0.11, SE = 0.06, p < .05). Therefore, using SAS 9.3, we ran 2-level multilevel models separately for each outcome measure in Wave 2 (Level 1 = child level; Level 2 = teacher level). Due to the high correlation between maternal minimizing and punitive reactions, we tested separate models for them, each predicting child peer acceptance, social cognition, and aggression (six models), to reduce potential collinearity and suppression problems. At Level 1, we included variables that were unique to each child, including child gender and age, maternal education (as an indicator of family SES), prior levels of child adjustment, maternal nonsupportive reactions, child emotion knowledge, and the interaction between maternal reactions and child knowledge. At Level 2, we included one variable that was identical for all children rated by the same class teacher: teacher education.

The interaction between maternal minimizing reactions and child emotion knowledge was not significant for child peer acceptance (B = 0.07, SE = 0.04, p = .064), social cognition (B = 0.07, SE = 0.04, p = .092), or aggression (B = −0.05, SE = 0.05, p = .357). These nonsignificant interactions were removed from the final models, as retaining them would otherwise increase standard errors (Aiken & West, 1991). The final models for maternal minimizing reactions explained 19%, 36%, and 15% of variance in child peer acceptance, social cognition, and aggression, respectively.

As shown in Table 2, however, the interaction between maternal punitive reactions and child emotion knowledge was significant for child peer acceptance (B = 0.07, SE = 0.04, p = .049), social cognition (B = 0.10, SE = 0.04, p = .009), and aggression (B = −0.10, SE = 0.05, p = .044). To examine the local effect sizes of these significant interactions, we computed their partial correlations (which controlled for the effects of all other predictors in the model), as recommended by McCartney and Rosenthal (2000). The partial correlations of the interaction between maternal punitive reactions and child emotion knowledge with child peer acceptance, social cognition, and aggression were .12, .16, and .12, respectively, indicating small to moderate effect sizes (Cohen, 1969).

We probed these significant interaction patterns by conducting simple slope analyses. As shown in Figure 1, for children with more emotion knowledge (1 SD above the mean), maternal punitive reactions were linked to increases in child peer acceptance (B = 0.14, SE = 0.05, p = .006), increases in child social cognition (B = 0.12, SE = 0.05, p = .026), and (though marginally) decreases in child aggression (B = −0.13, SE = 0.07, p = .071) over a 12-month period. For children with less emotion knowledge (1 SD below the mean), however, maternal punitive reactions were not linked to changes in child peer acceptance (B = −0.00, SE = 0.06, p = .956), child social cognition (B = −0.08, SE = 0.06, p = .173), or child aggression (B = 0.08, SE = 0.08, p = .350). The final models for maternal punitive reactions explained 21%, 39%, 15% of variance in child peer acceptance, social cognition, and aggression, respectively.

Studies with U.S. families have linked parents’ unsupportive reactions to children’s negative emotions to lower social competence among their children (Jones et al., 2002; Mackler et al., 2015). However, such links have been less consistently documented in studies with Asian families (Raval et al., 2018; Suh & Kang, 2020; Tao et al., 2010), possibly suggesting the presence of moderators. This study expanded upon this work to examine the moderating role of child knowledge about emotion display rules in the associations of maternal minimizing and punitive reactions with child peer acceptance, social cognition, and aggression among Hong Kong families. In support of our hypothesis, child emotion knowledge moderated the association between maternal punitive reactions and child social competence: In a Chinese context where children are encouraged to contain negative emotions (Chan et al., 2009; Kwong et al., 2018), maternal punitive reactions were linked to increases in child peer acceptance and social cognition and decreases in child aggression among children with more knowledge about emotion display rules. Child emotion knowledge did not moderate the associations between maternal minimizing reactions and child social competence, however.

According to Eisenberg et al.’s (1998) heuristic model of emotion socialization, the impact of parental socialization practices can only be fully understood taking into account the personal characteristics of children. Children’s own interpretations of their parents’ behaviors, for example, are key factors that determine how parental socialization practices will be received (Raval & Walker, 2019). In keeping with these views, children’s emotion knowledge, which might have affected children’s causal attributions and perceived normativeness of their parents’ behaviors, moderated the longitudinal associations of mothers’ punitive reactions with children’s peer acceptance, social cognition, and aggression: For more knowledgeable children, maternal punitive reactions were linked to increases in child peer acceptance and child social cognition and decreases in child aggression. For less knowledgeable children, however, maternal punitive reactions were not significantly linked to changes in our measures of child social competence. In other words, maternal punitive reactions seemed to be able to contribute to positive child development in Hong Kong—a highly collectivistic society (Hofstede Insight, 2018). As our predictor, outcome, and moderator variables were provided by mothers, class teachers, and children, respectively, our findings could not be explained by common reporter bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003). As we controlled for child outcome measures in Wave 1, neither could our findings be explained by children’s earlier levels of adjustment (Cole & Maxwell, 2003).

Existing research on parental socialization highlights the importance of considering cultural backgrounds and emotion knowledge. Perry et al. (2017), for example, showed that African American adult children felt less hurt, less ashamed, and more loved than did European American adult children when their parents showed unsupportive reactions to their negative emotions, possibly due to the differences in individualism–collectivism between African versus European American cultures. Moreover, Berzenski and Yates (2013) found that parental harsh punishment was more strongly linked to child adjustment problems for European American children with more emotion knowledge, possibly because these children were more aware that hitting and screaming are disapproved and nonnormative in the U.S.. Indeed, in an individualistic culture where self-expression is valued (Markus & Kitayama, 2001), parenting behaviors that do not support child self-assertion and open communication may be interpreted as malicious and abnormal and thus contribute to negative child development. In contrast, in a collectivistic culture where self-control is valued, the same “unsupportive” parenting behaviors may be interpreted as benign and normal, especially when they help save face of the family or serve the needs of the larger social group, and thus bring no harms or even benefits to children.

As our study was the first to examine the interrelationships among parents’ reactions to children’s negative emotions, children’s social competence, and children’s emotion knowledge, our findings have to be treated with caution. One important factor to consider when interpreting our findings, for example, concerned the severity of parental punishment in our study (e.g., forcing the child to stay with the guests or sending the child to his or her room), which could be considered fairly benign, especially when compared to that in Berzenski and Yates’s (2013) study (e.g., shouting, yelling, or screaming at the child, hitting the child with something hard). This might also explain why maternal punitive reactions were not linked directly to lower child social competence in our study. As we only used one measure to assess parental punitive reactions within one cultural group, we were not able to disentangle the effects of punishment severity versus culture. Future researchers should measure parental punishment of different severity, collect data from both collectivistic and individualistic communities, and reexamine children’s emotion knowledge as a moderator. In addition to replicating our findings with more nuanced measures across different cultural groups, future researchers should directly assess the intrapersonal processes indexed by children’s emotion knowledge, such as children’s causal attribution and perceived normativeness of their parents’ behaviors (Raval & Walker, 2019), and test them as alternative moderators.

On a theoretical level, our findings demonstrated the interplay of parental socialization (e.g., parental reactions to child negative emotions) and child characteristics (e.g., child knowledge about emotion display rules) in shaping child social competence, providing support to a social ecological perspective that child development is contingent on both contextual and personal factors (Bronfenbrenner & Crouter, 1983; Lam & McHale, 2015). The fact that emotion knowledge is culturally bound (Markus & Kitayama, 2001) further illustrates the need to consider the embedding cultural context when studying family processes and child adjustment, even when cultural comparisons are not explicitly made.

Though significant, the local effect sizes of the interactions between maternal punitive reactions and child emotion knowledge were only small to moderate (rs = .12–.16). Effects of such sizes were common in studies of social psychological phenomena, however. In fact, Richard et al. (2003) found that 30% of 474 effect sizes documented in 322 meta-analyses of social psychological phenomena were small (rs of .10 or less). Importantly, small effect sizes can also have substantial practical value, especially when the practical implications are inexpensive, easy to execute, and culturally and politically feasible (Litschge et al., 2010). Based on our findings, for example, Chinese parents may explain emotion display rules to their children, make reference to the cultural expectations in Chinese versus other societies, and help their children to balance self-expression with consideration of others’ feelings. On the other hand, practitioners may introduce a wider range of emotion socialization strategies when working with families from different cultural groups, as certain emotion socialization practices may be detrimental for one group but benign or even beneficial for another.

Child knowledge about emotion display rules did not moderate the associations of maternal minimizing reactions to children’s negative emotions with child peer acceptance, social cognition, or aggression, perhaps because the minimizing reactions described in our measure were less “informative” than the punitive ones (Fabes et al., 2002): The punitive reactions, such as “Tell my child that if he/she doesn’t calm down, we’ll have to leave and go home right away,” provided information on what children were punished for and what children should do in order to prevent the punishment. The minimizing reactions, such as “Tell my child that he/she is overreacting,” did not carry such information, however. It may be more difficult for children—even more knowledgeable children—to derive meanings from these minimizing reactions.

It is worth noting that punitive and minimizing reactions were strongly correlated with each other in our sample. In other words, mothers who endorsed punitive reactions to their children’s negative emotions also tended to endorse minimizing reactions, suggesting that the conceptual distinction between punitive versus minimizing reactions may be less clear from the views of parents, at least in hypothetical situations. An important direction for future research is to more carefully differentiate between different forms of parental unsupportive reactions, using both self-reported questionnaires and independent observations, and examine their potentially unique implications for child adjustment.

Our study was not without limitations. First, despite our use of a longitudinal design, no claims about causation can be made based on correlational data. Future researchers should use randomized experimental designs to test if improving parents’ socialization practices and children’s emotion knowledge may really promote children’s social competence. Second, although our stratified sampling approach allowed us to recruit families from a wide range of SES backgrounds, our sample was not representative of all families with young children in Hong Kong. Furthermore, as we did not collect information on family participation rates, we were not able to test whether low-SES families were less willing or less able to participate in our study (Stets et al., 2012). Replications of our findings are needed with Chinese samples recruited using probability sampling methods, in Hong Kong and other parts of China. Third, we assessed mothers’ reactions to children’s negative emotions using hypothetical situations, which might or might not reflect the actual behaviors of mothers. Further studies should use family activities and direct observations to assess how parents react to their children’s negative emotions in real situations. Fourth, in this study, we focused only on one kind of emotion knowledge, namely, knowledge about emotion display rules (Gnepp & Hess, 1986). Future researchers should examine the roles of other kinds of emotion knowledge, such as about emotion labels and emotion antecedents (Izard et al., 2011), in understanding the implications of parental emotion socialization for child social development. Finally, although we included three measures of child social competence and eliminated multiple alternative explanations of our findings, our study was far from exhaustive. Further studies should investigate other indicators of child social competence, such as child prosocial skills and emotion dysregulation (Ladd, 2005), and considered other confounding variables, such as maternal social competence and depressive symptoms (Ladd & Pettit, 2002).

In the face of these limitations, our study contributed to the theoretical literature by demonstrating how, in a collectivistic culture and among Chinese families, child development may vary as a function of both contextual factors (e.g., maternal emotion socialization) and child characteristics (e.g., child knowledge about emotion display rules). On an applied level, our study pointed to the importance of explaining emotion display rules to children in Chinese communities, helping children to balance self-expression of emotions with consideration of others’ feelings.

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Submitted: April 15, 2020 Revised: October 22, 2020 Accepted: October 24, 2020