Parental self‐efficacy: Examining its mediating and reciprocally predictive roles in supportive emotion socialization.

This longitudinal study examined the associations between child negative affect, parental self‐efficacy (PSE), and parents' approaches to the provision of supportive socialization. It also investigated the bidirectionality between PSE, problem‐focus socialization, and emotion‐focus socialization across two time points separated by one year. Participants were 757 Hong Kong Chinese parents (47.4% fathers) of kindergarten children. At both time 1 and time 2, parents reported their PSE, problem‐focus socialization, and emotion‐focus socialization. Additionally, parents rated their child's negative affect at time 1. Results from the cross‐lagged panel model revealed that, controlling for the effects of school's socioeconomic strata, child gender, parental age, and educational level, PSE at time 1 mediated the indirect links of child negative affect at time 1 with problem‐focus (indirect effect: β = −.02, SE =.02, p <.05) and emotion‐focus (indirect effect: β = −.02, SE =.01, p <.05) socialization at time 2 and that PSE (β =.10, SE =.06, p <.01) and problem‐focus socialization (β =.15, SE =.03, p <.05) were reciprocally associated with each other. Findings underscored the role of PSE in understanding parental provision of supportive socialization and the co‐development of belief about parenting and parenting behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]