Parenting, Emotional Self-Regulation, and Psychosocial Adjustment Across Early Childhood and Adolescence in Chinese and Chinese-Immigrant Sociocultural Contexts

Abstract

This chapter introduces a heuristic model and synthesizes extant research on cultural, parental, and child influences on emotion regulation or emotional self-regulation processes and adjustment outcomes in Chinese and Chinese-immigrant families. Consistent with a bioecological framework, where culture is part of the macrosystem, philosophical foundations and core cultural values that are relevant to Chinese parenting and parental socialization of children’s emotion and emotional self-regulation processes are discussed. In addition, major changes that have been observed in Chinese societies and cultures across the 20th and 21st centuries are discussed in relation to parenting and emotional self-regulation processes. In light of such cultural values and dynamics, transactional or bidirectional influences between parent and child factors on children’s emotional self-regulation processes and psychosocial adjustment, along with promising future research directions, are highlighted and discussed.