The impact of remembered emotion socialization on maternal sensitivity to distress via beliefs about crying

Abstract

The manner in which adults were parented in their own childhood is a known predictor of the manner in which they parent their own children. One potential mechanism explaining this intergenerational transmission of behavior is parental beliefs. This longitudinal study examined the association between mothers’ remembered emotion socialization, specifically their perceptions of how their own mothers responded to their childhood distress, and their sensitivity to their own infants’ distress at both 6 and 14 months and possible indirect effects via mothers’ beliefs about crying. Participants were 259 primiparous mothers (128 European American, 131 African American). The path analysis indicated that mothers who recalled their own mothers responding to their childhood distress in a non-supportive manner had more mother-oriented beliefs (i.e., crying is a nuisance to be suppressed for the comfort of the mother and others) which predicted lower maternal sensitivity to their children’s distress at 6 months and 14 months. Although there was a positive association between supportive emotion socialization and infant-oriented crying beliefs (i.e., crying as a meaningful signal that warrants a response) and a marginal but non-significant positive association between infant-oriented crying beliefs and maternal sensitivity to distress at 6 months, the indirect pathway was not statistically significant. Thus, identifying mothers who experienced non-supportive emotion socialization in childhood and providing preventative interventions to reduce their mother-oriented cry beliefs may promote more adaptive parenting in infancy.